Delivered
In the end, after all the promise making and promise keeping, what’s really in it of us? What happens when we deliver on our promises to others and when they deliver on their promises to us?
Speaker: Rev. T. J. FitzGerald
Sealed
So much of staying in relationship is keeping our word to others. On this Mother’s Day, we consider those nurturing relationships in our lives and how living up to our word can help to heal, and help to seal, our most important relationship.
Signed
It is an honor to offer others our care, our service, and our friendship. As we look together at the theme of covenant, we will explore an essential element of a covenant, an offer, and what it means to a community like our own.
Wholly One
This month we look together at the spiritual theme of incarnation. Theologies tracing the body and its form abound through time and across the globe. We will kick off stewardship season once more and look together at what being whole means…and what it doesn’t.
Giving Up
One of my favorite books is one of those collections of essays by David Sedaris. I know, I know, so original Rev. T. J.—you and the rest of the world. But the collection I like the best is the one called Me Talk Pretty One … read more.
Wholly One
When the earth was still flat
And clouds made of fire
And mountains stretched up to the sky, sometimes higher,
Folks roamed the earth
Like big rolling kegs.
They had two sets of arms,
They had two sets of legs,
They had two faces peering,
… read more.
Before the Storm
Hurricanes can be fun. I learned this at a young age. In the early eighties, I was living with my family in Connecticut in a house where only the main road and a creepy old graveyard, with a gate too hard to operate without pinching … read more.
After the Rains
Have you ever been at the beach, when the waves are so forbidding that the farthest you want to wade in is about to your ankles, maybe your calves? On Thursday afternoon at Waimea, the waves were like that. I was actually there long enough … read more.
Remaking History
A few weeks ago, visiting with my family, we realized that my niece and nephew had never seen the movie Groundhog Day. Now, for those of you who don’t know this movie, it’s an Andie MacDowell classic. Bill Murray is also noted for his performance. … read more.
The Way of Strength
Think about the strongest person you know. Really get that person in your mind. Is it someone with lots of muscles? Someone who can do thirty pull-ups? Maybe someone who has done an Iron Man? Maybe it is Iron Man. Or did you think about … read more.
A Faith of Action
On this Sunday we will share worship with one of our most active partners in addressing the pressing social justice concerns on these islands. Faith Action has a long relationship with our community, and their new Executive Director, Christy MacPherson offers a great deal to … read more.
One More Step – Martin Luther King Sunday
It was likely a fair day in July in lovely Concord, Massachusetts when 150 years ago, Henry David Thoreau strode across the town square to retrieve the shoes he’d left with the cobbler. Who knows what he was dreaming, what plans he was making. He … read more.
Eccentricity in Excelsis
I heard a woman say once that she was a little crazy. No one around her laughed. Everyone just kind of looked at her uncomfortably. Maybe they were wondering whether she was OK, or if she might do something unexpected, or something…well…crazy. But she didn’t. … read more.
Oceans of Blue
What a blessing to have a reminder of the holiness a night can hold. I remember many winters when I looked forward to hearing that song belted out by a couple who sang for the New York Metropolitan Opera but lived in my hometown during … read more.
Fire of Commitment
Around this time of year, I always remember learning about one of the first worship services I would get to lead as a real, grown-up minister. It was a few years ago, as a ministerial intern. And one of the first things that happened in … read more.
All Good Gifts
This is one of my favorite spaces in the church, not because it’s the sanctuary, the place I get to hold you hostage to listen to what’s on my mind each week. It’s something older and deeper than that. It’s something more than that. See, … read more.
Day By Day
Where were you? Where were you when it happened? This is one of the questions that can define a generation. One that holds so many stories for so many of us, stories of where people were when something happened that changed the world, or at … read more.
By My Side
It is fall now, right? It is the season when the leaves change, isn’t it? The smell of fresh baked apple pie, the crack of the bats of those baseball players taking their season down the stretch, aren’t all those things happening? No? Maybe? Well, … read more.
Out of the Woodwork – Open House Sunday
Once upon a time, a group of people who thought a little differently about religion than those around them began looking for a spiritual home, a place where they could experience the divine in the way they felt called to do so. And after some … read more.
Where the Wild Things Are – A Blessing of the Animals
Growing up, a lot of the stories I heard were about animals. Some of the most beloved characters in literature are nonhuman animals who act a lot like human animals. I remember one in particular: The Fox and the Hound.
One of the moments in the … read more.