"I will put my teaching in their minds and write it on their hearts..."
Jeremiah 31:33
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Calendar of Upcoming Events | |
Below are the weekly programs. You can find brief descriptions of these weekly programs on our website. Clickable links are in blue and italicized. | |
Below are the upcoming non-weekly events on the calendar happening at McFarland UCC for about the next month. All events are on the McFarland UCC calendar with Zoom links and additional information in the details/description area. Click the event on the McFarland UCC calendar to see the details. | |
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Sunday, August 4, 10:00 am, Worship, Birthday and Communion Sunday
Sunday, August 4, 5:30 - 7:00 pm, NO Teen Youth Monthly Meeting. Next teen meeting is the August 18th All Ages "Games, Food, & Fire Circle" gathering.
Tuesday, August 6, 6:30 - 8:00 pm, Racial Justice Care Team Monthly Meeting, (In person & Online), Multipurpose Room
Thursday, August 8, 6:00 - 8:00 pm, SaLT Monthly Meeting, (In person & Online), Multipurpose Room
Sunday, August 11, NO Younger Youth Monthly Meeting. Next Younger Youth meeting is the August 18th All Ages "Games, Food, & Fire Circle" gathering.
Wednesday, August 14, 6:30 - 7:30 pm, Healing Prayer Service (In person & Online), Sanctuary
Thursday, August 15, NO NION Monthly Meeting
Sunday, August 18, 10:00 am Outdoor Worship Service
Sunday, August 18, 5:30 - 8:00 pm Games, Food & Fire Circle, Outdoor firepit
Tuesday, August 20, 6:30 - 8:00 pm, Creation Care Team Bi-Monthly Meeting rescheduled from July, (In person & Online), Multipurpose Room
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Thank you to this weekend's volunteers!
Ushers/Greeters: Easton and Raya Becher-Etnier
Hospitality Hosts: Paul Miller, Margaret Miller & Jean Kleckner
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News at McFarland UCC
(Note: Clickable links are blue and italicized.)
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"Stuff the Bus" Campaign
Backpacks and school supplies have been coming in for this year’s Stuff the Bus campaign! In the photo, Bill and Auburn of Nelson Bus Service attach a poster to a school bus parked in the McFarland High School parking lot.
The donated items will be taken to the McFarland Food Pantry, where families with school-age children will go on Monday, August 19, to pick up the backpacks and school supplies to give the children what they need to start the school year.
If you wish to donate backpacks or school supplies, you can drop them off at the donation box located at the McFarland UCC now through Sunday, August 11. Or you can drop them off in the donation boxes at the village municipal center, the McFarland Library, or McFarland Pick 'N Save between July 27 and August 10. You can also drop donations off at the high school (main entrance) between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. on Saturday, August 10. If you wish to make a cash donation, you can send a donation to the McFarland Community Food Pantry (specify 'Stuff the Bus' on the memo line of your check), PO Box 101, McFarland WI 53558, or donate online through the McFarland Food Pantry (using PayPal or Venmo), and specify 'Stuff the Bus' in a comment.
School supplies needed: themed backpacks (grades K-5); sturdy backpacks (grades 6-12); Kleenex; black Expo dry erase FINE markers; Notebooks (college-ruled, 1-subject); #2 wood pencils (sharpened); binder dividers; whiteboard erasers; white 1-inch 3-ring binders; yellow highlighters; yellow Post-It notes; composition notebooks (wide-ruled); felt-tip pens; pocket calculators; and Ziploc bags (gallon size). We don’t need: crayons, glue sticks, filler paper.
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PLEASE Help: Refreshing Our Bulletin Board and Website!
Our goal is to update our bulletin board in the fellowship area and our website with fresh photos of our vibrant community! To capture our latest events and smiling faces, we kindly request recent pictures from all. Please submit your photos to Ginger, our administrative assistant, via email or her office mailbox by August 15, 2024. If photos are provided, it will be assumed that you grant us permission to have and use the photo. If the photo contains an image of a minor, a parent/guardian will be asked to sign a Minor Photo Release Form. Let's showcase our "A Church With Heart!"
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Befrienders Training
The Befrienders will be holding another set of classes after Labor Day with the orientation on Saturday, September 7, and then weekly classes will begin on Wednesday, September 11 at 6:30 – 8:00pm. and continue the next six Wednesdays. We also offer the classes on Zoom for those unable to attend in person.
These classes are on a two year rotation so a different set of classes will be presented this year. Some of the newly commissioned Befrienders will be participating in this new set of classes but new members are welcome to join as well.
At each class we invite speakers to come in to talk about the specific topic we are studying for the week. We had a number of members of our congregation who spoke this past spring. If any of the topics we are covering this fall touches you and you would be willing to share with our group please talk to me. Please be assured, anything shared with the group is completely confidential. We will need speakers for the following topics: Dementia/Alzheimer and Parenting a Parent, Cancer and Life Threatening Illness, Grief and Loss, Mental Illness and Schizophrenia and Alcoholism and Drug Abuse.
If you have any questions about the Befriender training, would like to sign up or are considering being a speaker, please let me know. We need to order books very soon so time is short.
Please contact Jean Duchrow at 608-335-3772 or by email.
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Update on your prayers...
This past winter Rachel Saladis requested prayers for her cousin's son Emmett. At the age of 6 months, Emmett was very sick and the outcome was unknown. Rachel wanted to update us. Emmett is doing well. He gets fed via a feeding tube but scoots around, plays outside, and enjoys spending time with his older sister. Emmett enjoys life! Rachel and his parents appreciate your continued prayers!
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Weekly Creation Care Tips -
Reduce/Reuse/Recycle
This week’s Tip: Justice: According to "The Devil Wears Prada (Once)" post on The Ecojustice Project website, much of fast fashion relies on sweatshop workers, child labor, or slave labor in developing countries. Workers often earn $64/mo (far below the cost of living), they are exposed to harmful chemicals, face sexual harassment, and are refused maternity leave. Since 1990, more than 400 workers have died in sweatshops and many more, including children, injured. Additionally, our environment suffers: The average person throws out 70lbs of clothing/yr; the textile industry emits large amounts of greenhouse gas, uses large quantities of water, and dumps chemical waste into water supplies and soil contributing to global pollution. We can all work to make even small changes: fix damaged clothing, repurpose it, give it away, buy second-hand, buy less, buy local, and if you can afford it, buy ethical brands. For more info, watch the fast fashion documentary: The True Cost (Netflix)
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A Few Words from Pastor Bryan
...and Denzel Washington
So here's a bit of rather personal information about me that came to even me as a surprise... (how's that for a tease?)
It's been a very full month or so for me pastorally. That's not the surprise, and it's not all that unusual. Being a pastor tends to be a rather intense existence, and I love it and regard it as a privilege to be invited into intimate and private aspects of people's lives. But I'm often holding a lot. Again, it's a privilege, and I know what to do (with God's help) to take care of myself. It's all good. Most of the time anyway. Hey, I'm human.
It's also been an intense month or so in the world. Gaza and the Middle East. Netanyahu. Putin. Assassination attempts. Biden. Trump. J.D. Vance. Kamala Harris. Plenty to deal with and to try to make sense of.
I heard a spiritual teacher I like a lot named Teal Swan talk about how much most of us have been more deeply traumatized in our lives than we realize. She defined trauma as "stress without resolution." Ah. That hits home. Most of us are taking in or being exposed to stressful input that simply has no quick or clear or well-defined resolution. I think that can be dangerous over time if we don't name it for what it is and bring it to conscious awareness and work with it.
And that leads to the information about me. To get right to it, last Sunday evening, after a long day (leading worship, preaching at an installation service, leading our "Games, Food, & Fire Circle" night (which was fun even with the rain!), I went home. I was pretty wiped out and too tired to read, but also not ready to go to sleep. So I decided to check out Netflix and veg out a bit. And what did I wind up watching?
"The Equalizer 3" starring Denzel Washington. I'd seen the original "The Equalizer" years ago, so I sort of knew what I was getting into. A lot of violence for sure. But I was too tired to question why I chose that of all things to watch, so I just went for it. I figured I'd probably turn it off before long, but nope, I was riveted. And here's what surprised me. I was soothed by it. Yup. It made me feel good.
Huh?
Well here's what I figured out. Denzel plays a retired ex-CIA operative (or something like that) named Robert McCall, who is the ultimate warrior. He kills people with legendary skill, efficiency, and decisiveness. But he's also this completely calm, aging, unassuming, humble, "good guy" who doesn't WANT to harm anyone and who is tired of the violence. He just wants to live in peace and get along. BUT--if he sees someone being ruthlessly mistreated to the point where he just can't stand it, then his righteous sense of justice and protection kicks in and he becomes the most efficient violent assassin imaginable who exacts perfect justice and punishment on all the "bad guys" in the film. He even warns them to change their ways first. He always gives them an alternative to avoid being killed, but they scoff at him. So you guessed it. They all wind up "getting theirs." And he's just so cool. He's always outnumbered and in impossible situations. And then he engages in his killing spree with surgical precision. And when it's all over, peace is restored, the bad guys are dead, and he returns to his unassuming noble, peaceful, and emotionally-conflicted-just- enough-self to keep it real.
So why did this sooth me? Lots of reasons, but here are a few obvious ones. So many of the things I deal with have no clear-cut results, let alone "resolution." They are rarely unambiguously resolved. And there's just something so "neat and tidy" about the good guys being really good and the bad guys (the bad guys are always male in these movies--that's another article!) being unspeakably and completely evil. And there's the "poetic justice" of the righteous use of violence and good overcoming evil, even though it's always through an orgy of bloody but justifiable violence or what theologian Walter Wink so aptly named "the myth of redemptive violence." There's a part of me weaned in our culture here in the U.S. that just loves it when the righteous use of force makes everything "right" in the world again. I was spoon fed that illusion--that the necessary use of might can make right-- in my formative years, as most of us here in the U.S. were.
But even deeper, Denzel's character gives voice and expression to a part of myself that sometimes gets exhausted as I try to walk the Path of Jesus. There are times when at least some weary part of me would rather NOT invite God's Spirit to fill me with the love of Christ--the love that challenges my ego, checks my smallness, questions my motives, reveals my blind spots, and that calls and equips me to choose patience and kindness and forgiveness rather than vengeance and violence. There's a part of me that sometimes wants to just explode with anger and rage and righteous judgement rather than hear Jesus calling me to "love my enemies" or Paul reminding me to "never return evil for evil." There's a part my very human being that doesn't want to leave all issues of retribution or evening up a score up to God. I get a bit tired of always having to remind myself that no one is "all good" or "all bad," and that everyone--no matter how lost they/we are--is God's beloved child, made in God's image, worthy of being treated with dignity and basic respect. I mean how can you "waste the bad people" if they are all God's beloved children? That plot would make a really lousy action movie. The bad guys might actually win if you don't somehow beat them at their own game. You know, "do unto them before they do it unto you."
And the simple truth also is that I have a lot of warrior energy in me. I was never one to get in a lot of fights, but growing up all of that more martial (and masculine, but that's another can of worms) energy got channeled into aggressive contact sports, which I loved. So what do I do with that now as an (aging) adult? What do we do when the frustration builds? That steam needs to be released somehow, even as I embrace spiritual practices which hopefully produce more Light than heat within me. But trust me--the heat is still there and sometimes all too ready to be released in a not-so-Christ-like manner.
Well these are some of the things I thought about last Monday, the day after watching this movie. It was good to smile at it all and be aware of it. And to simply be grateful for the way a movie like that can be a safe way to vicariously process certain things. And then you know what I did? I watched Equalizer 2 on Monday night!
I enjoyed it also. But this time, I also noticed how completely unrealistic it was in so many ways. People don't die that "cleanly" or easily or without consequence. And that kind of violence NEVER truly resolves any real problem. It just sets up and usually escalates the next conflict. And humans HAVE to learn how to regulate our rage and develop healthy ways of processing and working with our anger. And... I could go on. Suffice it to say that after further reflection, I was reminded why I have chosen to walk the Path of Jesus. It's actually even more soothing, though also challenging, as long as we are honest about the full range of our God-given emotions, and don't think choosing love means repressing anger or weakly acquiescing in the face of evil.
And it also hit me--as cool as Denzel is (he and Samuel L. Jackson are 2 of the coolest men on the planet in my opinion!)-- Jesus is infinitely more cool--and the only true Equalizer.
Hope to see you in church this Sunday or somewhere soon!
Pastor Bryan
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