Orchard Ridge United Church of Christ

We hunger to be known and understood. We hunger to be loved. We hunger to be at peace inside our own skins. We hunger not just to be fed these things but, often without realizing it, we hunger to feed others these things because they too are starving for them. We hunger not just to be loved but to love, not just to be forgiven but to forgive, not just to be known and understood for all the good times and bad times that for better for worse have made us who we are, but to know and understand each other to the same point of seeing that, in the last analysis, we all have the same good times, the same bad times, and that for that very reason there is no such thing in all the world as anyone who is really a stranger.

- Frederick Buechner
from Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons

by Winton Boyd

At a recent gathering of clergy and congregational leaders called “Courage to Lead,” facilitators shared several pieces of poetry in their effort to help clergy deepen their sense of call and leadership. They invited us to consider what poems had been important to us. I share two such poems (actually one is a song). Continue Reading »

—www.gratefulness.org

by Bro. David Steindl-Rast O.S.B.

“Could it be that the mystic gratefulness in the depth of every human heart sings with “a still, small voice,” and is easily drowned out by the noise we endure and the noise we make?”

Remember a night when you stood outdoors looking up at the stars, countless in the high, silent dome of the sky, and saw them as if for the first time. What happened? Eugene O’Neill puts it this way: “For a moment I lost myself – actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved in the…high dim-starred sky! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life…to Life itself! To God, if you want to put it that way.” [You may have good reasons for not putting it that way, for not using the G-word, but in any case you have caught a glimpse of "something greater" than your limited self.]“For a second you see – and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning!”
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by John M. Buchanan
It is instructive and ultimately very encouraging for an American churchperson to get a glimpse of the global Christian enterprise. I had a chance to do so recently at a pastors consultation sponsored by the World Alliance of Reformed Churches in Geneva, Switzerland. The alliance is a loose affiliation of 216 Reformed and Presbyterian denominations.

As different pastors talked about their ministries, amazing stories emerged. Gideon Khabela of the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa described his ministry in a rural church composed of 27 different local congregations. Khabela preaches in each every few months; the rest of the time congregational elders are in charge of the preaching, teaching and pastoral care. Zsigmond György Vad described the resilience of the Hungarian Reformed Church in Debrecen under communism and its rebirth with multiple Sunday worship services, hundreds of baptisms and an impressive array of outreach programs.
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by Winton Boyd

Despite the current cold snap, these are rich and warm days. It was a pleasure and an honor to lead a group of 29 to the Dominican Republic last week to work with Habitat for Humanity. Each of us had a powerful time, even if it was in different ways. As I Mentioned in my sermon on Sunday, no two people experience the same event the same way – as evidenced by the pictures we take. My camera had many pictures of the work site and a Marenge band (traditional Dominican music) that greeted us when we arrived in the city of Nagua on Sunday night. My daughter’s camera had a host of pictures of high school kids playing games in the evenings and many more pictures of the countryside.

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