March 2021 Issue
You will find current programs and gatherings included in this newsletter. Click on the link or email of the contact you wish to connect with for groups you are interested in joining. If you or someone you know would like a hard copy of the FC Older Adult Times, please contact the editor. First Community Older Adult Times wishes you a blessed season of Lent.
A Note from the Editor
March is upon us, continuing through the season of Lent, which began this year on February 17. The word "Lent" comes from the Old English word lencten, which means "springtime" or "spring season." In Germanic and Slavic languages, the word Lent comes from the word for fasting, hence the tradition of refraining from certain foods or other activities.

We observe this season for 46 days, through the last week, known as Holy Week. Palm Sunday will be March 28, allowing us to remember "Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, in which the path traveled was strewn with palm branches." (USA Today Network)

I pray that with the availability of the vaccine, we will be able to truly embrace the new life of Easter, giving us the long awaited hugs and gatherings of family and friends. We have endured so much this last year, yet we continue to hold fast to the faith of being together.

With love to you all, I send you prayers for renewed energy, light and peace this Easter season. And maybe with the vaccine (and a little bit of luck), we will be seeing each other soon!

Robin Hood
Congregational Care Coordinator
Prayer Chain
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Parish Registry
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Daily Devotional
You Make Me Lie Down
By Molly Baskette

You make me lie down in green pastures, you lead me beside still waters, you restore my soul. - Psalm 23:2 (adapted)

It’s hard to improve upon the 23rd Psalm, that all-occasion timeless classic for everyone from nail-biting test-takers to bone-tired activists to spent pandemic-living-throughers to those facing the ultimate enemy, death itself.

And yet some scriptures are almost too familiar, and we cease to feel their truth and power. We need a double dose of that medicine for the same effect on our weary spirits.

If that describes you, lie down, right now, where you are. If anyone asks why you are doing it, say the Good Shepherd is making you. Close your eyes. Take three good, slow, deep breaths, and when you’re ready, open your eyes.

Now click this madlib-style version of Psalm 23 by the poet Christie Towers, and read psalm delivered right from God’s lips to your heart – a new translation just for you, and just for today.

May your soul be restored.

Prayer
The Lord is my mother; I shall not yearn for anything. You make me lie down on my sofa. You restore my Being. You lead me to work for the greater good, for your name’s sake. Your beauty and creativity covers me. (Christie Towers, 2021. Refresh the poet’s webpage page again for more madlibbed translations of Psalm 23.)
Hearing One Another
by Reverend Jim Long
During my tenure as a member and later the staff of First Community, I have occasionally heard people say that they do not like to hear “politics from the pulpit.” When I was a child, a neighbor accused Dr. Roy Burkhart of being a Communist. I was later told that his successor, Dr. Otis Maxfield, was flying to Selma, Alabama for the march over the Pettus Bridge when his plane developed engine trouble and had to land in Cincinnati. He was unable to attend, and the person who told me the story said that it may have been fortuitous, since many in the congregation would have opposed his participation. Dr. Gabe Campbell, my minister in Junior High School, appeared prominently in a photo of a Civil Rights march in Columbus which I saw displayed at the Ohio Historical Society.

Later, Dr. Robert Raines was an outspoken opponent of the Viet Nam War and established a prison ministry at the church. Dr. Barry Johnson preached in support of the Nuclear Freeze. Dr. Richard Wing preached that the church should be open and affirming of LGBTQ people, and he established a ministry to prisoners on death row. Dr. Glen Miles has preached against systemic racism, and criticized white supremacists in Charlottesville, and Christian involvement in the insurrection on January 6. Our ministers often have been out in front of our congregation on Civil Rights and other issues.

In all these situations, our ministers were preaching or acting “prophetically” in speaking truth to power. It is not “partisan politics” but does speak to how the Gospel informs our Christian witness in public life. Obviously, it can be controversial, and congregants are free to disagree. There have been times in my life when I disagreed with my minister. I remember just such a discussion with Bob Raines. I always felt heard and accepted. Indeed, all of us as laity and clergy need to hear one another without judgement. This is foundational in a community of faith where we say, “All are welcome.” If we can listen to one another and to God, we may find that we grow and deepen our understanding. We may be able to work together for the building up of the community of faith and help bring love and justice to our world.
The Experiential Theology of Gregory Boyle
by Reverend David Hett, Dean of The Burkhart Center
At the end of the 1970’s I took a week-long National Training Labs retreat course, “Experiential Theology,” and it changed my spiritual life; it was, in other words, a life-changing experience.
 
As implied in the retreat title, this forerunner of a psychodynamically-based mindfulness training suggested that our understanding of God or the Divine must be based on our personal and life experiences, including the moment-by-moment felt experience in our minds, hearts, bodies, and souls. (“Experience” is the oft-neglected fourth element of the “Wesley Quadrilateral” we United Methodist seminarians were taught for discerning the Holy: Scripture, Tradition, Reason, Experience.)
 
The Burkhart Center is bringing Father Gregory Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries, for a virtual event one night only, Friday, April 23 at 7 pm. Whether you can attend or not, pick up one or both of his books laced with stories of his “homeboys” and “homegirls,” these kids (mostly) trying to leave their gang-connected, gang-destructed lives in Los Angeles: Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion and Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship.
 
You may find, as I did, that you both laugh and cry on every other page. But more than that, you receive a lived, experiential theology that, even if you feel disconnected from God, will bring you back into the compassionate arms of love the way that “G,” as the homies refer to Father Boyle, does so authentically for these men and women.
 
Here’s an example from early in Tattoos on the Heart, where Father G. is about to give a first communion to 15-year-old Rigo at a county detention facility and asks Rigo about his father. His father, a heroin addict is in prison, and before he left the family would often beat Rigo.
 
“And your mom?” Father Boyle asks.
 
Rigo points to a tiny woman standing at the entrance to the facility’s gym, where they are sitting.
 
“’That’s her over there.’ He pauses for a beat. “There’s no one like her.” Again, some slide appears in his mind, and a thought occurs.
 
“‘I’ve been locked up for more than a year and a half. She comes to see me every Sunday. You know how many buses she takes every Sunday—to see my sorry ass?’
 
“Then quite unexpectedly he sobs. . . . ‘Seven buses. She takes…seven…buses. Imagine.’”
 
Father Boyle comments:
 
How, then, to imagine the expansive heart of this God—greater than God—who takes seven buses, just to arrive at us. We settle sometimes for less than intimacy with God when all God longs for is this solidarity with us. … Our image of who God is and what’s on God’s mind is more tiny than it is troubled. It trips more on our puny sense of God than over conflicting creedal statements or theological considerations. The desire of God’s heart is immeasurably larger than our imaginations can conjure. This longing of God’s to give us peace and assurance and a sense of well-being only awaits our willingness to cooperate with God’s limitless magnanimity.
 
Experiential Theology.
 
These stories aren’t just about the marginalized ex-gang men and women that most of society sees as hopeless, expendable disappointments who are not worth our time. If we are open and self-reflective, they touch the deepest part of our own selves that we have cast off as expendable, as full of the hopelessness that is so difficult for us to experience, of qualities we want to ignore or better completely dispose of—the ways we have disappointed others or our own selves, or the way we sometimes feel as though we are disappointments—all the parts of our souls we’d rather forget, put behind bars and throw away the key, all that in ourselves “not worth our time” because they are too painful to bring to the surface. These stories allow us to tap into these dark places in our own hearts and souls, and so Father Boyle concludes, speaking to these places in our deepest selves:
 
[Anthony DeMello says] “Behold the one beholding you and smiling.” It is precisely because we have such an overactive disapproval gland ourselves that we tend to create God in our own image. It is truly hard for us to see the truth that disapproval does not seem to be part of God’s DNA. God is just too busy loving us to have any time left for disappointment.
 
At age 70 now, and aware of times of failure and arenas of remorse in my life, that “overactive disappointment gland” can still readily activate, and I need this hard-won word of Father Boyle about the “expansive heart of God.” I require this grace, this reminder that part of my “cooperation with the limitless magnanimity of God” is to apply it to myself first of all, so that this divine expanse might reach through this very human soul to open the possibility of embracing all humanity, all creation.
Older Adult Council
From member Janice Rook

Reflections on a Pandemic Year...
  
A year ago, I was finally beginning to settle into my retirement life. After deciding to retire early, I struggled to adjust to a different routine. Happily, I was able to settle into a new routine with a balance of self care, going to the gym regularly, traveling, learning new skills, and volunteer work, becoming actively involved at Heart to Heart and working at the Trading Post. Then came the pandemic with sudden closures and many unknowns and uncertainties.

Last March after a few weeks of helping to set up the new drive through service at H2H and my growing safety concerns, I felt the need to step back from working primarily inside under close quarters. By spring, a small group of H2H volunteers I had come to know decided to get together for lunch, bringing our own food and gathering outside at a park while socially distanced. 

One lunch led to more get togethers and discussions of our desire to find ways to help our H2H clients while feeling safe during uncertain times. We followed the progress of the new drive through service. We found that, unlike other local food pantries which remained open, H2H had not experienced any significant increase in clients. Knowing that H2H was blessed with an abundance of food and that food insecurity was growing, we felt determined to find a way to help more clients. Assuming transportation barriers might be preventing clients from coming to the drive through, we envisioned a mobile pantry that would take food directly to families in their local communities.

We continued our get togethers as we worked through a proposal for what became the Pop Up Pantry, an expansion of H2H’s mission in serving clients. We were able to establish Pop Up Pantry sites, working in partnership with community agencies to deliver pre-packaged food to clients. We were blessed from the beginning by the support and willingness of our church administration to expand H2H’s mission. Starting in July, our Pop Up Pantry was up and running weekly. 

Throughout the year, we worked through new processes for bagging and delivering food to our agency sites with our small group of volunteers to maintain safety. All of us were committed to following masking, social distancing and hygiene practices. Food was bagged outside through the heat of the summer and cold winter months. In addition to our weekly deliveries, we partnered with Wickliffe School, the Women’s Guilds as well as other church members and friends to conduct a Christmas gift and toy drive for children of families at one of our sites. We are looking forward to expanding the Pop Up Pantry in the months ahead.

In spite of dark days through the past year and being apart from family and friends, many silver linings have come from my experience. Finding even a small way to serve those in need has brought me many blessings. New friends and ongoing fellowship in this journey we have undertaken has brought so much joy in my life. My heart is filled with gratitude in finding light amidst the darkness. I am looking forward to a hopeful year ahead.

I hope and pray that you have found your silver linings during this year of the pandemic. 
Older Adult Council Survey
The Older Adult Council wants to hear from you! We are hoping to be able to plan some older adult fellowship this coming summer, and need to know what sounds fun to YOU.

Please take a minute to complete this survey so the OAC knows what you would like to do.

Thank you!
Congregational Care Council
From member Laura Elliott

Not long ago, my family experienced a lot of grief within the span of 16 months. Two aunties, a brother, a cousin, a great-grandniece and a long time dear friend crossed over to the other side. With perfect regularity, another loss was made known and a memorial service was attended. I refer to it as the year of funerals.
 
I can distinctly remember one particular low point that left me reeling for weeks afterward. At a post-funeral reception I had unwittingly stepped in front of some people already waiting in line. Two people ahead of me turned and looked at me scornfully, commenting on my rudeness. One of them said “now that takes some nerve” as she sneered at me. Of course I retreated immediately. My brother then explained with a laugh in his voice that we were family from out of town and so were unfamiliar with the venue. A man in line very kindly insisted that we should get in front of him. Later I learned that this gentleman was the husband of the sneering woman.
 
So what does all of this have to do with the Congregational Care Committee? Being sensitive to and considerate of the feelings and dignity of others in good times and not so good times is essential to what we do. One of our tasks is to send sympathy cards to those members experiencing the one-year anniversary of a loved one’s passing. I’ve written a number of these cards and always try to personalize it. While we all unfortunately experience the loss of our favorite people be they family or friends, that year of funerals was a gift to me. So often I’ve been able to call upon my own loss of a brother, cousin or 4-year old grandniece to connect to the recipient letting them know that my thoughts and prayers for them are truly sympathetic.
 
One final thought about the woman at the funeral reception. She was a long-time, close friend of the deceased. Emotions run high during times of great loss and most likely her derision was not directed at me but at the situation. She did me a great favor. I know with greater significance the importance of self-awareness under any circumstance. If I ever meet her again, I would tell her how much she helped me prepare for my commitment to the Congregational Care Committee of First Community Church. 
Looking Back On the Older Adult Ministry
Jackie Cherry, Church Historian

Stay tuned to next month when Jackie will write on the history of Heritage Sunday!
Welcome to Creative Connection. This program is intended to be an extra outreach to our members who are not able to get out as much as others, who might be homebound, not able to be online, or who need extra love and attention through these different times. You will find activities and readings below.


We would love to see your artwork! Just email or send in the completed coloring pages to Robin Hood at 1320 Cambridge Blvd, Columbus OH 43212, and we will be sure to include the drawings in the OAT.
What's Happening at FC


  • COVID Resources: Information on what to do after receiving the vaccine and places to register

  • Grief Group : Led by Rev. Jim Long and parishioner Janice Beaty. Meets the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of the month at 7 pm in the Narthex at North.

  • ElderWisdom Book Group: Contact Lorelei Lotozo . Meets 4th Thursday of the month via Zoom.

  • Weekly Bible Study: Contact Rev. Jim Long. Meets Wednesday evenings at 7 pm via conference call.


Recipe of the Month
The recipe for March comes from Sara Haag. She received this recipe from Cooking Professionally. She says, "This is good but it’s better on coho salmon than it is on sockeye."
Easy Brown Sugar-Glazed Salmon

Ingredients
  • 1 salmon fillet (1 pound)
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon pepper
  • 3 tablespoons brown sugar
  • 4 teaspoons Dijon mustard
  • 1 tablespoon reduced-sodium soy sauce
  • 1 teaspoon rice vinegar

Directions
  • Preheat oven to 425°.
  • Cut salmon into 4 portions; place in a foil-lined 15x10x1-in. pan. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
  • Roast 10 minutes. Remove from oven; preheat broiler.
  • In a small saucepan, mix remaining ingredients; bring just to a boil. Brush over salmon.
  • Broil 6 in. from heat until fish just begins to flake easily with a fork, 1-2 minutes.
  • Plate and serve!
ElderWisdom
March book selection:
How to be an Anti Racist by Ibram X. Kendi

Thursday, March 25, 1 pm
Zoom Meeting

ElderWisdom is a group of people who enjoy reading and discussing a variety of books. This group is perfect for anyone looking to connect with others and for some fellowship. The monthly gatherings are currently meeting on Zoom. We hope you will join us for our next meeting on March 25 at 1 pm. You do not need to have read the book to attend – all are welcome. Please contact Lorelei Lanier Lotozo at (614) 209-7125 or Robin Hood, Congregational Care Coordinator, at rhood@FCchurch.com with questions or to add your name to our email list to receive the Zoom meeting invite.

A sneak peek of this month’s book: “Ibram X. Kendi's concept of antiracism reenergizes and reshapes the conversation about racial justice in America--but even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. Instead of working with the policies and system we have in place, Kendi asks us to think about what an antiracist society might look like, and how we can play an active role in building it.” -ibramxkendi.com

To get your copy or to read more about the book: https://www.ibramxkendi.com/how-to-be-an-antiracist/
Celebrate Deep Griha Society (The Lighthouse)
This has traditionally been the time of year that 1st Community has hosted a festive dinner to celebrate Deep Griha Society (DGS), an outreach program working in the slums & rural areas of Pune, India. Unfortunately in this age of COVID, we aren’t able to gather & share a meal. In its place, however, DG USA is joining with DG UK & DGS in Pune to present a Global Webinar to celebrate the outstanding work & services that DGS continues to provide to the residents of Pune despite the challenges of COVID. The need for assistance & support of basic needs is greater than ever. 

At the end of this exciting event, there will be an opportunity to initiate or renew child sponsorships &/or to make a donation to the area of greatest need. Details of the event are on the flyer. Hope to see you there!
One Final Thought
Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
Week Ten: Communion of Saints
Wisdom Beyond the Veil
By passing along the narrow road they widened it, and while they went along, trampling on the rough ways, they went ahead of us. —Augustine of Hippo, Sermon for the feast of Saint Quadratus

I can’t imagine that God expects all human beings to start from zero and to reinvent the wheel of life in their own small lifetimes. We must build on the common “communion of saints” throughout the ages. This is the inherited fruit and gift that is sometimes called the “wisdom tradition.” (In the Catholic Church, we refer to it as the Big Tradition and it is held in the same esteem as Holy Scripture.) It is not always inherited simply by belonging to one group or religion. It largely depends on how informed, mature, and experienced our particular teachers are. CAC faculty member Barbara Holmes honors the wisdom she has been gifted by the teachers in her own faith and culture:

I know that African foremothers and forefathers would have referred to the assembled leaders [in my book Liberation and the Cosmos] as ancestors and that the place would be understood to be “beyond the veil.” Although some folks use a very narrow definition of the word ancestor, I use the word as an indicator of legacy and interconnections. The ancestors are elders who pour their lives into the community as a libation of love and commitment. They live and die well, and when they transition, they do so in full connection with an engaged community.

Thereafter, they dwell in the spaces carved out by our spiritual and cultural expectations. They may be in another life dimension, but they connect with us in dreams, in memories, and in stories. . . .
The stories reveal a promise that the community will continue beyond the breath of one individual and that all transitions will be well attended by relatives from the other side. This is a cosmology of connection that values but also transcends cultural contexts; life is considered to be a continuum of transitions, ruptures, and returns. Those who admit that the “ordinary” is punctuated by the ineffable cherish those indescribable and nonrational events as an enigmatic but welcome gift. The fact that I grew up in a family that included the presumptions of transcendence and the unseen in our everyday lives has affected my journey in powerful ways. . . .

The end result is that I know that I am not alone. I am connected to the past and the future by the ligatures of well-lived lives, the mysteries of “beyondness,” and the memories and narratives that lovingly bind and support me. While I hope that when I die, one of the elders in my family who have crossed over to the realm of the ancestors will be at my bedside, I certainly did not expect contact prior to that time. And yet here I am, [in my work] hearing from liberation leaders I have never personally met. They are also my elders as certainly as if they occupied a branch of my family tree. They have bequeathed to all of us a legacy of resolve, resistance, and spiritual expansiveness.
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Do you have thoughts or comments about the FC Older Adult Times? Please email or write Robin Hood, Congregational Care Coordinator and Editor, at 1320 Cambridge Blvd, Columbus, OH 43212.
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