OpenSpirit

Sunday, April 11, 2010 – Celebrate Easter Again (perhaps in a new way!) with OpenSpirit.

Christ is Risen!

“An Easter Insurrection.” – Join us for food, fellowship, and creative, experiential worship.  Bring a friend, a child, anyone who longs to practice the presence of God, hungers for spiritual community.

We gather at 6 pm for a potluck meal, and at 7 pm for shared worship.  Come for one or both events!  Take note – 6pm is a new time for dinner.  Bring something yummy to share.

“An Easter Insurrection.” What does that mean?? In a wide variety of ways, from sunrise services to festival worship to hunting Easter eggs, we have already celebrated the resurrection.

This Sunday evening, we invite you to join with us to see what changes in our celebration if we change just a few letters.  What if we get rid of the “re” and replace it with “in”? What does it mean to celebrate an Easter Insurrection?

What happens when we highlight the radically disruptive nature of the Easter event? How are our own lives disrupted? What new hope awakens in us?

OpenSpirit meets at Edwards Church UCC, 39 Edwards Street, in Framingham.  You will find us in Edwards Hall, just down the hill from the Church building.  There is plenty of easy parking; there is a place at the table set just for you.

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OpenSpirit pilgrims and friends …

Our OpenSpirit community will mark Memorial Day in shared fellowship with our brothers and sisters on the streets in Framingham, in a special gathering of remembrance and hope.  Please note the different time and location – 5pm, downtown Framingham Common on Park Street – only for this week’s gathering.  Willie’s press release, below, should tell you everything you need to know!

We will return to the Performing Arts Center the following Sunday evening, May 31st at our usual time, 7pm, for a spirit-filled celebration of Pentecost, with special musical guests!

Press Release

What:  A Service of Remembrance and Hope for People Who’ve Died on the Street

Where:  Town Common, Downtown Framingham (Route 126 at Park Street, across from the Salvation Army)

When:  Sunday, May 24, 2009

Time:  5:00 p.m.

Cost:  Free

Wheelchair Access:  Yes

Sponsored by:  OpenSpirit Community, SackCloth Ministries and Framingham Street Ministries

Contact:  Willie Sordillo  508-628-9294

This Memorial Day weekend, in addition to honoring those who’ve given their lives in defense of the nation through military service, a collaboration of OpenSpirit creative worship community, SackCloth Ministries and Framingham Street Ministries will offer a Service of Remembrance and Hope for People Who’ve Died on the Street in Downtown Framingham.

The service will honor those who’ve died while living on the street and offer hope to those who continue to live without permanent shelter.  The service will take place on Sunday, May 24 beginning at 5:00 PM on the Downtown Framingham Common (Route 126 at Park Street.)

The service will be led by the Revs. Debbie Clark (OpenSpirit and Edwards Church, UCC), Andrea Castner Wyatt (OpenSpirit and Aseracare Hospice), Jim Bachman (Framingham Street Ministries), Louis Miller (SackCloth Ministries), and Faith Tolson (Greater Framingham Community Church) with participation from other local clergy.

Music will be contributed by Willie Sordillo, Erin Craig, Lynne Miller and others.  The service will offer a remembrance for those who we’ve lost, a blessing for those in attendance and those who live on the streets, and a gift of the bread of life.

All are welcome and there is no charge.

For more information, please contact Willie Sordillo at 508/628-9294 or wsax@rcn.com.

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OpenSpirit Sunday Evening:  May 17, 2009; 7-8pm; Performing Arts Center of MetroWest

“Glimpses of the Divine”

You know the experience:  in the middle of attending to something pressing, worrisome, or tedious, you suddenly find yourself and the tangle of things demanding your attention interrupted.  A moment of insight.  A sense of being “at-oned” (as the late-medieval visionary, Julian of Norwich, was fond of putting it) with the world, or some local instance of it.  A realization of giftedness.  A deep breath of mercy.

Julian of Norwich

We’ll dwell in these experiences in our worship gathering.  Some will come from a marvelous poem by Jane Kenyon, “Briefly it Enters, and Briefly Speaks” (find it at:  http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15916).  Each line begins with the phrase familiar to us from Jesus’ teaching in the gospel of John:  “I am. . .”.

Kenyon extends them beyond “the good shepherd,” “the vine,” “the bread of life,” etc., to include ordinary images (as these, too, are) from her daily life.  She adds a line taken right from Julian’s writings:  “I am the maker, the lover, the keeper,” this mystic’s interpretation of the trinity in a non-gendered form.

What are the moments when you might say, “Yes, I sensed God’s presence as love, or mercy, or kindness, in that moment.”  Translate it into the phrase, “I am. . .”  In this way, we’ll build a story of how the divine is present among us, when we have eyes to see.  We’ll share our “glimpses” and shape our own witness.

Are you seeking new ways to worship?  Yearning for fresh expressions of an ancient tradition?  Are you hungry for authentic spiritual community?  Come, join us at OpenSpirit.  And all shall be well.  In fact, as Dame Julian would say, ‘All manner of things shall be well.’  Pray with us:  Come, Open Spirit, come!

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OpenSpirit Sunday Evening;  May 10, 2009;  7-8pm;  Performing Arts Center of MetroWest

Appearances of the Sacred:  Our Easter-season exploration of the holy around us takes shape as a celebration of Mother’s Day.

Spring Dance, Sugar Creek Quilters

Holy Piecing Toward Wholeness.

Quilts!  Join us on Mother’s Day evening, as we lift up an image of God drawn from one of the traditional ways women have expressed their creativity and caring.

In word and song, silence and story, we will encounter God as Quiltmaker, gathering the torn and scattered pieces of our lives, and creating of them wholeness and beauty.

We invite you to bring with you a favorite quilt, or another hand-made article to display!  There will be an opportunity, if you would like, to share its story with us as well.

OpenSpirit is a creative worship gathering in the Christian tradition.  If you are seeking spiritual community, if you are hungry for a deeper experience of Spirit, join us!  All are welcome!

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OpenSpirit Sunday Evening; April 26, 2009; 7-8pm

“The Masks We Wear”

A wise Scot, John Bell, suggests that our churches are too often like “gatherings of strangers,” people masked in ways that prevent us from a real knowing of who we are together with others.  It may well be true, for just this reason, that our longing to find the courage and clarity to drop the masks we put on — or those others seem to put on us — is a deep source of hope for us.  Tonight, we’ll explore masks, those that we choose to wear to keep us safe and those that we become accustomed to.

"Road to Emmaus," He Qi

We’ll hear an ancient story about a journey of friends who could not see a truth that was visible in their midst, perhaps because of the masks they had taken up in their fear and confusion.  We’ll put on masks, and consider what it means to keep them on — and how it feels to move among other masked persons.

We’ll also explore a poem by Bill Stafford, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other,” which begins:

“If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star. ”

Will we find the right god who can help us set our masks aside, and find the way “home” by the light of the star shining in the night sky to guide us?  Join us for music, meditation, song, prayer, and ritual as we explore what it means to be people called into the light and offered the courage to be ourselves and see others with a knowing that is freedom.

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OpenSpirit Friends!  On Sunday, April 19th, at 7:00 pm, we will begin our Easter season theme ‘Appearances of the Sacred’ with an Earth-Day celebration of the sacred in Creation.

We invite you to bring with you a brief poem or reading to share, focusing on the sacred in Creation.  Or bring an object from nature.  No pressure … just invitation!

Blessings to You!

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The Sacred, Appearing in Creation:  Sunday, April 19, 2009;7 – 8 pm

Sunday, April 19th, in recognition of Earth Day, we celebrate the sacred as it appears in Creation, springing forth all around us.  We rejoice in creativity – God’s, and our own.  People of The Rising … how does our resurrection faith shape our interaction with God’s Creation, and our calling to honor and sustain Creation?  OpenSpirit is an evening creative worship gathering in the Christian tradition.  Together, we search for the presence of God.  Come, be with us!

Appearances of the Sacred:  OpenSpirit Easter Season

Appearances of the sacred.  Holiness breaking through into everyday life.  God shows up.  All religious traditions seek to describe these experiences.  In these days after Easter, Christians tell stories of how Jesus appears.  And these stories tell very different tales.  The Risen One, his life renewed, transforms the lives of his disciples, stirring something in and among them that will leap and flame, come Pentecost.

In these days between Easter and Pentecost, we focus on how the sacred appears.  This word is deliberately ambivalent!  Does it refer to what breaks through the veil of obscurity into recognition?  Or does it suggest something that is not what it seems to be?  This double entendre shapes Gospel stories about Jesus’ appearances to his followers, strange accounts shaped at times by fear and confusion, at times by faith and joy.

In this season of new life, what does it mean to speak of the holy, breaking through the veil into recognition, or keeping distance from us?  Let us discern together what it means to be attentive to appearances of the sacred – in story and song, praise and prayer, creativity and the arts, shaped as always by the flow of jazz music.

Performing Arts Center of MetroWest:  www.pacmetrowest.org

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Women at the Tomb (1440-41) Fresco Convento di San Marco, Florence

Sunday, April 12, 2009 7:00 – 8:00 pm
MetroWest Performing Arts Center

The women went at dawn with fragrant spices to anoint Jesus in his tomb.  Instead of his beloved, broken body, they were the ones anointed with the message of his rising.

Jesus’ followers – women and men alike – were anointed to spread the good news of his rising; the triumph of love over the power of death.

OpenSpirit, Easter Evening.  A different way to ponder the meaning of The Rising.  As we light the lamps of evening, our hopes and fears reflect the mystery and awe of Easter dawn.  We gather as disciples, our own lives transformed by the power of God’s new life springing up in unexpected and miraculous ways.  Love is come again; let us lose ourselves in it.

So, come, people of the resurrection; let us gather.  With poem and song and painting, let us ponder.  The long day is over.  It is accomplished – Lent, our sojourn in the desert.  Maundy Thursday:  poignant, bittersweet; Good Friday:  piercing, thirsting.  The wonder of Easter morning, our singing triumphal.  But what of the evening?  On Easter evening, with what light do we look back at the meaning of the dawn?

How are you transformed by resurrection?  What is rising, in your life, in our world?  How are you anointed, in your own unique and precious way, to be an apostle – here and now, to spread the Good News?  Easter evening, we gather around the table, as we always do.  And Christ’s body is beloved and broken and risen and shared all at the same time.  And we are anointed with the sweet spice of new life.

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