October 6 - 13, 2023

Below are weekly programs. You can find brief descriptions of these weekly programs on our website:

SUNDAY Morning Worship, 10 am in person and via Zoom

https://zoom.us/j/97010988439 Password: betogether

SUNDAY , 11:30 a.m. Bible Study in person and on Zoom

https://zoom.us/j/262314649

MONDAY - FRIDAY, 8 am Morning Devotion

https://zoom.us/j/94276813637

WEDNESDAY Eve., 6:30 pm Midweek Inhale Spiritual Practices

No Midweek Inhale Sept 13-Oct 18 due to Befrienders Training. https://zoom.us/j/123020606

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, October 8, 5:30 - 6:45 pm, Younger Youth Monthly Meeting

Wednesday, October 11, 18, 6:30 – 8:30 pm, Befrienders Training Meeting (In person & Online) - Multipurpose Room

Thursday, October 12, 6:00 – 8:00 pm, SaLT Monthly Meeting (In person & Online) - Multipurpose Room

Saturday, October 14, 10:00 am, Love Has the Final Word Group Meeting (In person only)- Multipurpose Room

Tuesday, October 17, Ecojustice/Green Team Monthly Meeting (In person & Online) - Multipurpose Room



Thursday, October 19, 6:30 – 8:00 pm, NION Monthly Meeting (In person and Online) - Multipurpose Room

Sunday, November 5, 5:30 - 7:00 pm, Teen Youth Monthly Meeting

Tuesday, November 7, 6:30 – 8:00 pm, Racial Justice Team Monthly Meeting (In person & Online)- Multipurpose Room

Rides to Sunday Morning Worship Still Needed

Can you be on a team that will help bring Tcheki, Jeffrey, and Jefferson to church on Sunday mornings? Tcheki and Jeffrey would love to keep coming to Sunday morning worship and be involved with our congregation. In fact, we will be baptizing Jefferson soon, and that will be a great joy for us all. If you can be among a group of folks who could pick them up and bring them to church on Sunday mornings, please let me (Pastor Bryan, or Sheryl Rowe, or Judy Emmrich know. If a bunch of us share this task it will not be a big request on anyone. Pastor Bryan can almost always bring them home after church.

We had a Powerful Experience at the Black Holocaust Museum Last Weekend!

About 15 of us traveled to Milwaukee last Saturday for the outing organized by our Racial Justice Ministries team to visit the Black Holocaust Museum and then to have lunch at Daddy's Soul Food Restaurant. The museum was a powerfully moving experience and consensus was we need to do this again sometime so that others who weren't able to join us will have a chance to do so. Learning this history is essential for us as we continue to live out our commitment to being an anti-racist community. Plus we all want to go back to Daddy's for lunch! Delicious!!

Support CROP Hunger Walk

Sunday, October 15



CROP Hunger Walks are community-based walk fundraising events held in cities and towns across the United States, created to support the global mission of Church World Service, a faith-based organization transforming communities around the globe through just and sustainable responses to hunger, poverty, displacement, and disaster. After a CROP Hunger Walk ends, 25% of the funds raised are returned to the host community to support local hunger-fighting efforts.

Support John and Jean Sheild in their fight against hunger. Donations may be made online ("MUCC" may be listed in the "Personal Note" section, if remembered). If you'd prefer, checks may be made out to CROP and mailed to Attn: CROP, First Congregational UCC (or FCUCC), 1609 University Ave, Madison, WI 53726 with "MUCC" in the memo.

A Few Words From Pastor Bryan

...and Paula D'Arcy & Kate Bowler

Author and retreat leader Paula D'Arcy's (that's Paula in the picture) most well known quote goes like this;

"God comes to us disguised as our life."

I first came across this quote many years ago when I was reading Richard Rohr's amazing book (probably still my favorite of all his works), Everything Belongs. Here's what Fr. Rohr wrote;

“I believe contemplation shows us that nothing inside us is as bad as our hatred and denial of the bad. Hating and denying it only complicates our problems. All of life is grist for the mill. Paula D’Arcy puts it, “God comes to us disguised as our life.” Everything belongs; God uses everything. There are no dead-ends. There is no wasted energy.”   

So here's my little point for this week's "Few Words..." Actually it's a bunch of questions and not a point. Is it possible that whatever's going on in your life right now IS God coming to you? Speaking to you? Guiding you? Teaching you? AND loving you? Even if it's painful or somehow less than what you would consciously hope for? Let go for a minute of trying to figure out what is causing things or who or what is to blame. The question is, what is God saying to you in it and through it right now?

Maybe you're in the midst of something extremely difficult. Try to be still for a moment and ask God (within yourself), "what are you saying to me--to us-- through all of this God?" And just listen in the silence. You just might "hear" something that could somehow make a huge difference in how you live your way through whatever is going on. Or maybe you're overwhelmed in a wonderful way-- with joy and freedom and gratitude right now. Ask the same question. It might take you into something even more deeply beautiful and life-giving.

What Paula's oft quoted phrase says to me is that life is always full of meaning, and God is using it all to do something good and beautiful, even when it doesn't feel the least bit good or beautiful. I know that can sound like an obnoxious pious platitude when someone throws it at you insensitively or at the wrong moment. But you know I don't mean it that way. It's really a matter of knowing that in dealing with what truly IS--being truthful with ourselves and facing "life on life's terms"--that we can always somehow connect with God in the midst of it all. God is always in it with us. And since God IS Love, then we will always keep finding and being found by Love.

If what I'm trying to say here isn't clear, I think Kate Bowler's "Blessing For Truth-telling--however bitter or sweet" gets to the heart of it in a slightly different way. I'll sign off with her beautiful words below.

Hope to see you Sunday,

Bryan

For truth-telling—however bitter or sweet

By Kate Bowler

Blessed are you, resisting the urge to reframe.

You who are sick and tired of silver linings.

Blessed are you who risk sincerity, especially when the world around you craves a bright side. You who speak honestly about what is right in front of you:

This is hard.

Things might not get better.

This really has gone horribly.

There may not be a different way.

Blessed are you in your gratitude and your pain, your pleasures and

your limitations.

Blessed are you, the truth-teller.

And what a miracle it is when

your candor finds a chorus that echoes back:

“Same.”

The friend who will hear it.

The parent who will stomach it.

The partner who doesn’t roll their eyes.

They hear you, and it feels like a revelation.

Every. Time.

May you feel your truths answered

by this language of love,

changing where you can

and confirming where you can’t.

But loved, loved, loved all the same.