Cleveland Park Congregational UCC
Nurturing love of God and love of neighbor in the world
I invite you to read my bi-weekly newsletters below for reflections on Sunday worship and updates on congregational life. I hope, and believe, you will also enjoy my Sermons. I look forward to seeing you and sharing worship with you.
- Blessings,
Pastor Ellen
Here are some spiritual resources that I find myself returning to time and again. I hope you will also enjoy them.
UCC Feed Your Spirit
Bite in the Apple
Patheos.com
The Listening Hermit
RickMorley.com
Larry Patten.com
Advent Greetings,
Last Sunday, we lit the third Advent candle for Joy. This Sunday, 12/20, we’ll light the fourth for Love. This seems particularly fitting, given that many of our beloved children, youth, and adults will participate in an online Christmas Pageant during worship. It’s going to be a Joyful service with a message of Hope (first candle), Peace, (second candle), and Love (fourth candle). I hope you’ll join us; you can get in the spirit by making
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Advent Greetings,
Last Sunday, we lit the second Advent candle for Peace. In my sermon, I noted that peace is a tricky term. For example, the Hebrew word, Shalom, usually translated as peace, doesn’t just mean the absence of tension; it means the presence of justice (MLK Jr). I said, this Advent Season I’m going to focus on Shalom. I’m going to look hard at the way my peace is inextricably linked to my neighbor’s justice. I’m going to
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Last Sunday, we lit the first Advent candle for Hope. This seems fitting, for even as we experience the worst month of Covid thus far, we look forward to the coming of… a vaccine; the Light (solar and spiritual); and a new Administration. The word, Advent, means Coming.
As we look toward what’s to come (and back at what’s been), please consider what our church community has meant to you this year and however many years you’ve been
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Happy Thanksgiving Week!
Tis the Season to consider gratitude. I truly believe (and research shows) that the more we focus on gratitude, the happier we are. Gratitude opens our hearts, expands our minds, and brings us joy. Thus, if you don’t already have some form of gratitude practice, I encourage you to try one of these:
Grateful Greetings,
With all that’s going on in the world, it would be easy to “doom and gloom” our way through the rest of 2020. But let’s not! Because, for all the challenges, there are so many blessings. And, as we approach Thanksgiving Week, I encourage us to focus on them.
This Sunday, I hope you’ll join me for our annual Thanksgiving Service with music from both our Choral Ensemble and Chimes Choir. We’ll be welcoming four
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