United Church of Christ in Cornwall, Congregational s4

The Bridge United Church of Christ in Cornwall, Congregational June 2016

STAFF: Minister Director of Music Dir. of Christian Ed. Church Secretary Church Sexton Micki Nunn-Miller Anne Chamberlain Tracy Gray Tracy Gray Donna Bielefield

PASTOR’S WORD Happy Pentecost Season to all! We recently celebrated the birthday of the church on May 15 when we remembered together the Day of Pentecost. The church season of Pentecost goes from now until Advent begins 4 Sundays before Christmas. It is the longest church season. At the beginning of Pentecost we use red colors in worship to remind us of the “tongues of fire” that blew in on that morning when folks from different parts of the world were able to understand each other in their own languages. For the rest of Pentecost the color green is used to symbolize growth: growth in faith, growth in discipleship, and growth in the church. In my Pentecost sermon I spoke of what we all know is true: the church must adapt and change in the 21st century or die. I used the example of the industrial manufacturing company of General Electric (GE) as an institution that is trying to adapt and change. Their TV commercials featuring new college grad, Owen, tell the story of their attempts to move into the digital age. The tag line for their ads is: GE: A Digital Company that is also An Industrial One. Note that they put the NEW thing they are focusing on prior to stating what they have always been. So I suggested that perhaps we should try our hand at some possible tag lines to show the ways that we at the UCC – a 2,000 year old institution (and locally, a 200 year old institution) – are adapting and changing to meet the needs of our world in this time and place. Some of you took me up on that challenge, so here are my suggestions and yours that I have received so far.

The Church: A Spiritual Gathering that is also a Religious One.

The Church: A Community of Faith that also gathers in a 200 year old Meeting House.

The UCC in Cornwall: A Spiritual Community that is also a 2000 year old Communion of Saints.

UCC in Cornwall: A Spiritual Conversation evolving over 2000 years.

The UCC in Cornwall: Full to Bursting with God’s Spirit and also a Religious Institution.

UCC in Cornwall: You don’t need an invitation…you are welcome in our faith community. And from the UCC: The Holy Spirit: Blowing church doors off their hinges for 2000 years. Science asks how. Spirit asks why. Wisdom seeks both. Our Faith may be 2000 years old. Our Thinking is not. GRACE IS FREE and it’s free for EVERYBODY or it’s not grace and you should use ANOTHER WORD

The challenge is on! Not just for more tag lines, of course. The challenge is on to BE THE CHURCH that God is calling us to be. Blessings to you and to all our ministries,

Micki Congratulations to the following young people who celebrate birthdays in June:

June 1 Anna Kraebber June 6 Sam Green June 7 Caroline Hurlburt June 14 Linda Petersen June 17 Reilly Hedden

Summer Blood Drive Thursday, June 9 1:00 – 5:45 on the Save-a-Life Bus at the UCC in Cornwall Refreshments and registration will be held in the Parish House and the blood donations will be taken in a Red Cross bus in the parking lot. To sign up please call the Red Cross directly at 1-800-RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767). Walk-ins are welcome. Allow at least one hour in all. Each donation can help to save three lives! Children’s Sunday on June 12

We are Salt – We are Light: Being the Church Please join our Church School children as they lead us in an uplifting morning worship service. They have written the liturgy and have prepared the sermon based on Matthew 5:13-16. Bring your family and friends to help the children celebrate God’s invitation to us all: to share the good news with all we meet in word and deed. We will recognize our teachers and present bibles to our children entering the fourth grade. Special Fellowship will follow.

IN THE MAILBAG: “Dear Pat and Jerry and UCC, Just a quick note to thank you for the use of the wheelchair. It sure helped me a lot. Thank you, Donna Weigold”

“Dear Friends at the UCC, thanks for the lovely May Day flowers – they bring spring and cheer to the house! Peace – Roxana and Ledlie (Laughlin)”

“Dear Friends, Many thanks for the lovely flowers left on my doorstep Sunday morning. Margaret and I have been enjoying the signs of spring even though the weather doesn’t seem to cooperate. Sincerely, Thalia Scoville”

THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES… …(via the House Committee) invites you to look at and sign the Summer Jobs List! Volunteer a couple hours of time this summer to improve our buildings and grounds. The jobs are not difficult and their completion will improve our worship, missions, study, and play environment. And your work saves the church money so it also is good stewardship! Please read it over and see how you can help. If you can think of another job you see that needs to be done, speak to Peg Keskinen or any member of the Trustees (Peter Ebersol, Chris Gyorsok, Bob Potter, Paul DeAngelis, Lisa Keskinen, Paul Smith). OUTLOOK Series: Continuing Education at the UCC

June 5 “Thriving After Resettlement” Speakers: Phoung and Danh Le In September of 1975, Cornwall welcomed a Vietnamese refugee family – five adults and one infant, after our church, working with International Rescue brought a family here to resettle after fleeing Vietnam. Husband and wife, Phoung and Danh return to Cornwall to speak about how their life changed since that day and how they are all doing now. They still live in Connecticut and we are so very happy to have them with us to share their experiences. Please come and give them a warm welcome!

GOODNEWS! GOODNEWS! GOODNEWS!

 At the Annual Meeting of the Congregation, we celebrated our many ministries and remembered our members and friends who passed away this year. We thanked a number of people who finished terms in various offices and we welcomed new leaders. We agreed to co-sponsor a Resolution to the Conference Annual Meeting with the Conference Environmental Ministries Team which gives our Legislative Advocate the ability to work on our behalf at the State Legislature. Thanks be to God!  Our congregation voted at our Annual Meeting to become a co-sponsor with the Goshen UCC and with IRIS to bring a refugee family to Torrington. Thanks be to God!  Because of our participation in the annual CROP Walk, we received $500 to share with St. Peter’s Church to help alleviate hunger in Cornwall. Thanks be to God!  At a Continuing Education workshop led by Lisa Keskinen, “Let There be Light!”, 18 people gathered to consider chapels and the way that light invites a sense of wonder, awe, and spirit. Many created a chapel of their own, using color and light with materials provided. The creations are displayed in the Day Room. Thanks be to God!  Rev. Marilyn Kendrix preached and led a program on the problem of mass incarceration in our country and the uneven way justice is applied to people of color. We were challenged to think about how God’s people should respond. Thanks be to God!

UCC TO CO-SPONSOR A REFUGEE FAMILY The Annual Congregational Meeting of the UCC in Cornwall voted unanimously on May 15th to co-sponsor (along with the Goshen UCC) a refugee family - probably either Syrian or Iraqi - again working through Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS) in New Haven. Interest in resettling a family has spread to several other church groups in our area, and we have been meeting with them and the Goshen UCC committee over the past few weeks. IRIS has expanded its facilities and increased its staff and services to accommodate the current arrival of refugees in huge numbers. We will again settle a family in Torrington, as we have learned from experience that its social services, schools, medical facilities, translators, public transit and social venues are accustomed to welcoming refugees and are experienced in such matters as language training and differing cultural norms. Planning is well under way to resettle a family this summer. An apartment search and fund-raising have begun, and we will soon start collecting all the furnishings and equipment needed for a family’s new home. We will be looking for volunteers for providing rides, hosting the family for social time, moving furniture, taking care of children, shopping with the family, pre-arrival apartment cleaning and organizing, etc. We are making progress toward raising the $6,000 needed for the family’s initial support. If you are able to help us reach that goal, checks may be made out to: “United Church of Christ, Cornwall” with “Refugee Resettlement” on the memo line, and sent to: Treasurer, United Church of Christ, 8 Bolton Hill Road, Cornwall CT 06753. Donations in any amount - large or small - will help and will be so much appreciated! We will keep you informed about the opportunity to help a refugee family make a new home and a new life. If you would like to receive emails updating you about activities as we move forward, please email Peg at [email protected]. Your questions and suggestions are welcome and may be addressed to any one of us. ----from the Cornwall UCC Refugee Resettlement Committee, Micki Nunn-Miller, Nita Colgate, Jill Bryant, Peg Keskinen

A LETTER FROM OUR CONFERENCE MINISTER The following letter was received on May 23, 2016 from Rev. Kent Siladi.

Dear Christians of the Connecticut Conference, Grace and peace to you in the name of Christ Jesus, the Risen One! We give thanks for you, our partners in the church, for our common purpose in serving God. Our first and last word is gratitude, to the God who calls us each beloved, and calls us by name. We are writing out of our particular concern for ministries that strive for racial justice. Recently, at the Silver Lake Conference Center, a banner declaring that "Black Lives Matter" was defaced. In red ink, the anonymous defacer wrote across the banner, “All Lives Matter.” We have seen this same action in other places. We have had spirited arguments with friends and colleagues who fervently believe that “All” lives matter, and that to single out some lives seems to diminish the worthiness of others. We disagree with that analysis, although we welcome the conversation about this. But the action taken at Silver Lake — a place of holy encounter and spiritual refuge — was unwelcome. No matter the motivation, the vandal defaced “Blackness.” No matter the motivation, the vandal acted in a way that is painfully, brutally familiar to persons who identify as Black: assaulting their race, denying their history, dismissing their pain — and thereby intending to diminish the image of God in them. We wish to say this to our colleagues who are Black: we apologize that to date, we have failed to adequately confront the presence of racism in ourselves, in our churches, and in our society. We see, in the anonymous attack on a banner, an anger that seems wholly unaware of our culture’s continued brutality to Black lives. We are even more committed to the essential work of eradicating racism because of the vandalism that occurred in our outdoor conference center — in “God's back yard.” It is worth mentioning that the person who vandalized the sign has been identified. Members of the church group that was visiting Silver Lake at the time were shocked and dismayed at the act. They are using this incident to deepen their own awareness of racial violence. For that, we praise God! We also wish to make use of this incident to raise awareness of the urgent, ongoing work to expose racism in ourselves and in our midst. We have many resources available to the Connecticut Conference (UCC) on our website (www.ctucc.org/racialjustice/). We ask your prayers for the many in our conference who are responding to the call to answer racism with the power of Christ's compassion — that life of shared suffering and transforming love. At the end, as at the beginning, we thank God for this church that gives us companionship in the costly work of discipleship. Yours in Christ, The Rev. Kent J. Siladi, Conference Minister Ms. Persephone Hall and the Rev. Dr. John A. Nelson, co-chairs, Board of Directors, CTUCC Racial Justice Ministry

OFF TO THE PINE RIDGE TRIP! On June 25, 8 youth and adults will arrive at the RE-MEMBER organization on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota to begin a week of learning from and working with the Lakota people. Located in Wounded Knee, our home for the week will provide shelter, food, and a gathering place for us to hear from members of the Lakota tribe. We will work on bunk beds, outhouses, and repairing housing for 3 of our 6 days. We will learn about Lakota spirituality. The other time will be devoted to learning the story of the Wounded Knee Massacre, touring the Reservation, and hiking in sacred Lakota lands also known as Badlands National Park. Pray for us, that our work and sharing might be infused with the Spirit and with growth in understanding of a culture very different from our own. If you are interested in attending this trip next year, let Micki know as the list is forming!

June 2016 United Church of Christ in Cornwall, Congregational 860-672-6840 [email protected] Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday 1 2 3 4 Qigong, 6:00 – Food Pantry 7:00, DR open, 9:00 – 10:00 Stitch “n” Spin 7:15, Lib. 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 8:45 Choir Food Pantry CE Com. Qigong, 6:00 – Food Pantry CT Conf. CT Conf. rehearsal open for patrons, meets, 6:30 7:00, DR open, 9:00 – Annual Annual 10:00 Worship 5:30 – 6:30 10:00 Meeting, Meeting, and Church Stitch “n” Spin Blood Drive, School Hartford Hartford 7:15, Lib. 1:00 – 5:45 11:30 Cont. Children’s Ed.: Cornwall Sunday set-up, Thriving After Housing, 4:30, DR 10:00 Resettlement 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 10:00 Blood Pressure Church Qigong, 6:00 – Food Pantry Memorial Children’s Clinic, 12-1, Lib Council, 7:15 7:00, DR open, 9:00 – Service for Sunday Food Pantry 10:00 Denny Frost, worship open for patrons, Stitch “n” Spin 1:00, CVMH 5:30 – 6:30 7:15, Lib. Trustees, 7:30 Memorial DR Service for Hendon Chubb, 4:00, CVMH 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 10:00 Worship in Food Pantry Stitch “n” Spin Food Pantry Memorial CVMH open for patrons, 7:15, Lib. open, 9:00 – Service for Bea 5:30 – 6:30 10:00 Simont, 2:00, CVMH

Pine Ridge trip departs

26 27 28 29 30 10:00 Worship in Food Pantry Stitch “n” Spin Food Pantry CVMH open for patrons, 7:15, Lib. open, 9:00 – 5:30 – 6:30 10:00

PH = Parish House DR = Day Room Lib. = Church UR = Upper Room

United Church of Christ in Cornwall, Congregational 8 Bolton Hill Road PO Box 35 Cornwall, CT 06753 Phone: 860-672-6840 Fax: 860-672-6840 Email: [email protected] Web: www.uccincornwall.org Morning Worship: 10:00 Church School: 10:00 Office Hours: M – F, 9 –1 God is Still Speaking!

We are an Open and Affirming Church.

All are welcome here!

Happy Father’s Day Dads, Grandpas, Uncles and the other special men in our lives! What Makes A Dad by Anonymous

God took the strength of a mountain, The majesty of a tree, The warmth of a summer sun, The calm of a quiet sea,

The generous soul of nature, The comforting arm of night, The wisdom of the ages, The power of the eagle's flight,

The joy of a morning in spring, The faith of a mustard seed, The patience of eternity, The depth of a family need,

Then God combined these qualities, When there was nothing more to add, He knew His masterpiece was complete, And so, He called it ... Dad