This Sunday, May 8, 2022
Contemplative Prayer Group meets at 9am in the Upper Room (Rm. 206). If you'd like to join by Zoom, email the church office.

Sunday School for preschool through 5th grade meets at 9am in Children's Wing. If you'd like to join by Zoom, email the church office.

Seminar meets in the Chapel and on Zoom at 9am. Sunday Seminar’s speaker, Dr. Ashley Hamilton, a professor in DU’s Theater Department, is committed to developing the creativity of persons who are incarcerated. Among the array of projects she has developed as Executive Director of the DU Prison Arts Initiative is Inside Wire: Colorado Prison Radio, the only statewide Prison Radio Station in the world that streams to the public. Come and learn how you can listen in on Inside Wire, which is just one example of Ashley’s dedication to using the arts “to create spaces of transformation and possibility."

Sunday Worship begins at 10:15am in person and live streamed to YouTube. We continue our series "Cups of Freedom: The Theology of Rainbows" with the Freedom to Love. We invite you to wear BLUE.

Fellowship Hour after worship in the Fellowship Hall. Plan to come for coffee, tea, and bagels and vote for which plants will go in our raised bed. Sign up to help set up or clean up this or any Sunday here.

BYOB2, a young (at-heart) group, meets at 5:30pm in the Upper Room or on Zoom. They are discussing creation myths.
REAL talk
Gifts from my late gay best friend, Chris, from his military service in Japan
Last Sunday, during my sermon you caught a glimpse of a chip in the "armor" of my identity as a pastor who usually "has it together." You saw my grief over the loss of a dear friend and my frustration with systems (legal, moral, social, religious) that consider the death of a gay man - or black woman, or trans Child of God, or ANYONE - less important or outrageous than the death of any other being. It had been a rough week. I am still recovering from a lingering illness and I was disappointed that yet another system had prevented our special guest preacher from being with us. I felt unworthy to preach on our 16th Reconciling Anniversary, longing to give the pulpit, a place of power, to someone from the LGBTQ+ community directly.

But God works in mysterious ways. Even though I do not like to "ugly cry" in public, my spiritual director once said the Spirit often leaks from our eyes, and tears water our spiritual ground so that something new can grow. How appropriate, then, that I am preaching this week on the Freedom to Love, even when we feel our lives are like a chipped cup, imperfect or even useless. 

This week also seems daunting. Secular holidays like Mother's Day, Veteran's Day or Fourth of July are tense theological landscapes for me. I am torn between celebrating "harmless" traditions, and recognizing the harm that traditions cause, especially to people at the margins. It's not that I devalue family, freedoms or nationality, but I struggle to celebrate these in the context of my Christian faith. There have also been some severe chips in our democracy this week: threats to a woman's right to make choices about her own body and whether or not to bear children. These are deeply disturbing to me. For the past 50+ years, women's liberation has made great strides in offering women authority, autonomy and dignity. When we consider the societies in which Jesus lived, much of the Bible was written, or our national Constitution was penned, women were considered less human, less valuable, and less important than men. So, for the current U.S. Supreme Court to claim that any of those documents recognizes or details how women should lead or limit their lives today, is both insulting and terrifying. How am I free to love myself and others, if I have no autonomy or authority over what happens in my own physical body? 
It gives me comfort to meditate on the Japanese art of kintsukuroi pottery, wherein cracks are filled with gold to transform brokenness into beauty. When we are chipped, imperfect or broken, that is when we are finally vulnerable enough to release control and allow God to lead us.  

So this Sunday, while many kids make their Moms breakfast in bed, some women demand gifts and attention, childless people hold each other tightly with relief or grief or something else entirely, and many regular church-goers avoid church all together because of painful memories, we're going to focus on the global Freedom to Love and nurture and support one another. Even, and especially, when we are broken. We sure hope you'll join us at 10:15AM - and wear blue if you like, as we continue to examine each color in the theology of rainbows.   

With rain barrels full of tears from the sky, Emily