Reading: “Choose to Bless the World,” Rev. Rebecca Parker Your gifts—whatever you discover them to be— can be used to bless or curse the world. The mind's power, the strength of the hands, the reaches of the heart, the gift of speaking, listening, imagining, seeing, waiting Any of these can serve to feed the hungry, bind up wounds, welcome the stranger, praise what is sacred, do the work of justice or offer love. Any of these can draw down the prison door, hoard bread, abandon the poor,...
Martin Luther King
“The Beauty of the Thing” – January 16th, 2022
Thank you First Parish Band! Beautiful. Those words that Rev. King offered, closed his ‘I’ve Been to the Mountaintop’ speech, given on April 3, 1968 at the Church of God in Christ headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee. The mountaintop that King drew from came from the Hebrew Bible in Deuteronomy. Moses, the great prophetic liberator of the oppressed Israelites, leads his people through the desert, urging them to follow him, follow him for life and freedom waits in the Promised Land of Canaan. But...
“Reflections on White Rage, White Grief, and White Fragility” by Rev. Wendy L. Bell – January 19, 2020
A Reflection on White Rage We began this morning with the dream. And yet we hardly need reminding, that the ideal which we seek lies in stark contrast to the reality in which we live. Have we made progress in this country in terms of race? Yes, but it has not been straight forward. Every inch of progress has been met with a countervailing counterforce. The end of the civil war and the eradication of slavery was met with the Black Codes in Mississippi and nine other former confederate states,...
“Dream On” by Mark W. Harris – January 20, 2019
“Dream On” by Mark W. Harris – People often remember Dr. King for his I Have a Dream speech. Do you dream? I don’t mean those odd, colorful and strange visions at night, but rather visions for your life, or the life of the church, or the life of the world.
“Free At Last” – January 16, 2005 Derrick Jackson
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