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Sunday Gathering
December 8 @ 9:00 am - 12:00 pm
Join us!
Sunday’s Schedule:
Sunday’s Program and Reading
Sunday, December 8, 2024
What the World Needs Now: Angels
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Core Teacher: Ruth Zwald, retired social worker/minister, makes her home on a farm, starting every dawn with good coffee and the crow of the rooster. Loving the cycles of the seasons, Ruth watches the moon and never misses a solstice or equinox turning. She is a Mesa Carrier on the Peruvian Medicine Path, which involves personal healing, transformational healing for others, and creating ceremony and ritual for ourselves and for the earth.
Musician: Daniel Bracken, Michigan-based songwriter and finger-style guitarist plays music informed by his rich history as a recordist and producer for Public Media, and as a performer in the US and Ireland. In recent years Dan has delved deeper into personal songcraft, a wholehearted mix expressing the crossroads of spirituality, wistfulness, and humor. His songs embrace many of the storytelling qualities of traditional Irish and American roots music.
Music: Daniel Bracken
Gathering Host: Valerie Engeltjes
Music: Daniel Bracken
Meditation: Karri Absenger
Moment of Silence
Readings/Teaching: Ruth Zwald
The angel is a mystery, one that we have attempted to explain for more than two thousand years. This mystery is as deep as the mystery of the soul, as limitless as the mystery of infinity and eternity. This is a puzzle we may never be able to solve, but our probing of the mystery yields endless permutations that deepen our insights into ourselves.
— Rosemary Ellen Guiley
The Materialism of Angels
Of course the angels dance. If not on the head of a pin, then maybe on the boardwalk along the ocean of stars. And they eat hot and spicy: salsa, tabasco, red peppers.They love mangoes.They can munch for hours on cashews.Olives sit in bronze bowls on the cherry tables next to their canopy beds where the solace of pillows swallows their sweet heads and the quiet of silk lies across their happy backs.They know the altruism of material things. They want to say to us, “We’ll sleep next to you. Feel our soft and unimposing flutter across your shoulders, on your heartbroken feet.” They want us to take, eat, to smell the wood, run our tired fingers over the rim of every glass, give our eyes the chance to see the way the metal bends and curves its way into the black oval of the chair.They want us to feel the holiness of scratching where it itches, rubbing where it hurts.They want us to take long, steamy showers and a nap.They know how easily we follow directions: hook the red wire to the front of the furnace, fill in only the top half of the life insurance form.They have no manuals for joy.They can’t fix anything we break.They wonder why we never laugh enough, why we don’t know God is crazy for deep massage, and loves to wail on His alto sax whenever they dance. –Jack Ridl from Broken Symmetry
Music: Daniel Bracken
Gathering Host: Valerie Engeltjes
Music: Daniel Bracken
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