The Weight...

I pulled into Nazareth, was feeling 'bout half past dead
I just need some place where I can lay my head

We took a "load off" at The Pub Church last week. Andrew Prete was there to play one of my favorite songs, The Weight by The Band and it was awesome. It really is a song that helps take me to a better place...


The DugOut, the pub where we met, turned out to be our favorite location so far - we'll definitely be going back there...


Our conversational sermon continued on the gospel of Mark 1:1-8. John the Baptizer is preparing the way for the one whose sandal straps he finds himself unworthy of tying! We talked about being excited about the arrival of something, someone for whom we makes tons of preparation...and the disappointment we most commonly end up experiencing, even with Jesus and especially with the church. In our Telling Our Stories part of the gathering, one person shared how their experience of church was just like this...we invest and prepare, we are excited for something new and different, we make all the preparations we can think of, we go above and beyond in our hope and anticipation. But then we are left crushed and disappointed. Sadly, this is the experience many people have with Christianity and the church.

So we were ended by noting that the critical question is, what do we do then? How do we respond and what will we do after this kind of experience? It's an open ended question for sure.

A light note to end on huh?! ;-)


But, then Andrew played The Weight, we put our loads down, shared resources and shared communion...I think in openness and uncertainty, we are already practicing a response to the experience of being let down by so much. We drink in the Spirit and in the end, we had tons of FUN!

Our sharing of resources this week was for Common Ground Relief. They are a community-initiated volunteer organization that was started in order to provide short term relief for victims of hurricane disasters in the gulf coast region, and long term support in rebuilding the communities affected in the New Orleans area . Their founder, Malik Rahim, was invited to speak at Boston University the week before - telling us about the devastating situation that continues in New Orleans. And so we were inspired to send them our shared resources from this week.

We also stuck around and played pool afterward...

JOIN US NEXT TIME! :-)