September 27, 2008 Gathering

PRELUDE

Andrew Prete

WELCOME

Welcome to The Pub Church! We are a church in a pub and the Spirit is with us. In this space you are free to move about, order drinks/food, and express your thoughts and ideas openly!

We come together with diversity of thoughts, stories, talents, hopes and hurts. Our prayer is that in coming together with all our differences we participate in a new divine reality and drink in the Spirit! This is sacred space.

OPENING READING

Spirit who is in all places, when we meditate on what we will say and how we will say it, you are present; when we have resolved to come into your sacredness, you are present, but perhaps this truth is not always real to us. So bless this gathering in order that each of us individually and communally will in this hour feel your presence and know that we are with you. **Adapted from The Prayers of Kierkegaard, p. 59.

PEACE – TOAST

Followed by Andrew

In this place we creatively express;

Some of us are focused, some are a mess!

We participate during the sermon

And people do connect, we are learnin’

Greet all with a handshake, toast or a wave

At all times feel free to yell, rant or rave

Fake not friends, we can arrive as we are.

Cheers! Here’s to sacred space in a bar!

TELLING OUR STORY

Story from last week

CONVERSATIONAL SERMON

What new reality?

Last week we ended with communion and with these words:

“As we gather in this present moment

Let us remember that in every moment we are cooperating in some reality, we make something real by our very presence and participation, by our embodied reality, by how we live and relate to one another.

In this moment then, let us make real a community of the Spirit, a people who are peaceable and beautiful in our relations with one another, with the earth, and with the Divine. Let us do that even as we share this bread and this wine now...”

And the week before that we read from…

~~~~~~~

~ What would be the new reality we would like to see?

~ In what ways do we participate to make that reality real – embodied?

~ What practices contribute to this new reality?

~ Do we believe a new reality is even possible?

SHARING OF RESOURCES

COMMUNION

FEEDBACK AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

Check the BLOG: thepubchurch.blogspot.com

CLOSING

Followed by music from Andrew

Openness to the divine is one of the important aspects of each occasion of experience. And that openness and responsiveness to the lure of the Spirit leads to further openness in the future. Faith can be interpreted as trusting that divine influence each moment.

- From “Process and Faith” (lectionary website)

May we go in peace, with Spirit, and as participants of a new Divine reality.

September 20, 2008 Gathering

WELCOME

Welcome to The Pub Church! We are a church in a pub. So please feel free to move around, order drinks and food, and above all express your thoughts and ideas freely!

We all come with stories, talents, gifts, and hopes. It is our prayer that with all our differences and all our strengths, we will come together and drink in the spirit! This is sacred space.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Food, sharing of resources, a reading,
and our stories

PEACE – TOAST

In this place we creatively express;
Some of us are focused, some are a mess!

We participate during the sermon
And people do connect, we are learnin’

Greet all with a handshake, toast or a wave
At all times feel free to yell, rant or rave

Fake not friends, we can arrive as we are.
Cheers! Here’s to sacred space in a bar!

A READING

- From Bryan Stone’s, Evangelism After Christendom, (12).

“Jesus talked about the reign of God as a radically new order that comes to put an end to age-old patterns of wealth and poverty, domination and subordination, insider and outsider that are deeply ingrained in the way we relate to one another on this planet. But in order for that new order to become a serious option for the world, it must be visibly and imaginatively embodied in the world. And if scripture is a faithful witness, the purpose of God throughout history is the creation and formation of a new people whose mission is to do just that…But (if that is to be so, then good news)* will have to be understood …as a fundamentally subversive activity, born out of a posture of eccentricity (living “off-center” or “outside the center,” at the margins) and out of the cultivation of such deviant practices as sharing bread with the poor, loving enemies, refusing violence, forgiving sins, and telling the truth.”

*my rewording

FEEDBACK AND FINAL ANNOUNCEMENTS

Check the BLOG: thepubchurch.blogspot.com
Music

CLOSING COMMUNION

Our true home is in the present moment.

To live in the present moment is a miracle.
The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment,
To appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.
Peace is all around us.
* From Life Prayers, Thich Nhat Hanh p. 367

As we gather in this present moment
Let us remember that in every moment we are cooperating in some reality, we make something real by our very presence and participation, by our embodied reality, by how we live and relate to one another.

In this moment then, let us make real a community of the Spirit, a people who are peaceable and beautiful in our relations with one another, with the earth, and with the Divine. Let us do that even as we share this bread and this wine now...

The Dugout is remodeled!

Pretty fancy huh?! :-) So come and enjoy the comfy couches with us!

And don't forget, you can always bring your own shotglass to use for communion.

September 13, 2008 Gathering

WELCOME

Welcome to The Pub Church! We are a church in a pub. So please feel free to move around, order drinks and food, doodle on notepads, and above all express your thoughts and ideas freely!

We all come with stories, talents, gifts, and hopes. It is our prayer that with all our differences and all our strengths, we will come together and drink in the spirit! This is sacred space.

PEACE – TOAST

In this place we creatively express;

Some of us are focused, some are a mess!

We participate during the sermon

And people do connect, we are learnin’

Greet all with a handshake, toast or a wave

At all times feel free to yell, rant or rave

Fake not friends, we can arrive as we are.

Cheers! Here’s to sacred space in a bar!

OPENING READING

Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi

Spirit, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Spirit, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born anew. Amen

TELLING OUR STORY

By Andrew Tripp

CONVERSATIONAL SERMON

Reflections on Participating in Church

Last week we reflected on being church, and coming together with difference. We talked about how we do that; how do we have something in common that brings us together while at the same time acknowledging and taking our differences into account? We mentioned the importance of a few things: sharing our questions and our interests with one another, being open about them; not imposing our ways or understandings on each other, but being willing to be present with one another in our differences; and all this requires that we hold our own questions and understandings in openness.

If there is Sacredness, if there is Spirit, if there is God/ess, then movement, transformation, growth, healing and a new way of being and relating in the world and with one another is possible. And at the same time, conflict is inevitable…Matthew 18:15-20

- What are some of the practices that help us be together with difference, that help us work through the conflict that is inherent in difference?

SHARING OF RESOURCES

We will share resources with one another and toward The Pub Church.

COMMUNION

Led by Xochitl with a poem.

FEEDBACK AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

Check the BLOG: thepubchurch.blogspot.com

September 20^th location??? Andrew

CLOSING

Radiant and unfading Wisdom, you are expansive,

holy, unique, manifold; you are more mobile than any motion; you are a breath of the power of the Divine. Enter into our souls and stay with us as we close our time today. Amen.

What does it mean to be Church?

Reflections from 9/6 Gathering :-)

Xochitl's Reflections:
I am making my life’s work out of asking two questions: What it mean to be a Christian, What it mean to be the church. And here we are church differently. It’s not surprising that some people do not think of us as church. We disrupt their definition, their ideas, of what church is. As people who think of themselves as Christian and as church, we probably also disrupt their own sense of identity because they do not see themselves in us.

One response can be - who cares? We can do what we do regardless of what others think or say. But for me, since theology will also be what I do with my life, I have to be able to answer the question; How are we, The Pub Church, church? Any response we have is a work in process of course! But here's a go at it...

I think of church as a people, who with the Spirit, participate in a new reality. We participate in embodying and making real something that is more in tune with a sacred vision for the universe. Now, of course, I understand that embodied vision through the divine incarnation of Jesus. But not all of us do – and to me, the fact that we can still come together, taking our differences into account, while seeking out our commonalities, is more church to me than anything else.

I think that very fact, that we all are willing to be together and participate in what each other brings to the table, in itself communicates what and who we are as church. We come together with many different perspectives, frameworks of thinking, experiences, values, but still open to one another. We are not imposing ourselves on each other, but are willing to come together in difference, with difference. We come together and we explore and we share a way of living and relating that can include us all. And because it actually includes us, we shape it along the way. We move in and with the sacred to explore and to learn, to experiment and try new things. And to me, this reflects a new and divine way of being and relating in the world that is what I call church – A people gathered in Spirit participating to embody a divine way, always in process, always held in openness.

This is my church – we are church. And I learn what it means to be Christian and what it means to be Church by being willing to hold my Christianity in openness here with you.

That’s why I picked those readings for today – because they capture some of the answers to my own questions.
~~~~~
So now I want to turn it to you all and ask what you all’s questions are? How do you answer your own questions – or do you have answers to them. What are the questions we want to keep asking?
~~~~~

Some of our responses were:

• What it means to be church is not my question. My question would be What is community and what does it mean to be a participant in community? How do we be community. But I see commonality in the community questions and the church questions so that we are able to come together even though we have much difference.
• There is a reality of power and abuse of power that Christianity has, so it is important for those of us that do have the church/christian question to be aware that we do not dominate or impose our questions on others.
• We have to continually seek out and ask questions so that we do connect in our commonalities but aware and open to our differences.
  

September 6, 2008 Gathering

WELCOME

Welcome to The Pub Church! We are a church in a pub. So please feel free to move around, order drinks and food, doodle on your placemat, and above all express your thoughts and ideas freely!

We all come with stories, talents, gifts, and hopes. It is our prayer that with all our differences and all our strengths, we will come together and drink in the spirit! This is sacred space.

PEACE – TOAST

In this place we creatively express;

Some of us are focused, some are a mess!

We participate during the sermon

And people do connect, we are learnin’

Greet all with a handshake, toast or a wave

At all times feel free to yell, rant or rave

Fake not friends, we can arrive as we are.

Cheers! Here’s to sacred space in a bar!

OPENING READING

“As a virtue solidarity becomes a way of life.

It becomes the new way of living out the ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ that up to now has been interpreted as giving out of largesse (generosity/bounty). Given the network of oppressive structures in our world today that so control and dominate the vast majority of human beings, the only way we can continue to claim the centrality of love of neighbor for Christians is to redefine what it means and what it demands of us. Solidarity, then, becomes the new way of understanding and living out this commandment of the gospel.”

- Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, Mujerista Theology.

VOICES OF THE PEOPLE

By Jaclyn Jones

CONVERSATIONAL SERMON

Reflections on Be-ing Church

“We came from many nationalities and backgrounds. About half the women on the line were from Six Nations. We shared small bits of our culture, favorite foods, or revealed an embarrassing moment. It was just this potential for solidarity the foreman was always looking to sabotage. It was done in little ways, all the time: a whispered lie, a cruel suggestion, a vulgar joke. But it was hard to split us up. The conveyor belt held us together.

Within weeks I was welcomed into the circle, teased, pelted with questions. My differences were taken into account, my sameness sought out. We worked together, we talked, we listened.”

-From Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues, p. 78. A novel about the experience of being “butch,” here she recounts about her work experience in a factory.

SHARING OF RESOURCES

We will share resources with one another and toward The Pub Church.

COMMUNION

Led by Xochitl with a poem.

FEEDBACK AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

Check the BLOG: thepubchurch.blogspot.com

September 20^th location??? Andrew.

CLOSING

Radiant and unfading Wisdom,

you are expansive,

holy,

unique,

manifold;

you are more mobile than any motion; you are a breath of the power of the Divine.

Enter into our souls and stay with us as we close our time today. Amen.