Saturday, September 13, 2008

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 20th 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.