THIS WEEK at Jackson Community Church and Around Town: June 25-30
TUE, June 25
- Community Event: AUTHOR EVENING with LISA BUNKER
7-8:30pm • White Birch Books, No Conway
More info on Pride Week events.
WED, June 26
- PEACE & EMPOWERMENT CAMP
8:30am-12:30pm• JCC
More info and registration. - Community Event: YELLOW LADY SLIPPERS FIELD TRIP
7am – 4pm • Meet at Grants parking lot, Glen
With north country naturalist Peter Benson, go to The Nature Conservancy’s Hurlbert Swamp in Stewartstown, NH. Bring binoculars, boots, sturdy shoes, and a hearty lunch. Reservations requested; call 603-447-6991. - Community Event: JAZZ LECTURE SERIES
5:15-6:30pm • Journey Church
Mike Sakash explores the eventful year 1959, when some of the greatest jazz recordings were released. 8-week series. Drop-in or full summer session. $80 for all 8 weeks, or drop-in for $15/session.
THURS, June 27
- PEACE & EMPOWERMENT CAMP
8:30am-12:30pm• JCC
More info and registration. - AA
6:30pm • Second Floor, Church
FRI, June 28
- PEACE & EMPOWERMENT CAMP
8:30am-12:30pm• JCC
More info and registration. - Community Event: DRAG QUEEN STORY HOUR
9:30am / 10am • Conway Public Library
9:30am for tickets. 10am for Story Hour.
Attendance limited to parents with children. Come early as for limited same-day tickets. More info on Pride Week events. - Community Event: MEET the QUEENS
2pm • Jackson Community Church
Want to know more about Drag Queen Story Hour and why these entertainers choose to volunteer? Join us for an opportunity to meet the Queens, have your questions answered, and learn about the importance of programs that encourage diversity and acceptance in our community. Rev Gail moderates this discussion. To submit a question, email: whitemountainspride@gmail.com. More info on Pride Week events. - Community Event: REV YOLANDA’S GOSPEL HOUR
7pm • Christ Episcopal Church, North Conway
The most fabulous Reverend Yolanda will lead us in a service of song. Reverend Yolanda is an interfaith minister whose “Old Time Gospel Hour” show has earned her numerous awards. Check out Rev Yolanda’s website here. Plus more info on Pride Week events.
SAT, June 29
- Community Event: ART in BLOOM
10am-4pm • Jackson Village locations
Walking tour is at six venues: Jackson Public Library, RiverWood Inn, Whitney Community Center, Jackson Historical Society, the Old Library, and The Wentworth. - Community Event: WHITE MOUNTAINS PRIDE FESTIVAL
10am-4pm • North Conway Community Center
Free family-friendly day of fun, entertainment, games, food, and vendors. Starts with ribbon cutting and interfaith blessing with spiritual community leaders (including Rev Gail) and festival performer Reverend Yolanda. Bring a chair and enjoy the festivities all day! More info on Pride Week events. - Community Event: FLORAL DESIGN DEMO
11:30am • Whitney Community Center
With Carrie Scribner, owner of Dutch Bloemen Winkel.
SUN, June 30
- INTERFAITH GATHERING
8am • Gazeboby Jackson Historical Society - Community Event: UUFES WORSHIP ASKING “HOW INCLUSIVE ARE WE?”
10:00am • Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of The Eastern Slopes/UUFES, 30 Tamworth Road, Tamworth. More info on Pride Week events. - WORSHIP with INDEPENDENCE DAY PEACE THEME
10:30am • Jackson Community Church
* Organ/piano by Alan Labrie
* Worship leadership & message by Rev Gail - Community Event: FAREWELL to MURPHY FAMILY
6pm • Jackson Grammar School Pavilion
Come wish the Matt & Amanda Murphy family (with children Finn & Abbey) best wishes in their new adventures in Ohio! Bring your own beverage and a Summer snack to share. - Community Event: FIREWORKS 9:00 pm • Jackson Village Park
Independence Day week fireworks; come early to get a good spot.
Sermon: Choices
JCC 070217 – Choices from architect on Vimeo.
Meditations on Independence and Bondage for July 4th Weekend
Reflections as we approach July 4th weekend: who is free, who is not free? Themes of spiritual freedom versus civic freedom … pondering Abraham’s obedience to Yahweh, willingness to sacrifice a child, the merciful intervention that freed him from such an act. What is asked of us? What is offered to us?
My father always said, Malala will be free as a bird. — Malala Yusufzai
Bondage — Laura Lee Bird
We have lived, been more forgotten,
Than ever you will be,
We have lived, like you, remembering,
That you too were not free —
That for all the brilliant rustling
Of pinions, and the sound
Of a lifted mystic singing
You could not leave the ground.
Until all cords were broken
You were not wholly one
With the earth-forgotten mortals
Whose being is the sun.
On Freedom
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very act of existence is an act of rebellion. — Albert Camus
The work of art is a scream of freedom. — Christo
Dance, when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you’re perfectly free. ― Jalaluddin Rumi
I had crossed the line. I was free; but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land. — Harriet Tubman
Freedom is not given to us by anyone; we have to cultivate it ourselves. It is a daily practice… No one can prevent you from being aware of each step you take or each breath in and breath out. — Thich Nhat Hahn
I always say I’m so disciplined in my writing because very strict discipline is the only way I’ve found any freedom as an artist. Like meditation or in my spiritual journey, or exercise – hiking … — Anne Lamott
Every human has four endowments – self-awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom … the power to choose, to respond, to change. — Stephen Covey
Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you. — Jean-Paul Sartre
Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. — Victor Frankl
The struggle is my life. I will continue fighting for freedom until the end of my days. — Nelson Mandela
It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere. — Voltaire
To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment. — Eckhart Tolle
Education is a human right with immense power to transform. On its foundation rest the cornerstones of freedom, democracy and the sustainable human development. — Kofi Annan
Without freedom of thought, there can be no such things as wisdom. And no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech. — Benjamin Franklin
All the great things are simple and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope. — Winston Churchill
Maggid — Marge Piercy
The courage to let go of the door, the handle.
The courage to shed the familiar walls whose very
stains and leaks are comfortable as the little moles
of the upper arm; stains that recall a feast,
a child’s naughtiness, a loud blattering storm
that slapped the roof hard, pouring through.
The courage to abandon the graves dug into the hill,
the small bones of children and the brittle bones
of the old whose marrow hunger had stolen;
the courage to desert the tree planted and only
begun to bear; the riverside where promises were
shaped; the street where their empty pots were broken.
The courage to leave the place whose language you learned
as early as your own, whose customs however dan-
gerous or demeaning, bind you like a halter
you have learned to pull inside, to move your load;
the land fertile with the blood spilled on it;
the roads mapped and annotated for survival.
The courage to walk out of the pain that is known
into the pain that cannot be imagined,
mapless, walking into the wilderness, going
barefoot with a canteen into the desert;
stuffed in the stinking hold of a rotting ship
sailing off the map into dragons’ mouths,
Cathay, India, Siberia, goldeneh medina
leaving bodies by the way like abandoned treasure.
So they walked out of Egypt. So they bribed their way
out of Russia under loads of straw; so they steamed
out of the bloody smoking charnelhouse of Europe
on overloaded freighters forbidden all ports—
out of pain into death or freedom or a different
painful dignity, into squalor and politics.
We Jews are all born of wanderers, with shoes
under our pillows and a memory of blood that is ours
raining down. We honor only those Jews who changed
tonight, those who chose the desert over bondage,
who walked into the strange and became strangers
and gave birth to children who could look down
on them standing on their shoulders for having
been slaves. We honor those who let go of every-
thing but freedom, who ran, who revolted, who fought,
who became other by saving themselves.