Sunday Special | EP 29

Happy Sunday, Friends!

Today we have a video with a riddle for you to solve in the next week and a reminder about our upcoming Liturgy for Families with Kids next Saturday! 

Solve the Riddle

After watching the video, do you know what all of those strange things have in common? Hint: Remember this all relates to our friend Moses! If you can tell Pastor Mary what they have to do with each other when you come to our Liturgy for Families, she will give you a prize!

Daily Examen with Five Fingers

Last week we shared some ways to breathe and pray using your fingers as a guide. This week we have another way you can look at your hand and five fingers to go through a simple daily examen that kids can learn easily. Just choose a finger for each part to help you take it one thing at a time. You could do this at bedtime to help close out the day and settle into God's peace.

1.  BREATHE 

Start by looking at your thumb. Take a deep breath in and out, and imagine filling the space around you with God's love. Center yourself and know that God is present. Ask for God to give you wisdom and understanding.

2.  BE GRATEFUL

Then trace your index finger and move to a time of gratitude. Begin by expressing gratitude to God. Ask yourself, what am I most grateful for today? Or, if I could relive one moment, what would it be? Or, which moment made me feel loved? Or, what little things did see, say hear, feel, experience that made today so good? 

3.  FEEL

Now trace your middle finger. Think back about what you felt at specific moments today—like joy, frustration, boredom, anger, empathy—and what God might be saying through those feelings. Did you feel safe to express your feelings? If not, how can you do so now? Do you need to forgive someone or ask for forgiveness? How might you learn and grow based on the experiences of the day?

4.  PRAY

Next trace your ring finger. Ask the Holy Spirit to guide you to pray about whatever it is that God thinks is particularly important. You might simply choose one thing from the day to pray about. You might talk to Jesus about your actions, attitudes, feelings and interactions and ask for direction, share a concern, express thanksgiving, etc. 

5.  LOOK AHEAD

Finally, trace your pinky and think about the day ahead. When you think about your day tomorrow, how do you feel? Are you nervous? Excited? Worried? Why? How could you ask God for help and hope? Say a prayer for peace as you sleep and for God to make you ready for tomorrow.

Adapted from Training Happy Hearts

We hope you can find ways to pray and review your day with God. We miss you and love you!

Much love,

Pastors Lindsay and Mary



Leslie

Be Still, My Soul

Be still my soul for God is on your side
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain
Trust in your God, your savior and your guide
Who through all changes faithful will remain
Be still my soul your best your heavenly friend
Through thorny ways leads to a peaceful end

Be still my soul for God will undertake
To guide the future surely as the past
Your hope your confidence let nothing shake
All now mysterious shall be bright at last
Be still my soul the waves and winds still know
The voice that calmed them in this world below

Be still my soul the hour is hastening on
When we shall dwell with God forever more
When disappointment, grief, and fear are gone
Sorrow forgot, love's purest joys restored
Be still my soul when change and tears are past
All safe and blessed we shall meet at last

FBCP Families | 27

Hi, Friends!

Praise God that the air has improved! I think Brody even prayed in his own baby talk when we got to take a walk again. It has been a reminder to thank God for things like air and sunshine and breeze. Our prayers continue to be with the firefighters and all those who have been affected.

Liturgy for Families with Kids is next Saturday!

We are beyond excited for our Liturgy for Families with Kids, which got moved to Saturday, October 3rd! This is a safe chance to gather, worship God, and see our friends (and their cute masks!).  We hope you will join us at 10:30AM next Saturday (one week away—yay!) for a fun worship event in the church park area. We will have spots for families to hang out while staying a safe distance apart on the grass area, and we invite you to bring blankets or chairs. There will be kid-friendly worship with singing, a Bible story, and some creative activities for the whole family.  We hope you'll join us for this chance to worship and have fun together safely in our green space!

GoNoodle's Hispanic Heritage Resources

GoNoodle put together some super fun resources for you to celebrate and learn during Hispanic Heritage month. There are options for learning Spanish, dancing, cooking, and even a scavenger hunt. 

Worship Music for Kids 

Seeds released a bunch of sources for worship music geared for kids. The list includes lullabies and music to get your dance party going. Happy singing!

Sunday 

Drive-In Church is on for this week, so we hope to see you in the garage if you are able to join us! We invite you to come around 10:00AM to settle in for our 10:30 worship. Snacks and activity sheets provided—bring some coloring utensils if you have them!

Kid Video

This Sunday we will be sharing another quick video to encourage you in your faith, and as always, we'll share some extra resources in an email Sunday morning. We pray you get some time to rest and play as a family!

Youth Zoom 

We had a blast at our youth movie night on Friday! This Sunday, we have a special guest on our regular Youth Zoom at 2PM. We will be talking with Ken Fong about race and biology and how it relates to racial justice today. Here is the meeting link that you can use to hop on the hangout. We can't wait to hang out with our youth! 

Sending you so much love and virtual hugs!

With gratitude for you,

Pastor Lindsay & Pastor Mary


Lindsay

A MEDITATION FROM RICHARD ROHR

I awoke on Saturday, September 19, with three sources in my mind for guidance: Etty Hillesum (1914 – 1943), the young Jewish woman who suffered much more injustice in the concentration camp than we are suffering now; Psalm 62, which must have been written in a time of a major oppression of the Jewish people; and the Irish Poet, W.B.Yeats (1965 – 1939), who wrote his “Second Coming” during the horrors of the World War I and the Spanish Flu pandemic. 

These three sources form the core of my invitation. Read each one slowly as your first practice. Let us begin with Etty:

There is a really deep well inside me. And in it dwells God. Sometimes I am there, too … And that is all we can manage these days and also all that really matters: that we safeguard that little piece of You, God, in ourselves.

—Etty Hillesum, Westerbork transit camp

Note her second-person usage, talking to “You, God” quite directly and personally. There is a Presence with her, even as she is surrounded by so much suffering.

Then, the perennial classic wisdom of the Psalms:

In God alone is my soul at rest.
God is the source of my hope.
In God I find shelter, my rock, and my safety.
Men are but a puff of wind,
Men who think themselves important are a delusion.
Put them on a scale,
They are gone in a puff of wind.

—Psalm 62:5–9

What could it mean to find rest like this in a world such as ours? Every day more and more people are facing the catastrophe of extreme weather. The neurotic news cycle is increasingly driven by a single narcissistic leader whose words and deeds incite hatred, sow discord, and amplify the daily chaos. The pandemic that seems to be returning in waves continues to wreak suffering and disorder with no end in sight, and there is no guarantee of the future in an economy designed to protect the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor and those subsisting at the margins of society. 

It’s no wonder the mental and emotional health among a large portion of the American population is in tangible decline! We have wholesale abandoned any sense of truth, objectivity, science or religion in civil conversation; we now recognize we are living with the catastrophic results of several centuries of what philosophers call nihilism or post-modernism (nothing means anything, there are no universal patterns).

We are without doubt in an apocalyptic time (the Latin word apocalypsis refers to an urgent unveiling of an ultimate state of affairs). Yeats’ oft-quoted poem “The Second Coming” then feels like a direct prophecy. See if you do not agree:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Somehow our occupation and vocation as believers in this sad time must be to first restore the Divine Center by holding it and fully occupying it ourselves. If contemplation means anything, it means that we can “safeguard that little piece of You, God,” as Etty Hillesum describes it. What other power do we have now? All else is tearing us apart, inside and out, no matter who wins the election or who is on the Supreme Court. We cannot abide in such a place for any length of time or it will become our prison.

God cannot abide with us in a place of fear.
God cannot abide with us in a place of ill will or hatred.
God cannot abide with us inside a nonstop volley of claim and counterclaim.
God cannot abide with us in an endless flow of online punditry and analysis.
God cannot speak inside of so much angry noise and conscious deceit.
God cannot be found when all sides are so far from “the Falconer.”
God cannot be born except in a womb of Love.
So offer God that womb.

Stand as a sentry at the door of your senses for these coming months, so “the blood-dimmed tide” cannot make its way into your soul.

If you allow it for too long, it will become who you are, and you will no longer have natural access to the “really deep well” that Etty Hillesum returned to so often and that held so much vitality and freedom for her.

If you will allow, I recommend for your spiritual practice for the next four months that you impose a moratorium on exactly how much news you are subject to—hopefully not more than an hour a day of television, social media, internet news, magazine and newspaper commentary, and/or political discussions. It will only tear you apart and pull you into the dualistic world of opinion and counter-opinion, not Divine Truth, which is always found in a bigger place.

Instead, I suggest that you use this time for some form of public service, volunteerism, mystical reading from the masters, prayer—or, preferably, all of the above.

        You have much to gain now and nothing to lose. Nothing at all. 
        And the world—with you as a stable center—has nothing to lose.
        And everything to gain. 


Richard Rohr, September 19, 2020

The Wave

YOU’RE INVITED!

Hey Folks!

Are you having trouble remembering what your friends at church look like? 

Would you like to log on to your computer for a reason other than work or hearing about the latest craziness in the world?

Could you use a time of carefree fun combined with a dialogue on topics that impact your daily life?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions you need to check out The Wave, a new opportunity to interact with one another on Zoom. Join us this Thursday night at 7:30PM for a chance to catch up with people who have been missing you! 

Here’s how to find us:

Join Zoom Meeting by computer: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89956415087?pwd=aFlPaUdvWnVUbjFNaUpKcUZoNG5SQT09
Meeting ID: 899 5641 5087 Passcode: 346798 
Or call in by phone:  +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
Meeting ID: 899 5641 5087 Passcode: 346798 

We look forward to waving at you this Thursday! Email Pastor Gretchen with any questions.

With joy,

Pastor Gretchen and the FBCP Community

Sunday Special | EP 28

Happy Sunday, Friends!


Today we want to share some encouragement to all our friends who might be feeling stressed out, disappointed, frustrated, or sad. We know this season and the ongoing challenges (like the fires and an earthquake!) have been hard to cope with, not to mention the fact that most of you are in online school. So, we wanted to help you remember what Jesus promises us when we have heavy things on our hearts and minds, and we have some tips for letting go of those heavy burdens!

Talk It Out

  • Recap: What did Jesus say about the heavy burdens we carry?

  • What are some burdens that are weighing you down in your heart and thoughts?

  • What are you wondering about as you hearJesus' promise to take our burdens and give us easy work? What do you want to ask Jesus today?

Apply It

  • Try naming all the things that feel hard and heavy, and then imagine giving them over to Jesus. Whenever you start to feel weighed down and burdened, remember that you can keep giving them to Jesus and asking Him to help you.

  • Just like we did in the video, do a breath prayer by using your fingers to guide your inhale and exhale. You could also try asking for something specific that you need from God as you exhale. 

  • If you want to use your fingers to pray for different things, you could print out this bookmark as a guide.

We miss you and love you!

Much love, 

Pastors Lindsay and Mary

FBCP Families | 26

Hi, Friends!

What a week it continues to be! We are praying for all the firefighters who are working tirelessly and in dangerous conditions and for all of you who live nearest the fires. It’s a bummer to miss Drive-In Church again this week, but I pray you will have space to listen to the liturgy and worship from wherever you are on Sunday.

Update on Liturgy for Families with Kids

After monitoring the air quality closely and praying over our decision, we have chosen to postpone our Liturgy for Families until Saturday, October 3rd. We are super bummed that we have to wait a little longer to come together with our families, but we want to make sure we do so under safe and fun conditions. The air quality continues to be the worst in the morning in Pasadena, and we want all of our kids—even our littlest ones with their little lungs—to be able to come and enjoy the worship without a worry. We hope you will join us October 3rd, and in the meantime know that we miss you dearly!

A Question for Bedtime

Recently I was at an online webinar for youth ministry leaders, and one of the speakers shared a story about a question she used to spark discussion with her younger brother. It is a simple question, but after she gently asked it a few weeks in a row without any pressure to answer, he finally opened up and was able to talk about God in important ways. We've used this question in our youth group time, too, and it's one worth asking regularly. The question is this: Where did you see God today?

I encourage you to ask your child that question at bedtime or to pose it to the whole family over a shared meal and see what other questions and reflections it might prompt. And if your child (or you!) didn't feel like God showed up, that's okay—it's a great opportunity to talk about when they wanted to feel God's presence and to think about Jesus’ promise to be with us always. I'm praying we all see God in new ways this week.

Sunday 

Kid Video

This Sunday we will be sharing another quick video to encourage you in your faith, and as always, we'll share some extra resources in an email Sunday morning. We pray you get some time to rest and play as a family!

Youth Zoom 

We are on for our regular Youth Zoom at 2PM this week. Here is the meeting link that you can use each week to hop on the hangout. We can't wait to hang out with our youth! 

Sending you so much love and virtual hugs!

With gratitude for you,

Pastor Lindsay & Pastor Mary

Barbara

Sunday Special | EP 27

Happy Sunday, Friends!

We tried hard to keep our video shorter today, but we packed in a review of our last video, a new story about a baby in a river, and a special announcement for families with kids. We hope you are staying safe and indoors as the fires continue to affect the air quality. We pray you have a blessed Sunday and that God fills you with hope as you start a new week!

TALK IT OUT

  • Can you review the sequence of events, starting with Pharaoh's order to the Hebrew women who helped deliver babies?

  • How did God take care of baby Moses even in a scary time?

  • Who showed faith and courage in the story?

  • What are you wondering about after hearing the story of baby Moses?

APPLY IT

Moses's mom was filled with so much love for her baby, and she was creative and courageous to make a basket for Moses to float on the river. We can imagine that she must have been very afraid, but somehow she trusted God enough to try what probably seemed like a crazy idea. Here’s an exercise you can do to think about your own circumstances that make you afraid: Weave your own basket following the directions on this post. As you weave the paper together, talk to God about any fears you have and any areas where you could use some creative ideas from God. Listen for what God might want to tell you as you create your basket. (And you can certainly draw a baby to put inside it if you want!) Let the basket be a reminder that God has a purpose and a plan for you—just as He did for Moses.

We miss you and love you!

Much love,

Pastors Lindsay and Mary

In Pasadena as it is in Heaven

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