The Clarendon Connection

News of Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church March 2007

Sunday Schedule

Choir rehearsal 9:45 a.m.

Worship 10:30 a.m.

Christian Education (for children) 10:45 a.m.

Refreshments and fellowship 11:30 a.m.

Christian Education (for adults) 12:00 p.m.

(please see schedule on page 3)

Communion will be celebrated on March 4^th.

March Calendar

Saturday, March 3^rd, Trio Music – improvisational forms based on Ben Schwendener’s Children’s Music, 8:00 p.m. (for more info, see page 3)

Orders for Equal Exchange coffee, tea and cocoa will be taken at church on March 4th, for delivery on the 11th (for more info, see page 2)

Adult Ed., after the service on March 4^th (for more info, see page 3)

At 1:00 p.m. in the Nave Gallery, on Sunday, March 4^th, gallery talk with curators for “The Vessel as Metaphor”(for more info, see page 3)

There will be a joint meeting for Session and Deacons on Wednesday, March 7th at 7:30 p.m.

Saturday, March 10^th – Pancake Breakfast from 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m., sponsored by The Nave Gallery (for more info, see page 3)

Yoga, after the service on March 11^th (for more info, see page 4)

Adult Ed., after the service on March 18^th (for more info, see page 3)

Sunday, March 18th, Serenata Chamber Musicians concert at 3:00 p.m. (for more info, see page 4)

Trip to see Anne Lamott, Thursday, March 22^nd at 7:00 p.m. in Cambridge (for more info, see page 4)

Saturday, March 24^th, from 10:00 – 3:00 p.m. – Lenten Retreat at Tufts (for more info, see page 4)

Yoga, after the service on March 25^h (for more info, see page 4)

Sunday, March 25^th at 7:00 p.m., Sheila Provencher from Christian Peacemaker Teams, will speak at Clarendon Hill, in our inaugural Sunday Night Forum. Her talk is entitled "Come to the Table: Nonviolent Peacemaking in Iraq" (for more info, see page 5)

Book group meets on Wednesday, March 28^th, at 7:00 p.m. to discuss the first book of The Genesis Trilogy (And it Was Good) by Madeleine L’Engle (for more info, see page 6)

Friday, March 30^th. Trio Music – Ben Schwendener’s Children’s Music, Volume II, 8:00 p.m. (for more info, see page 3)

Parish Notes

Congratulations to Margaret Braga on the birth of her first grandchild, Henry James Belanger. He arrived on Valentine’s Day, February 14^th, and was 8 lbs, 8 oz. and 21 inches. Margaret says “Karen and Jim are the very proud parents. They are doing well and feel truly blessed.”

Julie Zenker sent an email back in January: “We are doing great. Will is in his second semester of law school. I am enjoying my new job. We think of Clarendon Hill often. I like being on the email list, keeps us in the loop. I look to see what the book club is reading!”

Val Donovan received a phone call from Mrs. Audrey Wright's daughter, Beryl, in response to a Valentine's Day card that Val sent to our members who are not able to attend church at this time. Beryl wanted us to know that her mother appreciated receiving the card very much.

The Presbyterian Coffee Project

Orders will be taken for Equal Exchange COFFEE (drip or whole bean) and TEA (English Breakfast, Earl Grey or Green), cocoa mix, baking cocoa, and chocolate bars at church on March 4th. You can send orders to Katherine no later than Monday evening, March 5th by phone (617-628-6716) or email (kgkg@gis.net).

Katherine has coffee, tea, cocoa mix, baking cocoa and some chocolate bars on hand for anyone needing some before the delivery date of March 11^th. Remember that for all products we purchase through the Presbyterian Coffee project, Equal Exchange makes a contribution to the Presbyterian Hunger Program.

What is EQUAL EXCHANGE? In 1991, Equal Exchange became the first U.S. company to adopt international fair trade standards as guiding principles on 100% of their products. By working with democratic farmer cooperatives around the world and paying a fair price, Equal Exchange supports efforts to improve local communities, putting more control and greater income in the hands of impoverished, small-scale farmers in developing nations.

We also serve freshly made Equal Exchange coffee at Clarendon Hill’s coffee hours!

Adult Education

Come and join our adult education group, which meets after coffee hour (around 12:00 noon). We began our group in November, with a 4 week Advent study of scriptures relating to the arrival of Jesus. We are now meeting to study scriptures related to Lent or other topics that members are interested in. During March, we will be meeting on 2 Sundays, March 4^th and March 18^th. We welcome all who are interested in exploring the scriptures and sharing their faith journey in a warm and welcoming environment.

The Nave Gallery

Saturday, March 3rd, 8:00 p.m. at The Nave Gallery, Trio Music: Improvisational forms based on Ben Schwendener’s Children’s Music will be held. It includes Ben Schwendener on piano, Bhob Rainey on soprano sax and Eric Rosenthal on drums/percussion. Tickets are $10.00

“The Vessel as Metaphor”(Sculpture and installation; 3D Dimensional explorations by nine artists) continues through Sunday, March 18^th. On Sunday, March 4^th at 1:00 p.m., join curators Ellen Schon and Geoffrey Koetsch in a gallery talk about the show.

For artist statements about their work, please see www.artsomerville.org/nave/2007/vessel.html

Hold the date of Saturday March 10th as we host yet another pancake breakfast at the Nave (well, really in the basement of the church where the kitchen is) from 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. Guest chefs this time around are the crew from the Somerville Arts Council -- a shout out & thank you to them for donating their time & energy. Only $6 for all pancakes & coffee you can consume --who can beat that?

Plus, a few words of explanation about our fundraising efforts. Flea markets and pancakes might not seem like much but they truly add up. At the Nave we recently purchased a digital projector with the proceeds of last fall's flea market -- a piece of equipment that was already put to use in a performance last Friday. We hope that having a projector will also allow us to present more artists working with video in the gallery in

the future.

The proceeds from two fundraisers are earmarked to support the Nave Gallery's Guest Curator project. Beginning in 2007, we have made the commitment to cover more of the costs of exhibiting in the gallery, leaving artists to do what they do best -- make and present their art without worrying about fundraising.

Friday, March 30^th, at 8:00 p.m. in the Nave Gallery – Ben Schwendener’s Children’s Music, Volume II. Artists are Ben Schwendener, piano, Blake Newman, bass and Steve Chaggaris, drums. This is the first live performance of Volume II. Books and CD’s will finally be available! Tickets are $10.00.

To see a schedule of events, which is updated often, please look at the website: www.artsomerville.org/upcoming.html

The Nave Gallery is a project of ARTSomerville in collaboration with the Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church. Run and staffed completely by volunteers, the Nave provides an important exhibition space for both local and regional artists.

Introduction to Yoga

Come join our small, half-hour class during coffee hour (12:00 noon, on Sunday, March 11^th and Sunday, March 25th) to practice mindful breathing and gentle yoga postures. Great for stress release, improved flexibility and strength. If interested, please email Liz at cavatorta1@hotmail.com for more info.

Serenata Musicians concert

On Sunday, March 18th, the Serenata Musicians will hold a concert in the sanctuary at 3:00 p.m. There is a $10 donation for general admission (children 12 and under are free). The artists are: Meghan Miller, flute, Ben Fox, oboe, Melanie Maz, violin and Itamar Ronen, piano. The program is: Dring, Trio for Flute, Oboe and Piano, and Brahms, Violin Sonata No. 2 in A Major.

See Anne Lamott!

Anne Lamott, author of “Traveling Mercies” and “Plan B” [and to be published this month, Grace, (Eventually)] will be at the Masonic Temple in Cambridge on Thursday, March 22^nd at 7:00 p.m. (Sponsored by Porter Square Books.) See Gusti Newquist, Liz Cavano or Katerine Gustafson if you are interested in joining us that evening. We anticipate we will have to go early if we want a seat.

Lenten Retreat

Discerning Our Way Into Mission

Congregational Retreat at Tufts University

Saturday, March 24, 10am-3pm

All are invited to a time of celebrating, remembering, envisioning, and discerning God's unique call for our community of faith! Through an integration of spiritual practices, Bible study, community building activities, and yummy food, we hope to build consensus toward a biblical theme undergirding our top three mission priorities. Participants can expect a "whole person" approach to discernment, incorporating God's call for us through our bodies, minds, hearts, and spirits.

Gusti and Karl Need Your Help!

Part of our congregational retreat will include an opportunity to select a biblical theme undergirding the mission of Clarendon Hill Church. Do you have any suggestions? Passages you love? Verses that speak to your sense of vocation? Please send them to Karl (chpc@tiac.net) or Gusti (gusti_newquist@yahoo.com) before March 18.

We will have a sign-up sheet in church on Sunday, March 4^th and subsequent Sundays. Please let us know if you will be attending, if you will need childcare (which will be provided on an as needed basis at the church) and what dish or dishes you can contribute. We will be looking for things like breakfast like food (bagels, muffins, etc. – NO NUTS), lunch dishes (prepared sandwiches; dips and spreads, fruit, fresh salad, flatbreads/crackers, veggies, etc. – NO NUTS) and beverages (water, juice, soda, etc.).

Sunday Night Forum

Sheila Provencher, a member of Christian Peacemakers Teams, will speak at Clarendon Hill beginning at 7:00 p.m. on Sunday, March 26^th, as the first Sunday night Forum kicks off.

The Sunday night forums are open to the public. We hope to find speakers, films, etc. discussing topics of interest to members of our church community and to the larger Somerville/Cambridge/Medford/Arlington community.

Here is a short biography of Sheila:
Lay minister, human-rights worker, and writer Sheila Provencher is a Catholic member of Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), an ecumenical organization which places teams of trained peacemakers to work with local partners in situations of violent conflict around the world.

The second of five children raised in a Catholic home, Sheila grew up outside of Boston.  She worked for a year as a Jesuit Volunteer in an AIDS hospice in Minneapolis before spending a few years back in the Boston area working in residences for homeless men and women with HIV/AIDS.  She then lived and worked for a year as a temporary lay member of a Benedictine contemplative monastic ashram.

In 2001 Sheila earned an M.Div from the University of Notre Dame.  During her time as a graduate student, she developed and later presented workshops to educate youth ministers about the struggles that GLBTQ teens face in the church. 

Sheila has been involved with Iraq issues since 1998 when she became active in movements to end the economic sanctions against Iraq. In the years before joining CPT, Sheila participated in a 28-day water-only Fast for Peace and Nonviolence, traveled to prewar Iraq with a Catholic delegation, and spoke out to urge the U.S. to seek nonviolent solutions to the Iraq problem. 

In August 2003 Sheila became a full-time member of CPT and lived and worked in Iraq from December 2003—December 2005.  Highlights of her CPT work include monitoring the detainee system, accompanying families of detainees, overseeing CPT’s Adopt-a-Detainee Campaign, and documenting torture and human rights abuses under the new Iraqi government.  She helped develop and train the new Muslim Peacemaker Teams and has accompanied them in actions to bring Shi’a and Sunni Muslims together.  Sheila lived in an ordinary neighborhood in Baghdad, a ministry of simple presence among neighbors.

In Dec 2005 she became a CPT reservist (i.e. part-time) in order to pursue premedical studies in the Boston area.

Sheila’s writings have appeared in America, Notre Dame Magazine, The Sign of Peace and numerous websites and newsletters.

Her presentation, based on Psalm 23 and entitled "Come to the Table: Nonviolent Peacemaking in Iraq" is a story-based talk.

It focuses on stories of suffering of war but also of hope based on the courage of the unsung heroes, ordinary people in Iraq who continue to this day to risk their lives in nonviolent efforts to build bridges and seek peaceful resolutions to conflict.

Book Group

Book Group will meet on Wednesday, March 28^th at 7:00 p.m. to discuss the first book in The Genesis Trilogy (And it Was Good) by Madeleine L’Engle. After spending some time reading several chapters of Genesis (in the bible), the group is now ready to tackle L’Engle’s book. All are welcome to attend!

One Great Hour of Sharing

Clarendon Hill will collect the One Great Hour of Sharing offering on Palm Sunday, April 1^st. During the month of March, our focus on Mission will share stories of how your gifts have helped people from around the corner, and around the world.

Since 1949, Presbyterians have joined with millions of other Christians through One Great Hour of Sharing to share God’s love with people experiencing need. Our gifts support ministries of disaster response, refugee assistance and resettlement, and community development that help people find safe refuge, start new lives, and work together to strengthen their families and communities.

Recognizing that the hope we have in Christ is lived out in our hope for one another, we respond with gifts that help our sisters and brothers around the world find the hope for a brighter future.

For more than fifty years, Presbyterians have joined with Christians throughout the nation in supporting One Great Hour of Sharing, responding to Christ's love for all people by joyfully sharing that love with people in need. The refugee and the stranger have found food and safe shelter; those stunned by the aftermath of disasters have found relief and help rebuilding; and communities seeking to take control of their future have found partners in development. Presbyterians' gifts support the work of The Presbyterian Committee for the Self-Development of People, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, and the Presbyterian Hunger Program. The hundreds of millions of dollars Presbyterians have given over the last half century have enabled a powerful witness to the love of the One who came that all might have life more abundantly.

“Love your neighbor as yourself.” Matthew 22:39 is the theme for this year’s One Great Hour of Sharing (OGHS)

Who is my Neighbor?

Our neighbors are everywhere from Louisiana to Sudan.

We know people all over the world are hungry.

We know about AIDS, street children and epidemics.

About tsunamis, earthquakes, wars and famines.

We despise suffering—and desperately want to alleviate it.

Together we are.

We’re improving nutrition through better food storage in Uganda and the Dominican Republic. We're providing care for refugees in Sudan and expanding access to fresh foods in inner-city Chicago. We’re helping recovering alcoholics build new lives in California, supporting job training for AIDS victims in Kenya, rebuilding quake-ravaged villages in Pakistan, and restoring tsunami-damaged coastal mangroves in Indonesia. And we're supporting thousands of our members as they volunteer to help rebuild communities on the Gulf Coast.

Christ has commanded us to love our neighbors. Today, join millions of other Christians who are loving their neighbors by giving wholeheartedly. Together we make a world of difference.

Mileydi is a second-grader in Nicaragua. Her mother, Maria, learned to sew in a skills workshop. She now makes clothes for her children, earns a living for her family, and is becoming a leader in her community. For Mileydi’s family, we make a world of difference.

How can we live Christ’s commandment to love all our neighbors?

By treating them like neighbors—accepting their help when offered and offering ours when needed. One Great Hour of Sharing gives an opportunity to share God’s love with neighbors from the shores of the Indian Ocean to those of the Gulf Coast. Through our gifts Presbyterians are privileged to be part of Jesus’ healing love in the world. And as we open our hearts to our neighbors through these gifts, God’s love flows in. May these gifts transform the lives of all they touch, including our own.

Where does the money go?

36% Presbyterian Hunger Program for ministries working to alleviate hunger and eliminate its causes, responding with compassion and justice to poor and hungry people in local communities, in the nation, and throughout the world, as well as ministries addressing homelessness and affordable housing.

32% Presbyterian Disaster Assistance for disaster response and ministries with refugees.

32% Self-Development of People for partnerships with groups of people who are oppressed by poverty or social systems, who want to take charge of their own lives, have organized to do something about their own condition, and have decided what they need to do to produce long-term benefits for themselves.

Here are two stories of how your gifts have helped:

Working Together to Help Iraq's Children

Children are typically the most vulnerable to shortages of food, medicine, and hygiene supplies. For the past two decades, the children of Iraq have suffered at the hands of both internal and external forces. During this period, between 500,000 and a million children are estimated to have died as a result of shortages. Today Iraqi children continue to suffer from a host of ailments, including diarrhea and acute respiratory infection, nutritional anemia, vitamin and iodine deficiencies, malaria, and measles.

Through Church World Service, One Great Hour of Sharing is supporting a coalition campaign called "All Our Children" to meet critical ongoing health needs of Iraqi children for medicine and other essentials. Church World Service is providing blankets, medicines, first aid and personal hygiene kits, and medical and surgical equipment for pediatric hospitals and clinics. With help from One Great Hour of Sharing, Church World Service, and the "All Our Children" campaign, a lot of Iraqi children will be healthier and happier in the years ahead.

Water for life

Rose Gwangwara and Anne Kachinde lead the Village Water Committee in Mabuleni village, Blantyre District, Malawi. Twice a month they do routine maintenance on the village’s borehole well, installed in 1999. Repairs, when needed, are funded with monthly user fees, about 20 cents per household.

In Malawi, thousands of people each year are gaining access to clean, safe water thanks to Church World Service and One Great Hour of Sharing. Boreholes wells are proving the most popular form of water supply. Because of their simplicity, they can be managed by village-level committees. And, a key to a successful water program is local management.

Simple irrigation systems also play an important role in improving food security. When drought-related famine hit Malawi and other areas of Southern Africa in 2002-03, communities with borehole wells were able to continue watering vegetable gardens, lessening the drought’s impact on their food supply. (OGHS has also helped CWS provide emergency food and seed for replanting.)

On April 1^st, please give as generously as you can!

We need updates!

Just a reminder to folks to be in touch with Sarah Donovan for an update if you have a change of address, cellphone number, home or work phone number , or e-mail address as she is compiling a parish list to be available to all who want it.

Christian Education

We are still looking for a volunteer or volunteers (you can sign up with someone else to share the teaching) for June; if you are interested and/or would like more information, please speak with Karl.

Big Thank You from RESPOND

We recently received this letter from RESPOND:

Dear Friends,

Thanks you for your amazing generosity this holiday season. Your sponsorship of a family in our Wish List Program made an enormous difference – bringing joy at a time that can be so difficult for the women and children that we serve.

For thirty-two years, RESPOND’s doors have remained open – day and night, seven days a week – to women and children seeking safety and support. During the last year, our dedicated staff has been there for over 4,000 women and children – conducting emergency shelter intakes at any hour, day and night; answering our 24 hour hotline; staffing our shelter so that women in danger can seek refuge for themselves and their children; helping women to create safety plans, providing bilingual services, linguistic outreach, and assistance in the Somerville and Malden courts each week; and offering emotional support through individual and group counseling. RESPOND also continues outreach, education and prevention efforts, working to change attitudes and create a coordinated community response to domestic violence.

Your gift provides hope for the families we serve – hope that they will not only be safe but will succeed in all aspects of their life and hope that one day we will achieve our mission and end domestic violence.

With gratitude,

Michelle Kweder

P.S. Later in 2007, RESPOND will bring hope to more families by opening a new shelter. Please view our video at www.respondinc.org.

Request for Help

This is an early notification of an upcoming request for help: The church will again be one of the sites for Somerville Open Studios on Saturday, May 5^th and Sunday, May 6^th. There will be an “Art Café” again this year, offering light lunch items and baked goods. This was a very successful event last year, and the help of so many made it possible. Please see Katherine if you can help plan, can work some hours, and/or are willing to bake and prepare food.

The irony of Romping Monday and Fat Tuesday

This was written by James Carroll and appeared in The Boston Globe on Monday, February 19, 2007.

Today is Rose Monday. In parts of Germany, the pre-Lenten carnival is in full swing. “Rose” is said to derive from a word meaning romp, and that is what thousands of revelers do, taking to the streets of cities, especially, along the Rhine. Noise, kissing of strangers, public drunkenness, mocking of gender roles, wearing of masks, breaking of rules – anything goes.

In Latin countries, the carnival is centered on Tuesday (Mardi Gras, Martedi Grasso) but all of these traditions involve a raucous up-ending (and sending up) of normal decorum.

Carnival can be understood as letting off steam ahead of the austerities of Lent. If gluttony marks the Monday-Tuesday festivities, the overconsumption comes originally from the practical need to clear the household of the food and drink forbidden in the penitential season, which begins with ashes on Wednesday. But more is at stake in the wildness than a prelude to penance.

The traditions of carnival go back to overt acts of political resistance, when common people seized an occasion to defy those in power. The outrageous parades of bimbos, cross-dressers, clowns, and jokers – what New Orleans will feature tomorrow – began as a way to make fun of the military parades that showcased the oppressive power of the rulers. Parades were by definition military exercises, and their purpose was to intimidate. At carnival, the parade is a celebration of the refusal to be intimidated. Soldiers are ridiculed, police are defied, the rules of the clergy are flouted. Social reversal is the point.

The irony of carnival is that, while religion is one of its targets, religion is also its source. This is true even when priests and bishops are being insulted. The extremely ordered liturgical calendar is what licenses the disorder of Romping Monday and Fat Tuesday. On those days, foolishness is as holy as piety is on Ash Wednesday. In such holy foolishness can be seen the supremely valuable function of religion as a sponsor of skepticism about everything conventional, including itself. This flies in the face of contemporary complaints about religion as aiming only at the subservience of its adherents. Richard Dawkins, in “The God Delusion,” cites this aphorism of Victor Hugo: “There is in every village a torch – the teacher: and an extinguisher – the clergyman.” But the teacher may be religious.

Both by many religious people and by its many secular opponents, religion is taken to be the enemy of the critical mind, yet religion is by definition a mode of critical thinking. This is obviously the case in the biblical tradition, which, in its steady stream of prophetic voices, enshrines principles of its own self-criticism. The prophet, after all, reproaches the king as an adulterous murderer. God rebukes Israel of faithlessness. The Gospels show the inner circle of Jesus as his worst betrayers.

Nor do other religions exempt themselves from such judgment. This is so because religion exists to point to the existence of God, to worship God, and to insist that nothing else be worshipped – including itself. But that point is complex. Religion uses language about God (creeds, prayers, etc.) images of God (trinity, monotheism, incarnation, etc.), and stories of God’s activity (the Bible, Koran, Vedas, etc.) but religion also insists that none of these are God. God is greater than any idea applied to God, or any word used to describe God.

Religion warms that humans constantly attempt to substitute for God what is not God (the nation-state, the quest of wealth, oneself, etc.). And religion, equally, acknowledges that it, too, does just that. Religion all too often worships itself. What that happens, religion does aim at the subservience of its adherents, and at coerced conversion of others. Religion becomes violence. That kind of religion is what atheists like Richard Dawkins reject, and why not? But religious people reject it too, although without the smug sense of being above the human condition which is so wounded by such mistakes.

At carnival, revelers, with their masks, costumes, and wild behavior, are holding up the powers that be for ridicule. That is especially true in New Orleans, where defiant joviality mocks this nation’s coarse – and ongoing - betrayal of that city. But the street-dancers are also making fun of themselves, which makes the festival noble. This week’s glad interruption in time is a gift from the deep past. Carnival foolishness is self-surpassing, whether deemed holy or not. Either way, it is a reminder that we humans on the earth were made for more than appears before the eyes.

Book Review

Blue Like Jazz (Nonreligious thoughts on Christian Spirituality) by Donald Miller

ISBN: 0-7852-6370-5

From the Publisher

Donald Miller's fresh and original voice may change the way Christians view the "status quo" faith and build a bridge to seekers who believe that organized religion doesn't meet their spiritual needs.

"I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. . . . I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened." In Donald Miller's early years, he was vaguely familiar with a distant God. But when he came to know Jesus Christ, he pursued the Christian life with great zeal. Within a few years he had a successful ministry that ultimately left him feeling empty, burned out, and, once again, far away from God. In this intimate, soul-searching account, Miller describes his remarkable journey back to a culturally relevant, infinitely loving God.

From The Critics - Publishers Weekly

Miller (Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance) is a young writer, speaker and campus ministry leader. An earnest evangelical who nearly lost his faith, he went on a spiritual journey, found some progressive politics and most importantly, discovered Jesus' relevance for everyday life. This book, in its own elliptical way, tells the tale of that journey. But the narrative is episodic rather than linear, Miller's style evocative rather than rational and his analysis personally revealing rather than profoundly insightful. As such, it offers a postmodern riff on the classic evangelical presentation of the Gospel, complete with a concluding call to commitment. Written as a series of short essays on vaguely theological topics (faith, grace, belief, confession, church), and disguised theological topics (magic, romance, shifts, money), it is at times plodding or simplistic (how to go to church and not get angry? "pray... and go to the church God shows you"), and sometimes falls into merely self-indulgent musing. But more often Miller is enjoyably clever, and his story is telling and beautiful, even poignant. (The story of the reverse confession booth is worth the price of the book.) The title is meant to be evocative, and the subtitle-"Non-Religious" thoughts about "Christian Spirituality"-indicates Miller's distrust of the institutional church and his desire to appeal to those experimenting with other flavors of spirituality.

Through the weeks of deep snow

we walked above the ground

on fallen sky, as though we did

Not come of root and leaf, as though

we had only air and weather

for our difficult home.

But now

as March warms, and the rivulets

run like birdsong on the slopes,

and the branches of light sing in the hills,

slowly we return to earth.

Wendell Berry

The Clarendon Connection is edited by Ellen D. Schemerhorn.

Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church

155 Powder House Boulevard

West Somerville, Massachusetts 02144-1613

Telephone: 617-625-4823

www.clarendonhillchurch.org

The Rev. Karl Gustafson, Minister…………………………..John Adams, Music Director

Augustus Kwaa, Parish Associate/Evangelist……………………….. Arnie James, Sexton

Gusti Newquist, Seminarian

LECTIONARY TEXTS

Mar. 4: Gen. 15: 1-12, 17-18; Ps. 27; Phil. 3: 17-4:1; Luke 13: 31-35

Mar. 11: Isa. 55: 1-9; Ps. 63: 1-8, 1 Cor. 10: 1-13; Luke 13: 1-9

Mar. 18: Josh. 5: 9-12; Ps. 32; 2 Cor. 5: 16-21; Luke 15: 1-3, 11b-32

Mar. 25:Isa. 43: 16-21; Ps. 126; Phil. 3: 4b-14; John 12: 1-8

Apr. 1: Luke 19: 28-40’ Ps. 118: 1-2, 19-29; Isa. 50: 4-9a; Ps. 31: 9-16; Phil. 2: 5-11; Luke 22: 14 – 23: 56 OR Luke 23: 1-49

Apr. 8: Acts 10: 34-43 OR Isa. 65: 17-25; Ps. 118: 1-2, 14-24; 1 Cor. 15: 19-26 OR Acts 10: 34-43; John 20: 1-18 OR Luke 24: 1-12

Apr. 15: Acts 5: 27-32; Ps. 118: 14-29 OR Ps. 150; Rev. 1: 4-8; John 20: 19-31

Apr. 22: Acts 9: 1-6 (7-20); Ps. 30; Rev. 5: 11-14; John 21: 1-19

Apr. 29: Acts. 9: 36-43; Ps. 23; Rev. 7: 9-17; John 10: 22-30

Church Assignments