Memorial Service

A memorial service for long-time church member Jean Perkins will be held in the Sanctuary on Friday, March 3 at 10am. All are welcome to attend.

New Members Joining This Sunday

We are thrilled to have new folks joining our church, bringing their energy and their gifts. This week, we welcome James Horgan, Kerry and Justin Bier, Karen and Brad Hammond and Miller Longbotham into membership at Old North at the 8am Service and Katherine Howe, Isaac and Aine Lorie, Ruth Duell and Jon and Leah Waldo at the 10am service.

Please introduce yourself to them, and help these new members feel at home. If you are interested in joining Old North, speak to one of the ministers! We will have special coffee hours after the 8 and 10am services to welcome our new members. Please attend!!

Deacons' Fund Envelopes Will Be In The Pews This Sunday

The Deacons’ Fund aids parishioners who have emergency one-time needs with bills such as rental or utility payments, or medical expenses. The fund has a monthly collection on Communion Sundays, but donations are welcomed at any time. You may mail a check to us at 8 Stacey St (please be sure to put Deacons' Fund on the memo line), or you may put a check in the offertory plate. Please see one of the ministers if you have questions or need assistance.

Children's Faith Formation

The children will go to the classroom during the second Hymn. James Horgan will lead the class this week.



Childcare for Infants to 3 1/2 years old are welcome to join Rey and Donna Weiner, upstairs in the First Church Meeting House room, beginning at 9:50 and anytime during the service.

Grief Class With Else Wiersma

Begins This Sunday, March 5 in the Great Room

For 40 years, Else Wiersma and her husband, Charles Navle, offered a course on death and dying at Salem State University called Life and Living. She brings the insights of this course to our church for a 4-part series for Lent: She writes: “This course will discuss how we can find both the courage and awareness to encounter death in the face of loss, grief, and fear, core deliberations, as we exchange points of view. Scientific fact falters before death. Yet to live means to die. There are important questions to ask: Why does our faith not strengthen and enlighten us? Why do we fear death so? Does the human inclination devoutly to hope for an afterlife say more about human nature than it may say about God? What does it mean when we speak of life after death? These are a few questions to which our discussions will attempt to respond.

This four-week course will meet on Sunday mornings, after the 10:00 A.M. service, on March 5, 12, 19, and 26, in the ‘Great Room’ at the Stacey Street Office. Essays will be e-mailed prior to meeting, and hard-copies will be made available in the church office. A ZOOM-option is planned.”

If you plan to attend let Else know: [email protected] or contact the church office (781-631-1244) or: [email protected]

See No Stranger

Sessions Have Begun

“You are a part of me that I do not yet know”.  Valarie Kaur in her book, See No Stranger, dives into a concept of revolutionary love. She writes from a perspective of compassion and justice delving into how we can love others, the opponent and ourselves. Her insights are extraordinary and her storytelling is compelling.  

We’ll gather via ZOOM on three evenings in Lent to explore each of these dimensions of revolutionary love. Join us for remaining sessions on:

·Thursday, March 16 @ 7pm book Part 2: ‘tend the wound: loving opponents’



·Thursday, March 23 @ 7pm book Part 3: ‘breathe and push: loving ourselves’

Topic: See No Stranger

Join Zoom Meeting

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Meeting ID: 823 4062 5600

Passcode: 566682

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From Lament to Gratitude: A Day Retreat at ONC

Saturday March 18^th from 10:00am-1:00pm

Led by Karen Kilty

Spiritual Director and Director of Children’s Ministries

We are a weary people, we have traveled and have carried so much over the last three years. In this retreat, you will be invited to settle in for time of quiet, rest, and for seeking peace. We will reflect on what it is we need to put down, to let go of, then open ourselves to listen to where it is that God is leading as we look ahead. To register or for more information, please contact Karen Kilty at kwkilty@ gmail.com 

Prayer Dice

There is an interesting way to engage in daily prayer. We talked about this in worship and in our Lenten brochure. You can do it from home even if you haven't been able to get dice and a card at church yet. Here's how:

Once a day, once an hour, or once a week roll the dice. Look at the number on top of the die when it comes to rest. Find that number in the list below and let the question guide your prayer and reflection:

1. Name 3 good things for which you are thankful. Give thanks to God.
2. Offer a prayer for God to guide our church faithfully into it’s next chapter.
3. Is there something for which you feel regret, shame or guilt? Release it into God’s mercy and tenderness.
4. Name a person or situation that you want to bring to God for healing and wholeness.
5. What Blessing would you like to ask God to bring into your life or the world.
6. Share in prayer something about God that amazes or delights you.

Experiencing Church, Ways We Learn and Grow

Each of us has our own ways of approaching and experiencing worship, time in fellowship, Children’s Church as we seek to deepen our roots of faith formation. As we welcome families and children, we are always looking for new ways to meet and greet them where they are at, helping them learn and grow in faith with new approaches to experience time together on Sunday mornings and beyond.

In the upcoming weeks, along with the Sunday morning activity clipboards with coloring pages and stickers, you may also see us offering electronic tablets* and head phones with a video recording that coincides with the Children’s Church lesson of the day.

Be it an autistic child looking for engagement in the lesson, or a child who finds social interactions a bit overwhelming, computing devices, like tablets can be quite beneficial as welcome our children, as well as their families, offering them connection in an accessible and meaningful way.

Would you like to lend your voice to this new Children’s Ministry? By way of recording a brief video of “Hello”, “Welcome,” My Name is” or to record a scripture lesson are simple ways for our children to get to know you, and find their special place in their church family.

Please contact me Karen Kilty, at [email protected]

*The tablets are ones that we used at the beginning of the pandemic to bring the recordings of Sunday worship and special music to those at home unable to manage online services.

UCC Earthquake Relief Efforts

As you surely know, Turkey and Syria have just suffered from a horrific 7.8 magnitude earthquake and aftershocks in a region which includes the UN’s largest concentration of refugees. The death toll alone is already over 47,000 at the writing of this note. The Outreach Ministry Board is contributing $1,000 in emergency funding through the national UCC organization on Old North’s behalf.

For those of you who would like to make an individual donation to the relief effort, click here to help fund the UCC’s relief efforts directly.

Thank you for being such a caring and giving congregation.

Stewardship

Old North Church relies on donations to fund its annual operating budget. If you wish to help support Old North’s mission, programs and community service, please fill out one of the pledge cards in the pew racks and put it in the offertory plate. You may also pledge online at:

www.onchurch.org/pledge

Welcome Table

The Community Life Ministry Board is planning on creating a Welcome Table in the Narthex, which will serve as an information and greeting location on Sunday mornings. We are looking for volunteers who would be willing to help with this project. For further information, please contact Chris Arren at [email protected] or 617-823-2471.

Singers May Still Join!



The program for our annual Palm Sunday Lenten Concert will be the beloved choral masterpiece, Requiem  KV 626 by W.A. Mozart, accompanied by the Festival Chorus chamber orchestra. Rehearsals are on Wednesdays from 7:30 -9:00 through the week of the concert and some Saturday mornings. If you are not singing, please mark your calendars to attend our performance of the Mozart Requiem on Sunday, April 2, at 7:30pm. Information regarding listing a loved one in the In Loving Memory section of our program will be forthcoming. For more information, please email Maria at [email protected]. 

Photo: Old North Chandelier taken by Tom Schaefer, member of the Old North Choir

Let's Go Bowling!



The Community Life Board invites you to come bowling on Saturday, March 11, 2023, at Sunnyside Bowling, 176 Water Street, Danvers. (Go straight on Rt. 114 past Bishop Fenwick High School. Sunnyside is just a little further on the right.) We have reserved lanes from 2:00 - 4:00 p.m. The cost per person is $3.00 for shoe rental and $5.50 per game. CASH ONLY - ATM available. Bowling is candlepin (small balls). Come on your own or bring your family and join us for a fun time. Please respond to Chris Arren at 617-823-2471 or email [email protected] so we can have a count of participants. Please respond by Wednesday, March 8, 2023.

Son of Holocaust Survivors to Conduct World Premiere of Anne Frank Opera



Old North Church mezzo-soprano soloist Gabriela Fagen, ("Gabi" ) will be traveling to Indiana this week to attend the world premiere of the opera, Anne Frank at the Jacobs School of Music, where she will have the honor of watching her father conduct. Gabi's grandparents are Holocaust survivors and were among those whose lives were saved by Oskar Schindler, the title character upon whom Steven Spielberg based his movie, Schindler's List. Please follow the link below to read more about this amazing project and the involvement of the Fagen family. https://news.iu.edu/live/news/28115-son-of-holocaust-survivors-to-conduct-world?mibextid=Zxz2cZ&fbclid=IwAR1aHmXuolKFyfePFwQEXryqpjzpzyNoh62akLIMXczr6sg7ozoA9u6Nq3Y

The world premiere of the opera Anne Frank will be livestreamed on Friday and Saturday at 7:30pm.

To watch, click here: https://iumusiclive.music.indiana.edu/

ONC Reading and Discussion Group

on Preserving our Democracy and Environment

Monday, March 13 at 8:30am

The next meeting of the Old North Reading and Discussion Group on Preserving our Democracy and Environment will be on Monday, March 13th, 2023, from 8:30 to 10:00 AM. This is the latest of a series of meetings on this subject that have been hosted for all by the ONC Men’s Group. You are invited to participate regardless of the amount of your preparation or whether you have attended a previous meeting. For the March meeting we will discuss Chapters 7 and 8 of Lies My Teacher Told Me, by James Loewen. The meeting will be hosted on Zoom, and will be open 15 minutes early for logon and general discussion. To log in, just click on 

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84601610025?pwd=d0JwSUZtOFo5emdUTEQ3ZGl0c21wQT09 .

If you would like to use your telephone for audio, dial 1 929 205 6099 and follow the operator’s instructions with Meeting ID: 846 0161 0025 and Passcode: 856736. 

Clothing Drive for South Africa



Our church group going to South Africa next August will be taking gifts of clothing for the Pholela Congregation to share among their 25 villages. We are looking for donations of good used items that include:

• Shirts (T’s and button down for boys and men, pants for boys and men ONLY)
• Sweaters, sweatshirts, blouses and dresses for girls and women (NO pants for women)
• Warm baby clothing, especially knitted caps and sweaters, shoes for small children only.
• Anything fleece like vests, jackets, warm hats, gloves, lightweight jackets and coats
•  NO heavy items please
• I will be purchasing fleece blankets for the elderly so donations of those will be appreciated. 

Bags of donated clothing may be left at the church upstairs in the small unused classroom at the end of the corridor. Contact Ginny von Rueden, [email protected] or 781-631-7898 for more information. Siyabonga!! (Thank you in Zulu)

Lectio Divina

A monastic practice of scripture, reflection and prayer dating back to the 4^th century, at Old North lectio divina has been adapted and practiced for more than ten years on every Tuesday morning from 9 to about 10:30 am. When Dennis was here, he led the practice. Since his leaving, we all take turns being the leader to select the readings. We have welcomed newcomers, some not from Old North, who seem to find soul food in the practice and the shared reflections that are part of it. We meet at 9 am both in person in the “Great Room” on Stacey St. and on zoom.

We begin each meeting with a context-setting call to worship. Then we pair a scripture reading with a poem, chosen by the leader for the day and read aloud. We then move into 21 minutes of silent meditation, marked by chimes, and finally we share in “safe space” our responses – personal and intellectual. We end each session with prayers for healing and the Lord’s Prayer.



It is a rich time of being together in community and quite like no other. We invite you to give it a try.

Help Us Help Our Environment

We have heard this quote for decades: “The Earth does not belong to us: we belong to the Earth.” Chief Seattle.  And what happens to the earth happens to us as well as by us.  We are hoping to be part of the change.  

We are forming a Green Team of volunteers looking for ways to make our church operate more sustainably. Specifically, we will be taking the steps towards becoming a Green Congregation (for more info go to our Conference’s website: 

https://www.sneucc.org/environmental-ministries). 

You can sign up to be part of the Green Team at Coffee Hour or send an email to Mark and Marge Adams at [email protected].  

Given the steep rise in fuel and electric costs this year we will also be suggesting ways for our congregation and community to reduce their use within their own homes.  

Additionally, we are interested in exploring collaboration and partnership with other green team groups among our interfaith siblings and within our town.