scripture

CHRISTMAS EVE & CHRISTMAS MORNING with Jackson Community Church

CHRISTMAS EVE,  SAT, Dec 24 @ Jackson Community Church

  • 5pm • OUTDOOR SERVICE with CAROLS, LESSONS & CANDLELIGHTHot cide
    • Hot cocoa
    • Caroling as we walk the journey of the holy family
    • Scripture
    • Candlelight & prayer
    • Dress warmly!
  • 7:30pm • CANDLELIGHT SERVICE 
    • In-person & zoom
    • Traditional indoor service with carols, scripture, candelight
    • Solo by Becca Gottlieb
    • Piano by Maisie Brown and Sharon Novak
    • Candellight
    • Carols
  • 10pm • CANDLELIGHT SERVICE 
    • In-person and zoom
    • Traditional indoor service with carols, scripture, candelight
    • Debut of Christmas song written and performed by Sharon Novak
    • Candellight
    • Carols
    • Piano with Sharon Novak
    • Zoom Meeting ID: 142 985 761 (Password required, email JCC by NOON of Christmas Eve for info)

CHRISTMAS SUNDAY, Dec 25 @ Jackson Community Church

  • 10:30am • STORIES & BELLS
    • In-person and zoom
    • Piano: Sue Titus-Reid
    • Interactive Storytelling: Gail Doktor
    • Text: Children’s Story
    • Come in your pajamas or favorite casual attire
    • Bring a sleigh bell or jingle bell if you have one, but we have plenty to share
    • Prepare to sing and ring jingle bells

This weekend at JCC: Sunday, May 1st

8am interfaith gathering

We will **not meet** this week (since Rev Gail is on vacation). Note: Next Sunday, we will begin to meet outside at the Pavilion behind the Whitney Community Center: Sunday, May 8 @ 8am. We will continue to offer a hybrid option with a zoom link made available by contacting the church.

10:30am Worship with Communion

• Led by the deacons
• Featuring the music of pianist Maisie Brown.
• Scripture: Road to Emmaus

This week we will gather in-person and also offer live-streaming (non-interactive option) over Facebook and posted to the this website starting Sunday, May 1st @ 10:15am, since Rev Gail & Chris Doktor are on vacation (and they currently constitute JCC’s zoom tech team). This is a communion Sunday, so if you’re participating at home, please prepare your beverages and food to join us at the time of communion during the service.

HOLY WEEK with JCC and around Town

April 10-17

Sun, April 10 – PALM SUNDAY

  • INTERFAITH GATHERING
    8am • Old Red Library & Zoom
    Join us for poetry, prayer, and conversation.
  • VIRTUAL CHOIR REHEARSAL
    9am •  Zoom
    Join choir director Rebecca Moore to prepare Palm Sunday & Easter Sunday songs.
  • WORSHIP with PALMS
    10:30am • (zoom & in-person)

Wed, Apr 13 

  • EASTER EGG-STUFFING
    10:45am • JCC Council Room
    Deacons and volunteers meet after Laurie McAleer’s fitness class to stuff Easter eggs which will be hidden on our campus as part of the village-wide Easter egg hunt held by Chamber of Commerce on Easter Sunday. Thanks to Deacon Sandy Louis for connecting us to this event.
  • C3: COCKTAILS & CHRISTIAN CONVERSATIONS / HOLY WEEK STUDY SESSION
    5pm • Zoom link required. Contact church: jcchurch@jacksoncommunitychurch.org
    Bring your adult beverage and your curiosity for a conversation about our sacred text

Thurs, Apr 14: MAUNDY THURSDAY

  • SOUP SUPPER & TABLE WORSHIP
    6pm • JCC Parish House (in person & zoom)
  • OVERNIGHT VIGIL
    8pm (Thurs) – Noon (Fri) – virtual / hold vigil in your own place or come to JCC and hold vigil
    • Virtual vigil:  People email the church and sign up to meditate on words from scripture throughout the night.
    • Each household takes one hour.
    • Meditate on a whole Biblical passage, or read and choose one word or image on which to focus. Be active or contemplative. Walk, knit, play music, stay quiet, pray, cook, make something, stay home, go outside.
    • Vigil commences after the soup supper & worship and ends at noon on Friday, when the final three hours are observed in the sanctuary.

Fri, Apr 15 – HOLY FRIDAY

  • FINAL HOURS: Vigil
    Noon-3pm • JCC Sanctuary
    • Also live-streaming to website & Facebook
    • Scripture will be read at the top of each hour: Noon, 1pm, 2pm, 3pm .
    • People often traditionally experience the Via Crucis / Way of the Cross during this time.
       
  • ECUMENICAL HOLY FRIDAY TENEBRAE SERVICE
    6pm • First Church of Christ, UCC in North Conway, NH
    All are welcome. Virtual live-streaming info will be provided once it has been shared by planning team.
    Planned and hosted by Clergy of the Eastern Slopes (of which Rev Gail is a member).

Sun, Apr 17 – EASTER SUNDAY

  • SUNRISE WORSHIP 
    5:45am • End of Presidential Drive off Tin Mine Rd, Jackson
    • In-person & live-streaming to Facebook / FB
    • Sunrise = 5:58am
    • Donuts & Coffee @ service provided by deacons
       
  • EASTER SUNDAY WORSHIP with Flowering of the Cross
    10:30am • JCC (in-person & zoom)
    • Zoom link required. Contact church: jcchurch@jacksoncommunitychurch.org
    • JCC Virtual Choral Anthem: Easter Song
    • Guest musician: Dominique Dodge, Harp
    • Flowering the Cross
    • Alan Labrie’s last day as organist
       
  • EASTER EGG HUNT
    11:30-2pm • JCC Campus and around the village loop
    Part of Jackson-wide egg hunt sponsored by Chamber
  • FLOWERED CROSS OUTSIDE
    Flowered cross will be placed outside the church with bucket of flowers for people to add as they pass. Will be returned inside by late afternoon.

Reflections on starting journeys: themes from baptismal scripture

If you can’t fly, then run,
if you can’t run, then walk,
if you can’t walk, then crawl,
but by all means keep moving.
– Martin Luther King Jr.


BELOVED IS WHERE WE BEGIN  — Jan Richardson

If you would enter / into the wilderness,
do not begin / without a blessing.

Do not leave
without hearing / who you are:
Beloved, named by the One
who has traveled this path / before you.

Do not go  / without letting it echo
in your ears, / and if you find
it is hard / to let it into your heart,
do not despair. / That is what
this journey is for.

I cannot promise / this blessing will free you
from danger, from fear,
from hungeror thirst,
from the scorching of sun or the fall of the night.

But I can tell you that on this path there will be help.

I can tell you that on this way there will be rest.

I can tell you that you will know
the strange graces that come to our aid
only on a road  / such as this,
that fly to meet us
bearing comfort and strength,
that come alongside us / for no other cause
than to lean themselves / toward our ear
and with their / curious insistence / whisper our name:

Beloved.
Beloved.
Beloved.

SONGS about STARTING a JOURNEY

Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute,
Whatever you can do, or dream you can—begin it;
Boldness has genius, power, magic in it;
Only engage,—and then the mind grows heated;
Begin!—and then the work will be completed.
—Goethe


It’s just as well, my pitcher shattered
I’m free of all that hauling water!
The burden on my head is gone….
A single well, Kabira
And water-bearers many!
Pots of every shape and size
But the water always One.
— ‘Bhala Hua Meri Gagri Phooti’ –song of Kabir.
translated by Rabindranath Tagore 1915, 55-56


Blessing the Baptism — Jan Richardson

As if we could call you
anything other than
beloved
and blessed

drenched as we are
in our love for you

washed as we are
by our delight in you

born anew as we are
by the grace that flows
from the heart of the one
who bore you to us.

STARTING a JOURNEY

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.– Lao Tzu

To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself. – Søren Kierkegaard

The only impossible journey is the one you never begin. – Tony Robbins

The key to realizing a dream is to focus not on success but significance, and then even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning. – Oprah Winfrey

 We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. – Aristotle

Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds that you plant. – Robert Louis Stevenson

Tell me, O Swan, your ancient tale.
From what land do you come, O Swan ?
to what shore will you fly ?
Where would you take your rest, O Swan, and what do you seek ?
Even this morning, O Swan, awake, arise follow me !
There is a land where no doubt nor sorrow have rule: where the terror of Death is no more.
There the woods of spring are a-bloom, and the fragrant scent “He is I” is born on the wind:
There the bee of the heart is deeply immersed and desires no other joy.
 — Poems of Kabir, translated by Rabindranath Tagore 1915, 55-56

COMMENTARY on BAPTISM

So I hope in this baptismal life ahead of you that when you encounter water – this most common of substances which surrounds land and comprises our bodies…I hope when you drink it in; when you dive deep in a pool of it; when you wade in a stream of it; that even when you wash dishes with it; I hope that you are reminded of the promise of life eternal: a promise that life with God is as close to you as water and bread and wine and human bodies.  Because to be Christian is to know that the eternal is always contained in the present. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

Water figures in many of Jyoti’s paintings, as too in biblical imagery: the waters that were ‘the face of the deep’ before creation; the waters of the flood, over which the rainbow shone, sign of God’s covenant of peace with all creation; the waters of the Red Sea parting to liberate the fleeing slaves, the ‘children of Israel’; the ‘water of life’ with which Jesus identified himself, both with the alienated woman at the well and during debate in the temple; the waters of baptism – that of Jesus and of those who accept his way. — Jyoti Sahi Art Ashram

Jesus has become part with the waters. His character is innately like that of water. … water seeks out the lowest place. Or, as [St] Francis says in his Hymn to Creation, the waters are humble – they offer life to others and for others – and in themselves are clear, like light. — Jyoti Sahi Art Ashram

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