Dear Friends,

Our meeting/church is part of a few different coalitions of churches in town.  Mostly we team up with the local LGBTQ affirming congregations in town which are so small they don’t have pastors, but who do good and similar work in the community.  The Interfaith Food Pantry is one of the ways we team up so that several churches, in this case a team of four churches, offer an interfaith way of making what might be too hard for one church to do on its own a way to make it work for the whole community.  We also had a very successful Pride Night in June.  One of those things we are going in on this week is Game Night starting at 6 tonight at our church.  It is open to our meeting/church, but also the Unitarian Fellowship and the Klamath Lutheran Church. The general announcement for this game night is written by Pablo Ramirez who is the lay minister at Klamath Lutheran Church: “Looking for a place to connect, be yourself, and be celebrated? Join us for game night this Friday at 6 PM! Whether you’re new in town, a longtime local, or just looking for community, you are welcome here.  Come as you are.  Bring a friend or come solo.  There is a place for you at the table.  This is an LGBTQIA affirming space where all are welcome.”  I am making tomato soup, and Alicia from KLC is making cheese sandwiches for everyone. There will be games to play and people to play them. And we are not forgetting the heaviness and meaning of today, September 11 as we will hold a moment of silence as we remember 9/11.

All of us remember where we were when that horrific tragedy happened.  I was in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, meeting with a coworker in a small pub that served breakfast and had the television where everyone could see it.  I was a mitigation specialist at the time on death penalty cases, so my first instinct was to check on the New York litigation firm that represented people on New York’s death row.  There was no phone reception. I couldn’t get our state’s death penalty litigation organization on the phone either, so I headed to Durham to see if anyone had heard from them.  Later, we would get a call that they were able to get out between the two planes crashing but could not use a telephone early on.  I went from there to a place where my friend lived who had a brother in the towers-area who was a firefighter.  I stayed at their house until he was able to contact his brother. Then it hit me.  I had rolled my ankle and twisted it at some point during the whole ordeal.  I would go the whole day without feeling it, going to the hospital that night to have it x-rayed and put in a boot.  I felt like I had spent the day reaching out and trying to find loved ones, not completely registering how traumatic this was on such a large level for millions of people for several days. Mentally and emotionally, I had checked out it was so traumatic.

But what about spiritually? I went to a meeting yesterday where we discussed God’s will.  Someone had said that everything is God’s will. I didn’t agree. I was still thinking about the discussion when I was listening to NPR this morning. Surely God’s will cannot be found in any act of violence, even systemic violence that we are a part of and perpetrate everyday but is found in every act of love and goodness that we can muster.  God to me is love.  Love has a will, but I think we have to want to serve this will for this will to prosper.  We then spend all our waking hours, if we can, being open to being used as instruments of peace and goodness to as much of the world as we can.  To me, that collective force we all aim to serve is God’s love.

As we think about this memorial day and remember the bad of that day and all that followed, let us do so asking ourselves if there are places today that we can be instruments of love or peace.  Where is compassion?  Where are radical acts of kindness?  How can we love our enemies so that we are always serving that will?  It is a day to search our hearts and think about what we serve in this world.  Do we serve Love?

See you tonight at 6 PM at the church, if you can come, as we play some games and find solace in the company of each other’s presence and the goodness that is fellowship.

The financial documents for July and August are attached.  We appreciate so much the people who gave to the AFSC fund for Gaza.  That was a very successful offering because of you

Sincerely,

Leigh

Announcements

• September 13 –11:00 AM – Richard Rohr Book Group, chapters 13, 14, & 15 after meeting for worship
• September 14 – Bring food to the church at 3:00 PM. to take it to Transitional Housing in town
• September 16 – 5:30 Music Committee Meeting
• September 19 – 9:00 AM – Church Cleaning
• September 20 – 9:00 AM – Peace & Social Concerns
• September 21– 5:30 PM – Administrative Team (clerks of committees and pastors)
• September 22 – 5:00 PM – No Food Pantry
• September 23 – 5:30 – Music Committee Meeting
• September 27 – 11:00 AM – Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business
• September 29 – 5:00 PM – No Food Pantry
• September 30 – 5:30 – Music Committee Meeting