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Beloved:
I had a wonderful week in Washington, D.C. I’ve decided it’s my favorite big city. All my preacher friends at the conference are Canadian, and it was wonderful showing them around the monuments and museums. With approximately one thousand other clergy members, I gratefully participated in the Reclaiming Jesus procession and candlelight street vigil. Read about it here: http://www.reclaimingjesus.org/. I’ll leave again this coming Sunday evening for a family vacation at the beach, be back for a few days and then gone a few more for Baptist meetings in Texas. Then back to stay for VACATION BIBLE SCHOOL!!!!! ~ and the whole month of July. I know you want to know what’s coming up in preaching – and you have homework! For months I’ve been saying (preaching) that when (the apostle) John writes one thing he means at least three more. We’ll come back to him later in the summer, but for the next few weeks we’re traveling from Egypt to nowhere in particular, considering Ten Words for Free People. Not just any ten words. Ten particular words. You’ve also heard them called the ten commandments, and you’ve probably heard them preached before, a time or two. I mean for us (thus the homework) to think about them as they have to do with our topic for the year: justice. In preparation and for context, please read Genesis 37 through Exodus 20. In other news - the church kitchen will be closed for the next week, so please plan accordingly. Tomorrow’s Wednesday Night Supper will happen upstairs, picnic-style, with not much clean-up. If you can come around 5:30 to help set up, all the better! Remember we’ll have immigration attorney Christie Popp as a guest speaker to tell us about local impact of recent immigration policies and how people of faith are responding. I look forward to seeing you soon! ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette
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What a lovely time with Mrs. Cannon, Abby, Dai, Braxton and Leo from the BHSN Civil Rights History Club. I’m so proud to be invited to partner with them in the justice work they are doing in their school, community and country. Our offering for them Sunday was $944, but if you haven’t given, please do. Checks can be made out to BHSN Civil Rights History Club and mailed to: BHSN Attn: Angie Cannon 3901 North Kinser Pike Bloomington, IN 47404 Please write University Baptist in the memo line so Mrs. Cannon will know it came through us. Elder Wanda Hosea is preaching on Sunday, May 27th, and you don’t want to miss it. I’ll see you next week (5/30) at the Wednesday Night Supper where the justice workgroup will have another special program for you, the second speaker in our Justice Matters Series: Christie Popp, a local immigration attorney. She is a member of Congregation Beth Shalom and is currently coordinating the Bloomington Interfaith and Community Immigrant Task Force. She will help us understand some of the struggles that immigrants in our community are facing and give us some background on why some immigrants in our community lack current immigration documentation. The meal begins at 6 PM, and our discussion of justice issues affecting our immigrant neighbors will start around 6:45. We hope you can join us; bring a friend, and bring your questions! ~ peace & prayers from our nation’s capital, pastor annette
hear him walking, like when the leaves are dry and down. Sometimes they chatter back and forth, about who knows what? About the weather . . . or those two idiot dogs who have never caught them even once? I have favorite things about every other month, but May remains my favorite favorite. My whole yard smells like candy, thanks to the irises. I can’t get sad for tulips ending, when peonies are coming on, with pink Annabelle hydrangeas not that far behind. Everything is so alive. In springtime, “everything can come back new and beautiful” isn’t something only poets say, but so does the world outside my kitchen window. I can live almost a year on the memory of May, then here it comes again. No winter month has this hold on me.
As with everything, the task is finding grace, the grace received and the grace that must be shared. Spring comes to the deadest places eventually, but need not stay just where it lands. Where much has been given . . . much can be forwarded into other places. I pray you a beautiful, joyful, faithful-with-all-that-you-have-been-given spring day.
Beloved:  People going through a rough patch sometimes stop in a church asking, “Do you ever help people?" Jesus called them our friends, so the answer is always, “Yes. That’s what we’re here for!" My magnificent assistant personifies hospitality, and a little flock of said friends seem to know exactly what time she arrives, despite her never working the same hours two weeks in a row. A cup of coffee or a bus ticket with a side of conversation usually sends them on their way, but once in a while the patch is not so easily smoothed, and the word privilege comes to mind again.
If you don’t have insurance or an address, there’s nothing we can do for you, the healthcare office told the couple. He’s hurting and in need of care. They’ve been to the emergency room. Now they need a doctor. They did as they were told and were humiliated for their trouble. Of course the system isn’t perfect, and most are doing the best they can. But one imperfection of the system is it works unequally at both ends. I called a different healthcare office where the gatekeepers know me. On my word the gate was opened. These new friends have an appointment and a plan. I’m not special. I’m just at work. And it’s what friends do for friends. Still, something nags me just a little. I leveraged my reputation to go around the system. Because I could. It’s business as usual most folks would say and wonder why I need bring it up at all. Because it makes me itchy and uncomfortable – but not so much I’d not do it next time. I’ve done it since, in fact. I’m sure I will again. I’m not naïve to the politics of work and wealth, the need for business to make a profit and for systems to have rules. None of which precludes that all of us are human beings; friends was Jesus’ word, remember. It bothers me enormously that decency and justice ride on who is willing to be a friend when some friends have it rough. I suppose it’s just another reason God made church: so we’d hang great, big signs out front that say, “Everyone Welcome!"; so friends in a rough patch will know where to go to ask, “Do you ever help people?” My daughter had wisdom tooth surgery yesterday, so I’m at her house fetching ice packs and Tylenol. She’s an easy patient, so I get to read and walk the dogs a lot. Her neighborhood could hardly be more different than mine. It’s urban, first of all, so the traffic never really sleeps. Sirens at night and buses in the morning. Trains and cars and trucks go by all day. And diverse. But what’s fun is that our kids add the diversity to this part of town.
They’ve had three sweet years here, but her husband’s residency is wrapping up and they’ll move to Bloomington this summer, where she’ll manage her dad’s consulting business and he’ll be a pediatrician. We’re over the moon about that, of course, but I think I’ll miss them being here. I liked how their front porch was full of kids five minutes after they moved in. I love how Margie and Donna, the mother-daughter duo next door who’ve lived there forty years, watch out for Mariah when Jeremy is working nights. They also boss Jeremy around, making him unload their groceries and such, requests to which he joyfully complies. It’s the very best of being neighbors. It’s springtime in the city just like at home. Sunlight streams through every window and the dog sighs, deep asleep upon the rug. I’m grateful to this one-hundred-year-old house that has watched over these newlyweds for this tiny era of its life. I’m grateful to this neighbor-hood, which (as Margie says) has gone from sugar to salt and back to sugar in the last forty years, for welcoming my kids and being home to them. I’m grateful to God for healthy kids and the fortune it has been to be witness to their growing up. I’ve no words for what a precious life I have. I pray the day is as kind to you. |
I write a Tuesday morning devotional to members and friends of UBC. It is also posted here.
Enjoy! Pastor Annette Copyright
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July 2022
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