THIS SUNDAY: The Community of Pilgrims Presbyterian Fellowship, Sunday, May 8, 2022, Fourth Sunday of Easter. Join us on Zoom at 4 pm. 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!
To our members of the Community of Pilgrims who do not live in Portland, I want to let you know that even though we had a dry Jan., Feb., and March, April and now May are now making up for some of the dry conditions and rainless days. And I find it more enjoyable to have raindrops splatter my bare skin and clothes on warmer days than on colder days. And today was such a day.
This Sunday’s reading is from Acts 9:36-43. It is a story about the early community of faith, which was a collection of people of “The Way,” (Acts 9:2). In this short passage, Dorcas, a woman who was the epitome of “service” or “love-in-action,” had taken ill and had died. The community of Christian faith was beside itself in sadness for this untimely death, so they reached out to Peter, the disciple-now-apostle, to come and heal her and wake her from Peter had compassion on her, and did as they asked, bringing her back from the dead to life again. What Peter exhibited was nothing more and nothing less than compassion upon this member of the Christian faith community. And as Benedictine writer Joan Chittister reminds us that “compassion makes no distinction between friends and enemies, neighbors and outsiders, compatriots and foreigners. Compassion is the gate(way) to human community…It is in community that we come to see God in the other. It is in community that we see our own emptiness filled up. It is community that calls me beyond the pinched horizons of my own life, my own country, my own race, and gives me the gifts I do not have within me.” Join us this Sunday as we consider in what ways our life in our respective communities of faith are blessed, in which we are more than we could ever be by our individual selves. Thanks be to God.
______
Roxanne Ushman shared this great youtube.com “Episode” by a team called “Hurd Mentality, which focused on HomePlate, starting at around the 8:22 minute mark. Excellent way to get insight as to what is happening at HomePlate, which we just sponsored for Lent/Easter. Thanks, Roxanne! And thanks, Community of Pilgrims, for such an act of love.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNK3TNAjx6A.
______
Events!
May 8, Fourth Sunday in Easter, 4 pm, Gather and Devotion on Zoom.
May 15, Fourth Sunday in Easter, 4 pm, Gather and Devotion on Zoom.
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, Seventh Sunday in Easter, 4 pm, Gather and Devotion on Zoom and in person.
____
Prayers of Celebration and Concern
We pray to the Creator of all creation:
· Linda Fuqua-Anderson battling cancer. Prayers for love, hope, courage, and peace.
· Linda’s brother Gary who is getting the care he needs.
· Birthday celebrations for Shu on April 28.
· Wedding celebrations for Ellen and Sarah who will get married next September.
· Thanksgiving that Sarah got her top intern pick with a practice where she can do play therapy with whole families.
· Thanksgiving for today.
· Kairos time, "God's time".
· Thanksgiving that Brett and Christian met four years ago this weekend.
· Lorinda's sister Val in Bozeman who had a medical emergency.
· Friend Guy McCully who is doing better with his possible skin cancer.
· Christian's sister Yarrow who has had breast cancer and other forms of cancer.
· The wife, sons, and extended family in Greenwich, NY who just lost their father to pancreatic cancer.
· Charles Flaum who is being treated for lymphoma.
· The Plymouth Family whose Dad passed away last night at the age of 94.
· Celebrations for Roxanne’s daughter who completed her master’s degree and just got a good job.
· Michael who also recently completed his master’s degree and as a trans youth it will be more difficult to find a good job.
· The LGBTQIA2S+ community, especially transgenders under attack through state legislation limiting health care access, ability to compete in sports, and other restrictions.
· Those people who are being attacked using Critical Race Theory.
· A miracle that the voting suppression laws passed in 19 states can be lifted.
· A miracle that the Democratic Party turnout in droves in upcoming elections.
· Climate change and the long-running drought across the U.S. West including the Willamette Valley.
· Countries at war including Ukraine, Russia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Yemen, and Syria.
· For all women in the US in light of the leaked “Majority Decision” re: Roe v. Wade, written by Assoc. Justice Samuel Alito. If true, the impact upon the lives of all US citizens will be enormous.
God in your love, attend our prayers. Amen.
Poem
May by Mary Oliver
May, and among the miles of leafing,
blossoms storm out of the darkness—
windflowers and moccasin flowers. The bees
dive into them and I too, to gather
their spiritual honey. Mute and meek, yet theirs
is the deepest certainty that this existence too—
this sense of well-being, the flourishing
of the physical body—rides
near the hub of the miracle that everything
is a part of, is as good
as a poem or a prayer, can also make
luminous any dark place on earth.
___
Buen Camino! Pastors Brett & Karen Cornwell Fortlander.