Jackson Community Church

Summit, Spirit, Sky: connect to community and creation!

12 Days of Christmas

THIS WEEK: Jan 2 – SUN, Jan 6

WED, Jan 2 (2019)

  •  PASTOR’S HOURS
    7-8:45am • JTown Deli. Come by for hot beverage and conversation. Or make a date to go for a walk by calling/texting Rev Gail 978.273.0308 or emailing Rev Gail (gaildoktor@mac.com).
  • New Start Time: TUNE UP FITNESS with Laurie McAleer
    9:30am • Parish House, Jackson Community Church. Fitness class. Free; open to public.
  • Community Note: PUBLIC SCHOOL RESUMES after holiday break.

THURS, Jan 3

  • No class this week – resumes next week: FLOW & ALIGN YOGA with Anjali Rose
  • AA
    6:30pm • Second Floor, Church.

FRI, Jan 4

  • PASTOR’S HOURS
    7-9am • JTown Deli. Come by for hot beverage and conversation. Or make a date to go for a walk by calling/texting Rev Gail 978.273.0308 or emailing Rev Gail (gaildoktor@mac.com)
  • PASTOR’S OFFICE HOURS
    9-11am • Pastor’s Office, Second Floor. Come by for hot beverage and conversation. Or make a date to go for a walk by calling/texting Rev Gail 978.273.0308 or emailing Rev Gail (gaildoktor@mac.com)
  • Community Event: AVALANCHE CLASS with XXX …
    All day • Starts in Parish Hall, Jackson Community Church.
    Registration required. Class to prepare back-country skiers, winter hikers and other athletes and professionals about avalanche conditions, preparedness and responses. 2-day class: indoor coursework and field work. More info: XXX …
  • Community Event: SOUP & SONGS BENEFIT CONCERT
    6pm Doors Open / 7pm Concert Begins @ Conway United Methodist Church, 1626 E. Main St. Center Conway, NH
    • A Benefit Concert to Support Recovery Services in Mt. Washington Valley
    • Featuring Music by Bennett & Perkins with Special Guest Taylor Whiteside
    • Tickets available online.
    • Come early for a potluck dinner featuring scratch-made soups and stews and pick your own hand-thrown pottery bowls crafted by local artisans.

SAT, Jan 5

  • CARL FULLER MEMORIAL SERVICE & RECEPTION
    Noon • Jackson Community Church.
    Memorial service to honor the life of Carl Fuller, followed by reception at church. Open to the community; friends of the Fuller family welcome and encouraged to attend.
  • Community Event: BOREAL BIRD FIELD PROGRAM
    8am – Noon • Meet at Grant’s Parking Lot in Glen, NH.
    Join the Tin Mountain Bird Society for a winter birding adventure north of the notches. We will visit boreal birding hot spots off Trudeau Road outside Bethlehem. Dress warm. Bring your own binoculars or borrow ours. Call 603-447-6991 for reservations.   

SUN,  Jan 6 – Epiphany

  • INTERFAITH GATHERING @ OLD LIBRARY
    8am • Old Library. Hot beverages available. Come for poetry, literature, conversation and prayer.
  • CHOIR REHEARSAL
    9am • Drop-in choir directed by Ellen Schwindt. All welcome to participate; come at 9am to warm up and learn the song.
  • WORSHIP with COMMUNION & SUNDAY SCHOOL
    10:30am •  Jackson Community Church.
    • Message: Rev Gail Pomeroy Doktor
    • Communion
    • Sunday School: Barry Chisholm
    • Accompanist: Alan Labrie
    • Choir director: Ellen Schwindt
  • Community Event: NEAT YEAR, NEW YOU
    7pm • Jackson Public Library
    Join the Friends of the Jackson Public Library for their first program of 2019 with professional organizer Mia Whalley. Transform your home from chaos to composed. For more details, visit www.neatmethod.com. Free and open to public; suggested $5 donation is welcome to offset presenter expenses.

ICE CARVING COMPETITION
Mon, Jan 7 • 10am Start
Wentworth Inn Porch

Top carvers from around New England return for the 24th Annual Great Ice Carvers of New England Invitational Ice Carving Competition. Competitors allowed 3 hours to transform a 300-pound block of ice into a work of art. Event is open to the public. Awards ceremony takes place in the lobby of The Wentworth. For more info, contact Kim Labnon, Director of Sales at The Wentworth at 603-383-9700 or kim@thewentworth.com.

FAVORITE BOWL
Sun, Jan 13 • 4pm
Whitney Community Center
  Make your own bowl. Cost: $40. Students will select a glaze color for their pieces during class and completed pieces will be available for pick up at the Whitney Center. All materials included. Completed pieces will be dishwasher and microwave safe. Register online.

DACAPO CONCERT
Sun, Jan 27 •  4pm
Whitney Community Center   Continuing the Da Capo tradition of singing popular favorites, the concerts will include arrangements of Gershwin tunes, hits from the 1950s and 1960s, including “California Dreamin’,” “Misty” and “Girl from Ipanema,” and recent releases such as Christina Perri’s “A Thousand Years.” The group is co-directed by conductor Mary Bastoni and accompanist John Waldie. Concert is free to the public.  

FILM SCREENNG: RUN WILD, RUN FREE
Thurs, Jan 31 • 6:30 – 8:30 pm
Whitney Community Center
  Over 60 years ago America was in the peak of the industrial revolution and the nation’s waterways were dying from dams, water diversions and pollution. Run Wild Run Free takes the viewer through the history and current state of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act that sought to protect these waterways. Join Tin Mountain Conservation Center, the Jackson Conservation Commission, and former Director of Research for the AMC, Dr. Kenneth Kimball, for this celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. Cost: $3/pp or $5/family.

By jacksonnhccPosted on Posted in Calendar, Home, WorshipTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Reflections on following stars, receiving epiphanies: themes in Matthew 2 and Isaiah 60.

Follow That Star — lyrics by Paul Baloche
In the quiet of the night
Under the wide expanse of sky
I am alone and asking questions… why
What’s this longing in my heart
What’s the reason for my life
And this solitary light is shining, callingFollow that star, follow that star
Uncover the mystery of Who You are
I’ve searched for a lifetime,
I’ve come from afar
And discovered my destiny
Is to follow that starLike the light of early dawn
I see the promise there beyond
And a hope within begins to rise
Love is calling to my heart
Reaching deep into my soul
And reveals to me the reason for living …
What joy, what hope, what good news
He brings to me and you …So I follow that star, I follow that star
Uncover the mystery of Who You are
I’ve searched for a lifetime, I’ve come from afar
Discovered my destiny is to follow that star
Follow that star, follow that star
Follow that star, follow that star
I have to follow that star
Follow that star
Follow that star

Of Stars

God’s time [Emancipation] is always near. He set the North Star in the heavens; He gave me the strength in my limbs; He meant I should be free.  — Harriet Tubman

What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives? — E. M. Forster

Once upon a time there were some very wise men who were all sitting in their own countries minding their own business when a bright star lodged in the right eye of each of them. It was so bright that none of them could tell whether it was burning in the sky or in their own imagination, but they were wise enough to know that it didn’t matter. The point was, something beyond them was calling them, and it was a tug they had been waiting for all their lives. — Barbara Brown Taylor 

When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty. — John Muir

Son, brother, father, lover, friend. There is room in the heart for all the affections, as there is room in heaven for all the stars. — Victor Hugo

Stars and moon are an object of consciousness. They are in store consciousness. In the world of the oyster, they have no-eye consciousness and no-ear consciousness. The things that we see, the oyster cannot see. So, sense organs are one condition to give birth to consciousness. The object gives rise to consciousness. And these are manifested from seeds. And store consciousness holds all the seeds. The sense organ and the object rely on each other to create consciousness. Object and subject. They are divided into two parts but this isn’t exactly correct. We cannot take one out of the other. This is called Interbeing. — Thich Nhat Hahn

I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars. — Og Mandino

No, sure, my lord, my mother cried, but then there was a star danced, and under that was I born  … God give you joy!— William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

Well we all shine on, like the moon, and the stars, and the sun. — John Lennon, Instant Karma lyrics

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars; in the heavens, you have made them bright, precious and fair. — St Francis of Assisi

How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart. — William Butler Yeats

Nations, like stars, are entitled to eclipse. All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become endless night. Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul. — Victor Hugo

After my death, the molecules of my being will return to the earth and the sky. They came from the stars. I am of the stars. — Charles Lindbergh, Autobiography of Values

Reach for it. Push yourself as far as you can. — Christa McAuliffe

The Starlight Night
— Gerard Manley Hopkins
Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
   O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!

   The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there! …

Touched by an Angel
— Maya Angelou

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love’s light
We dare be brave
And suddenly we see that love costs all we are
And will ever be.
Yet it is only love which set us free

Of Epiphany

In order to reach a distant shore, one must consent to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. — Andre Ghee

All we know for certain is that we are three old sinners, That this journey is much too long, that we want our dinners, And miss our wives, our books, our dogs, But we have only the vaguest idea why we are what we are. To discover how to be human now is the reason we follow the star. — W.H. Auden

Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering. — Saint Augustine

So there we have it: a call, a path, a life, a destination—all safe in the heart of God, and given to us, bit by bit, as we do our part and accept both the invitation and our soul’s transformation that the journey requires. Putting one foot in front of the other, as Jung said, trusting that this life, and this path, is given us for a reason. It is … a path that will be utterly unique to you, yet also grounded in our common experience as people of the star. … We follow the light, though we do not know the way. Yet we need not know everything to follow Christ. We need only trust the invitation and the One extending it. — Rev Mariann Edgar Budde

Sometimes the dreams that come true are the dreams you never even knew you had. ― Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

The magic of the street is the mingling of the errand and the epiphany. ― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

Science means constantly walking a tightrope between blind faith and curiosity; between expertise and creativity; between bias and openness; between experience and epiphany; between ambition and passion; and between arrogance and conviction – in short, between an old today and a new tomorrow. Heinrich Rohrer
By jacksonnhccPosted on Posted in Home, Weekly MeditationsTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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