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SPRING SCHEDULE for Youth & Families with Jackson Community Church

APRIL

  • Fri, April 27 — 5:30-7:30pm • Friday Fun Night

    Spring Fling with Pizza & Games at JCC. RSVP by email if planning to attend or call/text Rev Gail (978.273.0308)
  • Sat, April 28 — 9am-Noon • Spring Cleaning at JCC

    Come prepared to work inside (or outside if you don’t mind the rain). We’re organizing closets, cleaning windows and hard-to-reach areas, touching up spots inside and outside the church, changing light bulbs, and sprucing up the church grounds. Wear old clothes, sensible shoes, and bring work gloves. We’ll add more info about any tools or equipment you should bring from home, such as buckets or rakes or brooms.
  • Sun, April 29 – 10:30am • Worship includes traditional Sunday School. Parents may attend worship and children will have interactive lesson during portion  of service.

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Church service projects & community causes seeking volunteers

Highlights: spring cleaning at church, cutting party for Pease Greeters Christmas stockings, plant sale to address teen homelessness, estate sale to benefit for church, plus help Valley Pride road clean up, women build with Habitat for Humanity and learn more about volunteering for Starting Point. Some RSVPs requested for planning purposes.

FRI, April 27

  • OUTDOOR CLEANUP
    3-5pm • Outdoors at Jackson Community Church. Come prepared to work outside. Wear old clothes, sensible shoes, and bring work gloves. If possible, bring rakes or brooms. We’ll remove sand and leaves from driveway, lawn, and playground, and generally doing a first pass at cleaning up outside. Park across the street if possible; we’re cleaning up the parking lot.

SAT, April 28

  • SPRING CLEANUP DAY
    (mostly indoors due to rainy weather forecast)

    9am-Noon. Come prepared to work inside or outside, depending on your preference. Rain is expected, so we anticipate most projects will be indoors. We’re organizing closets, cleaning windows and hard-to-reach areas, touching up spots inside and outside the church, changing lightbulbs, and sprucing up the church grounds. Wear old clothes, sensible shoes, and bring work gloves. If possible, bring sponges, rags, buckets, rakes or brooms. RSVP to Rev Gail if able to help.

WED, May 9

  • CUTTING PARTY for PEASE GREETERS CHRISTMAS STOCKING PROJECT
    10-Noon • Parish Hall, Jackson Community Church
    Mission Committee is holding a Cutting Party to prepare the materials for veterans’ Christmas Stockings after Laurie McAleer’s 9am Tune Up fitness class. Bring sharp scissors and common pins if you have them. Expect to cut out 60 stockings.  Once completed (they’re taken home to be assembled by the organizers), these stockings go to the Pease Greeters group and are distributed to incoming and outgoing military personnel at Pease Air Force Base.

FRI, MAY 25

SAT, MAY 26

  • PLANT SALE • Outside Jackson Grammar School
    7:30-9am • Set up tables and plants for sale outside Jackson Grammar School (near library book sale at Whitney Community Center)
    9am-Noon • Plant Sale.
    Money earned from the plant sale will go to the emerging Homeless Teen Initiative c/o North Country Cares (also the umbrella organization for the Revolving Closet).
  • ESTATE SALE
    7-8am • Set up
    8am-2pm • Jackson Community Church
    The church “estate sale” will take place the same day as the plant sale, outsie of weather permits, indoors if necessary. Donated items (household goods, sports equipment, collectibles, kitchen items, tools) will be sold to benefit the church building and operations. RSVP to Rev Gail if able to help.

Community Causes

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Reflections on tenacious love plus relationship as vine & branches – themes from 1 John 4 and John 15.

Active love establishes a tenacious & enduring relationship; find its allegory in the vine and branches in 1 John 4 and John 15. If the incarnation of holy love is the vine and we are the branches, what fruit do we bear? What or whom does the fruit nourish? What is essential and what must be pruned away? In what soil are the vine and the branches rooted, to be nurtured, to grow, to flourish? We are here to sustain each other through relationships that are sacred.
Song of Myself (excerpt) — Walt Whitman
44 … All forces have been steadily employ’d to complete and delight me,
Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.
45 … Crying by day Ahoy! from the rocks of the river,
swinging and chirping over my head,
Calling my name from flower-beds, vines, tangled underbrush,
Lighting on every moment of my life,
Bussing my body with soft balsamic busses,
Noiselessly passing handfuls out of their hearts and giving them to be mine …

Of Vine and Branches

We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond. — Gwendolyn Brooks

We are leaves of one branch, the drops of one sea, the flowers of one garden. — Jean Baptiste Lacordaire

Maybe you are searching among branches for what only appears in the roots. — Rumi

How can you bear fruit? How can you imagine being beyond yourself? How can you realize your potential if you have no grounding, no sense of origin, no affirmation of possibility outside yourself? The bearing of fruit depends on dependence. It depends on connection. It depends on origin. It depends on belonging. As soon as you think you can produce anything from the basis of your own sovereignty, from your own efforts, from your own sense of independence, think about it. What kind of fruit will that be? Because bearing fruit has everything to do with who you are in relationship. — Karoline Lewis

… our sole responsibility to the rest of the branches is love. — Meda Stamper

Looking closely, we see the many entwined branches, winding their way around one another in intricate patterns of tight curls that make it impossible to tell where one branch starts or another one ends. This is not just intricate; it’s intimate, and the vine shares with its branches the nutrients that sustain it, the life force of the whole plant … this vine is one with the branches … we find the best grapes close in to the vine, “where the nutrients are the most concentrated.” … This kind of abiding … showers us with “shalom, which speaks of wholeness, completeness, and health.” Here, close to the vine, immersed in shalom, we find not only nourishment but also hope and joy. — Kathryn Matthews

Stubborn Love (excerpt)
Performed by The Lumineers
link to video
Songwriters: Jeremy Fraites / Wesley Schultz
… It’s better to feel pain, than nothing at all
The opposite of love’s indifference
So pay attention now
I’m standing on your porch screaming out
And I won’t leave until you come downstairsSo keep your head up, keep your love
Keep your head up, my love
Keep your head up, my love
Keep your head up, keep your love

On Stubborn, Abiding Love

Tolerance must give way to tenacious love that overwhelms the forces of indifference, intolerance and hate. Only then can we live into Dr. King’s vision of the beloved community and the common good … — Paul Louis Metzger

I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, [God] will not ask, ‘How many good things have you done in your life?’; rather God will ask, ‘How much love did you put into what you did?’ — Mother Teresa

I think, therefore I am? Nonsense! I love, therefore I am. — William Sloane Coffin

The community that Jesus calls forth is one that embodies an African proverb: Because we are, I am. — Barbara Essex

Where there is love there is life. — Mahatma Gandhi

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This Week @ JCC: Mon, April 23 – Sun, April 29

 MON, April 23

  • Community Event:
    EMERGENCY SHELTER MEETING
    6:30pm • Ministry Center of Lutheran Church of the Nativity, North Conway. Startup meeting for a group that would etch out one corner of the larger homelessness problem and focus on an emergency shelter  that would operate periodically as the situation requires. If interested in attending as a liaison from JCC, please RSVP to Rev Gail.

WED, April 25

  • PASTOR’S HOURS
    7-9am • J-Town Deli
  • TUNE UP (Fitness) with Laurie McAleer
    9am • Parish Hall, Jackson Community Church
    Free. Men and women join fitness trainer Laurie McAleer for a gentle, introductory fitness class for beginners. Wear comfortable clothing, sensible shoes, and bring a bottle of water. Also bring a ski pole and a small ball and hand weights. Customized to each person’s abilities.
  • WOMEN’S GROUP HIGH TEA
    12:30pm • Yankee Clipper Tea House, Bridgton, ME. Annual outing of women’s group to have high  tea. Go early or stay later to shop or visit antique stores. Share rides. Allow an hour if traveling separately; please arrive promptly. Everyone welcome, including friends. Please RSVP to Linda Hastings to reserve a spot since we have a group reservation.

THURS, April 26

  • INTRODUCTORY YOGA with Anjali Rose
    9am • Parish Hall, Jackson Community Church. Join instructor Anjali Rose for a gentle, introductory yoga class. Wear stretchy fitness clothing, bring a matt and a cushion/blanket if you have them. $10/class for 6 weeks. Scholarships available. This session runs through April 19.
  • YOGA & MEDITATION with Charlotte Doucette
    3:30pm • Parish Hall. $10/pp fee. (Scholarships available)
  • AA
    6-7pm • Church Library

FRI, April 27

SAT, April 28

  • SPRING CLEANUP DAY
    9am-Noon. Come prepared to work inside or outside, depending on your preference. We’re organizing closets, cleaning windows and hard-to-reach areas, touching up spots inside and outside the church, changing lightbulbs, and sprucing up the church grounds. Wear old clothes, sensible shoes, and bring work gloves. If possible, bring sponges, rags, buckets, rakes or brooms.

SUN, April 29

  • INTERFAITH GATHERING
    8am • Gazebo. Bring your hot beverages. Dress warmly. Gather for readings and spiritual conversation.
  • CHOIR REHEARSAL 
    9am •  Jackson Community Church.
    Drop-in choir. Join us to practice and sing during the service.
  • WORSHIP SERVICE
    10:30am •  Jackson Community Church.
    Sermon: Vine & Fruit
    Sunday School will be available.
  • CYRANO De BERGERAC FILM & DISCUSSION
    3-6pm • Parish Hall, Jackson Community Church
    Join us for a showing of the film “Cyrano de Bergerac” at the Jackson Community Church. Following the film there will be commentary and discussion led by Anthony DeLuca, who holds a PhD in history from Stanford.

MONDAY, April 30

  • DEACONS MEETING
    4pm • JCC Council Room (library), Second Floor
    Meeting of deacons to plan worship and community support issues.
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Reflections on Earth Day

Earth Day — Jane Yolen
I am the Earth And the Earth is me.
Each blade of grass, Each honey tree,
Each bit of mud, And stick and stone
Is blood and muscle, Skin and bone.
And just as I Need every bit
Of me to make My body fit,
So Earth needs Grass and stone and tree
And things that grow here Naturally.
That’s why we Celebrate this day.
That’s why across The world we say:
As long as life, As dear, as free,
I am the Earth And the Earth is me.

Learn More

Of the Earth

The good man is the friend of all living things. —Gandhi

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together … all things connect. —Chief Seattle

Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs, — To the silent wilderness, Where the soul need not repress its music. —Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Earth will not continue to offer its harvest, except with faithful stewardship. We cannot say we love the land and then take steps to destroy it for use by future generations. —John Paul II

What’s the use of a fine house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on. —Henry David Thoreau

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. —Margaret Mead

One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between man and nature shall not be broken. —Leo Tolstoy

Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty.  —John Ruskin

You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference and you have to decide what kind of a difference you want to make. —Jane Goodall

The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil … the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

Walking in Beauty:
Closing Prayer from the Navajo Way Blessing Ceremony
In beauty I walk
With beauty before me I walk
With beauty behind me I walk
With beauty above me I walk
With beauty around me I walk
It has become beauty again …
Today I will walk out, today everything negative will leave me
I will be as I was before, I will have a cool breeze over my body.
I will have a light body, I will be happy forever, nothing will hinder me.
I walk with beauty before me. I walk with beauty behind me.
I walk with beauty below me. I walk with beauty above me.
I walk with beauty around me. My words will be beautiful.
In beauty all day long may I walk.
Through the returning seasons, may I walk.
On the trail marked with pollen may I walk.
With dew about my feet, may I walk.
With beauty before me may I walk.
With beauty behind me may I walk.
With beauty below me may I walk.
With beauty above me may I walk.
With beauty all around me may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk.
My words will be beautiful…

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This Week at JCC: Wed, April 18 – Sun, April 22

 Pastoral Vacation Schedule: Rev Gail returns to NH on Wed, April 18 after visiting her family in Ohio and western Pennsylvania.
WED, April 18

  • TUNE UP (Fitness) with Laurie McAleer
    9am • Parish Hall, Jackson Community Church
    Free. Men and women join fitness trainer Laurie McAleer for a gentle, introductory fitness class for beginners. Wear comfortable clothing, sensible shoes, and bring a bottle of water. Also bring a ski pole and a small ball and hand weights. Customized to each person’s abilities.
  • COUNCIL MEETING
    7pm • JCC Library.
THURS, April 19
  • INTRODUCTORY YOG with Anjali Rose
    9am • Parish Hall, Jackson Community Church. Join instructor Anjali Rose for a gentle, introductory yoga class. Wear stretchy fitness clothing, bring a matt and a cushion/blanket if you have them. $10/class for 6 weeks. Scholarships available. This session runs through April 26.
  • YOGA & MEDITATION with Charlotte Doucette
    3:30pm • Parish Hall. $10/pp fee. (Scholarships available)
  • AA
    6-7pm • Church Library

SUN, April 22

  • INTERFAITH GATHERING
    8am • Gazebo. Bring your hot beverages. Dress warmly. Gather for readings and spiritual conversation.
  • CHOIR REHEARSAL 
    9am •  Jackson Community Church.
    Drop-in choir. Join us to practice and sing during the service.
  • WORSHIP SERVICE: Earth Day
    10:30am •  Jackson Community Church.
    Sermon: A Sense of Place.
    Presentation by Lauren Orsini about Starting Point. Guest musicians: Pianist Minnie Brown and choir director Jen Ouellette.
  • EARTH DAY WALK
    1pm •  Jackson Community Church.
    Inter-generational outdoor hike. Bring proper equipment; route to be announced. Allow 2-3 hours for this activity. Please RSVP to Rev Gail if interested!
  • Community Event:
    FUNERGY Earth Day Activities
    10am-1pm • North Conway Community Center, North Conway, NH

    SAVE the DATES

  • Women’s Group High Tea
    12:30pm • Wed, April 25
    Yankee Clipper Tea House
    Bridgton, ME
    Annual outing of women’s group to have high tea. Go early or stay later to shop or visit antique stores. Share rides.  Allow an hour if traveling separately; please arrive promptly.
    Everyone welcome, including friends. Please RSVP to Linda Hastings to reserve a spot since we have a group reservation.
    Yankee Clipper has a varied menu with something for everyone. Although there are many kinds of tea to choose from, they also have coffee, wine and lavender lemonade.

    Cyrano de Bergerac
    Film & Discussion
    Sun, April 29, 3-6pm

Join us for a showing of the film “Cyrano de Bergerac” at the Jackson Community Church. This event has been generously and enthusiastically supported by The Friends of the Whitney Community Center in Jackson and the Jackson Community Church. Visitors to the valley and everyone who lives in the Mount Washington Valley are cordially invited to attend. Refreshments will be available.

Following the film there will be commentary and discussion led by Anthony DeLuca, who holds a PhD in history from Stanford.  He has given numerous guest lectures and public lectures on European history, politics and culture and has published  books, articles, essays and reviews on these topics.

 

Spring Cleaning & Work Day
Saturday, April 28
9am-Noon

Come prepared to work inside or outside, depending on your preference. We’re organizing closets, cleaning windows and hard-to-reach areas, touching up spots inside and outside the church, changing lightbulbs, and sprucing up the church grounds. Wear old clothes, sensible shoes, and bring work gloves. We’ll add more info about any tools or equipment you should bring from home, such as buckets or rakes or brooms.

Continue reading “This Week at JCC: Wed, April 18 – Sun, April 22”

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Reflections on forms of lay ministry: gifts of the spirit and where you may be called to serve & support others.

Reflections on forms of lay ministry: gifts of the spirit and where you may be called to serve & support others. Our church’s deacons will give the sermon and explore this theme at this week’s worship service. Based on passages from letter from Timothy.

What if God was one of us?
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Tryin’ to make his way home?

If God had a face what would it look like?
And would you want to see if, seeing meant
That you would have to believe in things like heaven
And in Jesus and the saints, and all the prophets?
— Joan Osborne (excerpt from song lyrics)

Our true home is in the present moment.
To live in the present moment is a miracle.
The miracle is not to walk on water.
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 in the world and in nature, and within us;
It is in our bodies and our spirits.
Once we learn to touch this peace, we will be healed and transformed.
It is not a matter of faith, it is a matter of practice.
— Thich Nhat Hahn

Helping Others with our Gifts of the Spirit:
Everyday People as Ministers, Servants, Saints

…You don’t have to be famous, or perfect, or dead.  You just have to be you—the one-of-a-kind, never-to-be-repeated human being whom God created you to be—to love as you are loved, to throw your arms around the world, to shine like the sun.  You don’t have to do it alone, either.  You have all this company—all these saints sitting right here whom you can see for yourself plus those you cannot… all of them egging you on, calling your name, and shouting themselves hoarse with encouragement.  Because you are part of them, and they are part of you, and all of us are knit together in the communion of saints … — Barbara Brown Taylor

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SPRING SCHEDULE for Youth & Families with Jackson Community Church

Spring youth and family schedule: Friday fun nights, service opportunities, Sunday morning activities and lessons, Sunday afternoon hikes, end-of-year Youth & Children Sunday plus summer camps for families and work camps/advocacy trips/retreats for high school youth.

APRIL

  • Sun, April 8 – 9am • Road to Emmaus activity & walk: Meet at church and wear outdoor clothing for a spring walk. Focus on people who met God on their walk and didn’t recognize their companion. How do we see and meet God in our world? Walk includes lessons on shared meals, communion, and breaking bread together. Also it’s Holy Humor Sunday … bring a joke to tell!
  • Sun, April 15 – 9am • Planting Activity with Lisa White at JCC. Preparation for Mother’s Day and anticipation of Earth Day. Meet at JCC for this activity.
  • Sun, April 22 — 10:30am • Worship
    service includes presentation by Lauren Orsini from Starting Point about being aware of domestic violence and ongoing initiatives for safety for local children and families
  • Sun, April 22 — 1pm • Afternoon Earth Day Hike – Intergenerational outdoor hike to be led by church youth. Bring proper equipment; route to be announced. Allow 2-3 hours for this activity.
  • Fri, April 27 — 5:30-7:30pm • Friday Fun Night
    Spring Fling with Pizza & Games at JCC.
  • Sat, April 28 — 9am-Noon • Spring Cleaning at JCC
    Come prepared to work inside or outside. We’re organizing closets, cleaning windows and hard-to-reach areas, touching up spots inside and outside the church, changing light bulbs, and sprucing up the church grounds. Wear old clothes, sensible shoes, and bring work gloves. We’ll add more info about any tools or equipment you should bring from home, such as buckets or rakes or brooms.
  • Sun, April 29 – 10:30am • Worship includes traditional Sunday School. Parents may attend worship and children will have interactive lesson during portion  of service.

Continue reading “SPRING SCHEDULE for Youth & Families with Jackson Community Church”