"I will put my teaching in their minds and write it on their hearts..."
Jeremiah 31:33
| | |
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, underlined, and italicized. | |
|
SUNDAY Choir Practice, 9 am in person, Sanctuary
Contact Tom Ludwig, if interested
| |
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. | |
|
Sunday, December 8, After worship, Decorate the Christmas Tree, Everyone is invited!
Sunday, December 8, NO Younger Youth Monthly Meeting. We encourage you to attend Advent worship services instead.
Sunday, December 8, 3:30 - 5:30 pm, Teen Youth Shopping for Giving Tree presents
Sunday, December 8, 5:30 - 7:00 pm, Teen Christmas Party
Wednesday, December 11, 6:30 - 7:30 pm, Healing Prayer Service (In person & Online), Sanctuary
Thursday, December 12, 6:00 - 8:00 pm, SaLT Monthly Meeting, (In person & Online), Multipurpose Room
Tuesday, December 24, 6:00 pm, Christmas Eve Candle Light Service, (In person & Online)
Wednesday, December 25, 11:00 am - 1:00 pm, Community Christmas Meal, Fellowship Area
Wednesday, December 25, Office Closed
Thursday, December 26, Office Closed
Sunday, January 5, 10:00 am, Birthday & Communion Sunday
Sunday, January 5, 5:30 - 7:00 pm, Teen Youth Monthly Meeting
Tuesday, January 7, 6:30 - 8:00 pm, Racial Justice Care Team Monthly Meeting, (In person & Online), Multipurpose Room
| |
|
News at McFarland UCC
(Note: Clickable links are blue, underlined, and italicized.)
| |
|
Guided Shamanic Journey & Potluck Socials With Jessica Riphenburg - TONIGHT 6-8 pm
Our dear Shamanic practitioner friend Jessica Riphenburg of Be The Light Shamanic Healing, who has been leading our quarterly Solstice and Equinox fire ceremonies since June of 2022, is leading group Shamanic journeying sessions. Shamanic journeying is very similar to guided meditation. The session is free, but donations are greatly appreciated! No need to RSVP for tonight's gathering. Come join us and bring a dish to pass!
Click here for more information (including what to bring).
| |
|
Decorate The Church Christmas Tree!
Sunday, December 8th
Immediately after worship. Fun for all ages!
| |
|
Younger Youth—
Special Advent Happenings on Sunday Mornings In December!
Advent Greetings to all Parents of younger kids at McFarland UCC!
Sheryl Rowe and I have planed some special crafts and messages for each Sunday of the season of Advent. Instead of a Sunday evening Younger Youth meeting in December we’re encouraging families to come and participate in these festivities together as a church family.
Here's what we have in store...
Sunday, December 8: The theme will be Peace, and Sheryl will once again help the kids make “Christingles” out of oranges and treats and a candle. After church our entire community will decorate our sanctuary and the Christmas tree with ornaments (and candy canes!).
Sunday, December 15: The Advent theme will be Joy, and there will be some special music including some from our kids (a surprise). Sheryl will have some fun and joyful project for the kids.
Sunday, December 22: The theme will be Love, and we’ll have our annual “No Practice Christmas Pageant!” We’re also going to baptize Tcheki and Jeffrey’s son Tyrell during this service, and it’s always wonderful to have kids in church for baptisms.
So we’re hoping to see the younger ones and their families at church a bunch in December! Come join us if you can!!
Pastor Bryan
| |
|
Winter Solstice Fire Ceremony With Shamanic Practitioner Jessica Riphenburg
Friday, Dec. 20, 6:00- 7:00 pm
We'll get a big fire going outside at our fire pit and enjoy another solstice fire ceremony and prayers with shamanic practitioner Jessica Riphenburg. Come enjoy some prayers from the Celtic Christian tradition, and the fire ceremony from the shamanic tradition. Bundle up and join us as we acknowledge the longest night of the year, and welcome the returning of more and more Light!
| |
|
Want to Join Our Church as an Official Member?
Next New Member Sunday is December 22nd...
We'll be receiving new members once again during worship on Sunday, December 22nd. Speak to Pastor Bryan if you have any questions about what being an official member of our congregation is all about. At this point there are 7 persons who will be joining our church that day and there's always room for more!
| |
|
Christmas Poinsettias
MUCC has purchased poinsettias through the McFarland Lioness Club fundraiser to decorate the sanctuary. Would you like to purchase one or more of our church’s poinsettias to honor or memorialize a loved one? The honored person(s) would be listed in the Pulse. Purchasing a poinsettia helps defray our church costs.
The suggested donation for the small (6 ½” pot) plant is $14 and $23 for a large plant (8” pot).
To contribute toward a poinsettia (which you may take home after the Christmas Eve Candlelight Service), sign up via SignUp Genius or contact Ginger (Administrative Assistant) or Colleen Krattiger.
There are two payment options:
- Pay online into the General Fund with the memo “Christmas Flowers”
- Pay by check – drop in the offering basket on Sunday or mail it to the church with the memo “Christmas Flowers.”
| |
|
Lost and Found Items
All items are by the coat racks and want to be reunited with their owners! Help rejoin these items with their owners.
- Green jacket
- Pink baseball hat with "Tell your dog I said hi"
- Yeah! Home found - Blue baseball hat
- Brown sunglasses
Unclaimed items will be donated December 20.
| The Care Team is always looking for ways to build community and is once again doing the Community Christmas Meal. We need volunteers to prepare food, set up, clean up, and serve. If you are available, please consider how you could help this season and sign up. Questions? Contact Lavon Geasland or Judy Taber. | |
Weekly Creation Care Topic
Reduce/Reuse/Recycle
This week’s Tip: Reduce: ‘Tis the season to consider ways to have an eco-friendly holiday. From Small Footprint Family, 1 of the 12 things they suggest we consider is how we shop. “Online shopping reduces the time you drive your car, but the carbon footprint from transporting all those purchases can be high. In addition, the packaging can be an enormous waste. According to a study by MIT that compared brick-and-mortar shopping to online shopping, buying online typically has a lower carbon footprint than driving around—except when online shoppers choose 2-day or faster delivery. Whenever possible, plan to avoid 2-day or rush shipping. Opting for a slower shipping time gives the shipper time to schedule deliveries more efficiently. Try to consolidate shipments of multiple items when you can, and waive signature requirements (or use Amazon locker) to prevent multiple delivery attempts. Many online shops specialize in sustainable & handcrafted gifts, from arts and crafts to clothing to household goods to fine jewelry, including Loop & Tie, Etsy, EarthHero, DoneGood, & Guud.”
| |
A Few Words from Pastor Bryan
...and poet/author Chelan Harkin
I don't think I've ever recommended a new book as strongly as I'm recommending this one!
I had lunch with MUCC member Trish Kalhagen yesterday, and she asked if she could share some excerpts from a new book she's discovered called The Prophetess: The Return of The Prophet By The Divine Feminine by a woman named Chelan Harkin. Trish often finds amazing stuff on the internet and shares it with me, and I knew after she read one paragraph to me that this book was and is profoundly inspired in a deeply mystical and transforming way.
I mean like Scripture. Like the Sufi mystical poetry of Rumi and Hafiz. No joke and no exaggeration. I'll be giving a bunch of these for Christmas. This book is blowing me away.
I can't take time to get into it here, but the book is particularly impactful for me because of its title and its purpose. Chelan shares in the introduction that she felt called by the Spirit to write a companion book to the Kahil Gibran classic, The Prophet, and that that book had played a huge role in her own spiritual journey and in the family in which she was raised. Trish had no way of knowing that this book by Kahil Gibran played an intimately significant role in my own spiritual awakening when I was 17. It was one of the first books that spoke to my soul in a way that my soul recognized. It grabbed me so deeply that I shared two quotes from it on my high-school yearbook senior page at age 18 (see the photo below--that's me with Muhammad Ali when I was about 12! Ask me later. And yeah, look at all that hair!).
I'm going to share with you the words that Trish first shared with me yesterday. Some of them anyway. They are from the chapter called "God," and I hope it's enough to inspire you to read the entire book. Again, Trish had no way of knowing, but the quote at the bottom of my yearbook page from Gibran's The Prophet is also from a chapter that begins with the words, "Speak to us of God."
The only other thing I'll say before leaving you with the amazing words of The Prophetess is that this book is obviously the female counterpart to the original book. It's all about a new paradigm for a new time. And that time is NOW. Seriously, I hope you read this book. Those of you who hear me preach regularly will understand why I resonate SO DEEPLY with this inspired text.
Thanks again Trish! And thank you God for this amazing book. I have no doubt I will be drawing from it for the rest of my life. Chelan Harkin is going to be very famous. I'm certain of it. This book is anointed.
Hope to see you Sunday,
Pastor Bryan
Chelan Harkin-- "God"
Speak to us of God. And The Prophetess spoke, You don’t have to believe in God, but please, collapse in wonder as regularly as you can. Try and let your knowledge be side-swiped by awe, and let beauty be so persuasive that you find yourself increasingly willing to lay your opinions at her feet.
If the word “God” comes with too many weighty associations that haven’t made your heart lighter, experiment with giving God a new name.
Find a name that doesn’t need so much redemption, that isn’t tied to history and old gravity in your heart. Try calling God “Life,” the inspired intelligence that sings through all form and adds poetry to the radiance of the moon. Call it that which attunes us to beauty. Call it the Wild Grace that encourages the sapling into the oak, that which coaxes the apple tree into the fullness of its blossom, the truth that redeems us from the fallacious notion that we could be anything but love.
We want a God that delivers us into the grandeur and nobility of our deeply rooted joy—What else is worth yoking our life to? If a notion of God feels more cage than key, more should than want, more authoritative than attractive, more death than Life, more weight than wing, try a way that carries a more mellifluous tone. Try calling it “She” who animates the ocean waves, who composes sunsets, who carves the great clay bowls of the valleys and uses the steady hands of time to raise the mountains. Call it “Ancient Reality,” “Inspired Intelligence,” or “the Magic Within Science.” Call it “the Ecosystem of Light that Connects Us All.”
This is the age to lay down the old God of wrath and retribution, to lay down the fearful burdens in your heart that have kept you separate from yourself and without joy.
Claiming the agency to redefine God is claiming the agency to redefine your life. Redefining our relationship with God is the king-pin of the new paradigm. For God represents our highest value, what our life most deeply cares about and serves. We could consider God to be the authority of permission we grant ourselves that determines how deeply we’ll accept ourselves, how bravely we’ll shine, and how fully and truly we dare to live.
| |
|
In case it's hard to read the quote above, here's the text below. Of course you won't find exclusively male pronouns for God in The Prophetess!
And if you would know God be not therefore a solver of riddles.
Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children.
And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain.
You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in trees.
The Prophet
| | | | |
