Today’s Scripture: Galatians 5:19-25; John 14:27

Reflection by Jeri Arent

As many of you may know, I am a retired librarian. I worked for Columbus Metropolitan Library and enjoyed my 30 years there as a reference librarian who helped library patrons find information and materials they wanted. ( I love to “look things up” ) After I retired, I wanted to continue helping people but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do as a volunteer.  I led tours of a historic house in Worthington as a volunteer at the Worthington Historical Society, but I wanted to do more to help people less fortunate than I.

I had always wanted to sew and had a fascination with quilts and quilt making, but I had not taken the time to learn how to make a quilt.  I admired quilts and comforters, and was amazed by them, but I was not sure I could do that kind of sewing.

Judy Hartzler and I often chatted about quilts and quilt making when we worked together at the library. Many years before I retired, Judy had invited me to a quilt auction at the Ohio MCC Relief Sale in Kidron, Ohio.  I had never heard of MCC or had any idea what they did. I enjoyed the auction, watching quilts and comforters being auctioned off, sometimes for very high prices and all to be given away. It was amazing to me.

After I retired, Judy invited me to come to her church and help with a group that made comforters.  She asked me to come to help set up quilt frames for a knotting party.

All this was a mystery to me having never set up a quilt frame nor knotted a comforter.  As a total novice, I wondered how I would fit in.

Well, I was overwhelmed by the warmth…

Text: Galatians 5:22-23Speaker: Bethany Davey

Today is the first of our Fruits of the Spirit worship series, and we’re kicking it off with a focus on joy. What a fitting start to our series, and what a fitting focus for Pride Sunday. 

Pride Sunday is, indeed, a Sunday for joy, a Sunday for joyful resistance.

Pride Sunday is a Sunday for celebration, and a Sunday that confronts and refuses the violent boundaries of our societies: the barriers that include some while excluding others, the gates of access kept by those holding social and political power, the borders designed to keep out, the lines that become dangerous and all too often lethal. 

None of this is new. Throughout recorded human existence, we observe fortress walls, borders and imposed barriers of all sorts. Most often, these lines of demarcation are determined by those within, to accommodate those within and to keep perceived “outsiders” out. 

We can observe this very human pattern not only in who is kept out, but what is kept out. We may convince ourselves that whatever behavior, belief or practice we find undesirable lives “out there” or “over there,” beyond our established border walls. When we believe ourselves so other than another, we are more likely to believe our lines of demarcation, barriers and separations are not only important, but justified and even beneficial, necessary. 

We’re prone—as a species—to harsh divisions, to polarization. We too often operate—particularly in Western, colonial thought—in opposites, binaries, either/or dualisms. But in reality, humans and life are (thankfully) more complex and nuanced than either/or allows. Though we’re focused on two particular verses of Galations 5 during this series, Galations as a whole has much to say to the notion of barriers, in-groups and out-groups. 

Believed to be one of the earliest New Testament texts, Paul’s letter to the Galations cautions against…

Remove Invasives, Plant Natives and make America Biodiverse Again! by Tracey Lehman

I work part-time at Leaves for Wildlife, a native plant nursery. It opened about five years ago when the owner, Patty, a practitioner in natural medicine, read a book by entomologist Douglas Tallamy. Convinced of the intricate connection between the well-being of our environment and human health, she shifted gears and opened a native plant nursery.

I, too, have been inspired by Tallamy’s ongoing research that supports the idea that the non-native plants that dominate our landscape have contributed to the loss of biodiversity, which is the variety of life on Earth. As entomologist E.O. Wilson said, “Biodiversity holds the world steady.” The 2022 UN Biodiversity Conference said that biodiversity “is important for our health and well-being, food supply, and safety.” It also said that the widespread preference for non-native plants in the horticultural industry has globally transformed millions of acres from potential habitat into ‘food deserts’ for native insects, with the unintentional consequence of reducing the abundance and distribution of birds, as well.” And of course, those pristine green lawns that are so appealing to many Americans also count as food deserts.

Insects and plants co-evolved alongside of each other for millions of years, and 70-90% of plant-feeding insects are specialists, meaning their larvae are adapted to feed on a very narrow range of what are called host plants. Without these host plants, the specialist insect must either adapt to a new plant, which can take thousands of years, or die. This is why there has been a grassroots movement to plant species of milkweed, because that is the only plant species that monarch butterflies will lay their eggs on, as it is the only species their caterpillars can eat. As for bees, many ground-nesting bees are specialists on certain…

Text: 1 Thessalonians 2:1-12Speaker: Mark Rupp

This is the final Sunday of the Ours is a Story… worship series where we have been exploring and reflecting on our Membership Commitment, so I thought it would be good to focus on the final line of the statement. “By God’s grace, may we be a sanctuary, where we welcome, protect, and challenge one another.” Now there is a lot in that one line that could be unpacked, and I’m grateful for the ways Bethany helped us last week to think about how we may be a sanctuary by committing to the importance of our Keeping CMC Safe from Abuse policies. 

But what really stands out to me in this final line are those three verbs, those three actions we commit to in order to fully become a sanctuary for one another. In particular, I’m struck by the final one: challenge. How do we challenge one another? Or perhaps more importantly, how do we challenge one another without relying on structures of dominance and power-over that can so easily become controlling and toxic, especially when these challenges are tied to spiritual matters which are often about the core of who we are. 

This final Sunday of this series also overlaps with the first Sunday of Pride month, so as I think about this question of how we challenge one another, I can’t help but think about how my own faith and life journeys have been marked by challenges to my identity as a gay man. So before we circle back to these hard questions about what it means to challenge, I want to detour for a moment, but a detour that I think will help us see these questions in a new way. 

I think it has actually been a long time since I told my coming…

Today is Keeping CMC Safe Sunday. We won’t be discussing specific experiences of abuse, but abuse prevention itself can be activating. Many, perhaps even most of us, have been impacted by abuse in some way. Many, perhaps even most of us, have been impacted by church-related abuse in some way. And so, one of the ways we can offer care to our community today is by offering care to ourselves throughout this service and sermon; each of us is part of the community, and each of us matters.

If our bodies become dysregulated during the sermon, we can aid ourselves in self-comfort and self-regulation. I invite you to practice any of these things, should they be fitting:

-wiggle toes, roll shoulders, twist in seat, awareness of the ground beneath feet, pew beneath seat

-five things (see, hear, smell, taste, touch)

-“this is my hand”

-breathe in through our noses for a count of five, hold our breath for a moment, and release through my mouth for a count of five or longer.

May we extend ourselves the kindness we would a beloved child or a dear friend. May we be gentle and compassionate with ourselves and with one another.

——

I have loved to write since I was a child. In elementary school, I often carried a notebook with me, adding to my “chapter book” in-progress throughout the day. I fell asleep constructing first sentences of new stories in my head. Writing came easily. Words flowed, and I delighted in bringing my imagination to the page.

Yet, as much as I loved writing, I never cared for outlines.

…I wanted to pause in case this roused the same response that my feelings about The Princess Bride did, but apparently outlines don’t evoke the same degree of emotional outpouring. …

I have never much cared for outlines. In elementary and middle school,…