THIS SUNDAY: The Community of Pilgrims Presbyterian Fellowship, Sunday, May 22, 2022, Sixth Sunday of Easter. Join us on Zoom at 4 pm. Note the time change. Contact me if you need a link. If you have any questions, or are interested in a conversation, contact Pastor Brett Webb-Mitchell (919) 444-9111; brettwebbmitchell@gmail.com and visit www.communityofpilgrims.com.
_______
Greetings, Community of Pilgrims!
Amid all the news this week—from a war in Ukraine, baby food shortages in the US, pending changes in Roe v. Wade, Jan. 6th hearings starting in a few weeks, to gun violence in various cities across the US, global climate change, and COVID rates rising once again—one has to ask this week what is the top concern(s) among those of us in Christian communities, and what is it that we need to bring to this weary world? It is a message of hope. Hope was one of the biblical virtues that Paul wrote about in 1Cor. 13:13, in which faith, hope, and love are part of life. Or as Anne Lamott wrote, “hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.” That’s more-or-less what we are called to do and be these days: be hope.
The Scripture focus this week is on Acts 16:9-15 and is not unrelated to our task of being the embodiment of Christ's message of hope in this world. Paul has a dream of a man in Macedonia who needs Paul’s assistance, and Paul pulls together his friends to aid the man in Macedonia. And on the way to aid this man, they happen to meet Lydia, and her heart and mind were open to the message of the Gospel, the Good News, the hope, that Paul was living and preaching. And before we know it, her entire household was baptized. What is amazing about this story is how God used Paul, and uses us, to be and bring God’s presence and hope into the lives of others, often without our knowing it until we look back, in the rearview mirror of life, and realize what an impact we’ve had in the life of another person, or they have had in our life. In our world today, it would not be unexpected that God would be bringing us into the life of people in the world today who need to hear, see, experience, the living presence of Christ's hope for the world today. Join us this Sunday as we focus on being and becoming the living hope of God in our stressed-out world.
**
The Community of Pilgrims will celebrate our five-year anniversary on Sunday, Sept. 18, 2022! Woohoo! Fifth year anniversaries are all about wood, as in celebrating the growing of our roots in the ground. Mark this in your calendars. More details will be coming. This is a big anniversary for the Community of Pilgrims, and we look forward to celebrating it with one another, and with the world around us as we continue to serve and love God and serve and love neighbor in creative and meaningful ways.
______
Events!
May 22, Fifth Sunday in Easter, 4 pm, Gather and Devotion on Zoom.
May 29, Sixth Sunday in Easter, 4 pm, Gather and Devotion on Zoom.
June 5, Pentecost! 4 pm, Gather and Devotion on Zoom and in person.
June 12, 4 pm, Gather and Devotion on Zoom and in person.
____
Prayers of Celebration and Concern
We pray to the Creator of all creation:
· Brett's friend Philip Culbertson and Brett and Christian attended his memorial today. May his memory be a blessing.
· Thanksgiving that Nina Clippard is doing much better following a fall at her home.
· Peace and comfort for Linda Fuqua-Anderson who has advanced cancer and for her family.
· Randy who just completed his first week of treatment for prostate cancer.
· Thanksgiving that Chuck and Sue Malter are both feeling strong.
· Christian's sister Yarrow who is very ill with cancer.
· Sarah and her father as they make difficult decisions about her Mother's end of life.
· Thanksgiving that Galena's family in Ukraine now has drinking water and their life is improving.
· Protection of women's reproductive rights and channel the anger into action, particularly for the midterm elections.
· Protection of voting rights
· Ukraine where fighting Russian forces just passed 81 days.
· Gun control after a dozen people were killed in Buffalo, Houston, Milwaukee, and Orange County this weekend.
· Thanksgiving that a federal judge blocked part of a newly enacted Alabama law that made it a felony for doctors to provide certain gender-affirming medical care to minors.
· The transgender community under attack in Texas where legislation criminalizing transgenders is in place.
· Longtime activist Urvashi Vaid, a leader of many LGBTQ+ and other social justice organizations, who died at age 63.
· Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh who was shot dead in the West Bank as she reported on Israeli military raids.
· Increased violence in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
· Welcome back Mary, Sue, and Michael.
· The 1 million Americans and 15 million victims around the world who have died from COVID 19.
· People dealing with mental illness and their families.
· Musician Bobby Jo Valentine as he deals with mental illness.
God in your love, attend our prayers. Amen
_____
Poem
Hope, by Wendell Berry
Here by the road where people are carried, with
or against their will, as on a river of burning oil
through a time already half consumed, how
shall we pray to escape the catastrophe
that we have not the vision to oppose and have
therefore deserved, and that many have desired?
Yet here in our moment in the ages of ages
amid the icons of fire from the maddened center
whirling out, we pray to be delivered from the blaze
that we have earned, that many desire. We pray
that the continent of love may be shaped within
the continent of power, here by the river of fire.
We pray for vision, though we die, to see
in our small imperfect love the Love of the ages
of ages, whose green tree yet stands amid the flames. May we
be as a song sung within the tree, though beside us
the river of oil flows, burning, and the sky is filled
with the whine of desire to burn and be burned in the fire.
Buen Camino! Pastor Brett Webb-Mitchell and Karen Cornwell Fortlander