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The election is over. The votes have been cast and almost all the counting and contests are over. The political signs crowding our intersections and obscuring our views will hopefully disappear. Now is the time to catch our breath. Come to our Sunday service at 10:15 am and catch the breath of love and life. Catching our breath before we move forward into tomorrow.

Thanks to Bill Peterson and all of our hospitality volunteers during the days of voting. You too can catch your breath.

No matter who you are or where you are on life's journey,

you are welcome here!

This Sunday at Shadow Rock

9:00 am

• Adult Spiritual Formation and Kindlings start in the Multipurpose Room of the Education Bldg with coffee and fellowship
• Spiritual Play is in the Lime Room
• Childcare is in the Blue Room
• Sunday School for ages 9 and up in the Green Room
• Hospitality Cart with coffee and cookies in the Multipurpose Room

10:15 am

• Worship in the Sanctuary (childcare is offered in the Blue Room of the Education Bldg 10 - 11:30 am)

11:15 am

• NO there is Sermon Reboot after worship in the narthex.
• Coffee Chat is happening, and it is sponsored by our WISE Team.
• Planned Giving Initiative Group is inviting everyone for a conversation in the Multipurpose Room.



Planned Giving Conversation This Sunday After Worship

ATTENTION! This is not an official notification, but it is important information to share so it is on your mental, spiritual, and financial "radar screens"! The decision-making entities of our congregation are moving through a process to bring the second half of our soffit repair project to a congregational meeting, Nov. 24th. After review by the Facilities Team, Financial Oversight Team, Executive Council, and our Governing Board we will make the official notification. Timing is crucial, thus the heads up.

The written proposal is available upon request.



A Reminder of the History of Veterans Day

November 11 is Veterans Day, originally “Armistice Day.” On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month (that is, 11:00 am on November 11, 1918), the truce was declared that ended World War I, then known as “The Great War” and “the war to end all wars.”

“Armistice” is from the Latin arma (“arms”) and sistere (“stand still”). Imagine the stillness, the quiet that came from laying down weapons on both sides, after years of grueling, bloody trench warfare.

The United States Congress subsequently declared that the date “should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations.”  

Sadly, it was not “the war to end all wars” — and so in 1954, the day was renamed, “Veterans Day” to honor veterans from all the wars since, not just World War I. But the words of Congress still resonate, as do the holiday’s origins in that great stillness.

A day of thanksgiving: for the service of veterans, living and dead; for the service of caregivers — doctors and nurses and chaplains and mental health professionals and spouses and family members and friends — who walk with veterans through the ravages of war, even after the bullets and bombs and missiles stop flying; and for the days of peace that come at long last.

A day of prayer: for people of all faiths (or no faith at all), a time of prayer, meditation, or reflection on the stillness of armistice, so that the days of peace on Earth increase, and the days of war decrease.

A day of exercises designed to perpetuate peace through goodwill and mutual understanding between nations: for all of us to find ways, large and small, to build bridges across lines of difference, suspicion, or hostility, in our neighborhoods, our country, and among the nations of the world.

To lay down our arms. To step into a new stillness together. To sing with our ancestors that we, too, will lay down our swords and shields, “down by the riverside, and study war no more” — so that the next hundred-and-six years may be more peaceful than the last.

As we live through these days of war and rumors of war, may God’s peace be with you on this Veterans Day, this Armistice Day, and may we lay down all of our arms, all of our burdens, in God’s great Shalom rising up even now, like soldiers climbing out of trenches a century ago.

(Source: SALT is an Emmy Award-winning production company dedicated to the craft of visual storytelling)

Dr. Patricia StandTal Clarke meets with World Council of Churches General Secretary

Indigenous peoples of Arizona have lived in the region since time immemorial: tribes who entered centuries ago, such as the Southern Athabascan peoples; the Pascua Yaqui who settled Arizona in mass during the early 20th century; smaller communities that have been in the region for thousands of years prior; and others who have come and gone.

Arizona has the third largest Native American population of any U.S. state. Almost a quarter of Arizona is reservation land often without electricity or running water. Food and water insecurity are a constant challenge. The Navajo Nation has the largest reservation in the United States, and the Tohono O'odham Nation in southeast Arizona has the second-largest reservation; thus, the Southwest Conference of the UCC has the highest Native American demographic in the denomination.

President Joe Biden traveled to the Gila River Indian Community on Friday, 25 October 2024, to formally apologize for the role the U.S. government has in abuses committed at Indian boarding schools that Native American children were forced to attend for 150 years. These abuses were also perpetuated by Christian denominations who prospered financially.

Native American children nationwide were forcibly removed from their homes and suffered whippings, sexual abuse, and severe malnourishment and were forced to perform manual labor across 408 boarding schools from 1819 to 1969 as part of the U.S. government's campaign to compel their assimilation and cultural genocide. In Arizona alone, there were 47 federal Indian boarding schools — and that number does not even include the religious and private institutions that received federal funding to run schools.

The ongoing impact of the so-called Doctrine of Discovery deprives Native Americans of their sacred lands through resource extraction, ecological catastrophe, land grabbing, and human trafficking leaving their communities utterly devastated by psycho-social consequences that have decimated and continue to traumatize Indigenous peoples both now and for generations to come.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) Ecumenical Indigenous Peoples’

Network (EPIN) works to help bring about change and healing from these abuses and serves as an ongoing consultant to the General Secretary.

The Rev. Dr Patricia StandTal Clarke (fifth from the right), Minister of Wholeness at Shadow Rock UCC, is a member of the EPIN and met with WCC general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr. Jerry Pillay October 11-15, 2024, in Geneva. North American Indian Boarding Schools and the complicity of Christian denominations was a major topic of discussion. Dr. Rev. Clarke and the EPIN group is pictured below.