Blog Archives

Rather than dump more of my own thoughts here, I want to share an article I read and appreciated recently - an interview with a Black spiritual director. Perhaps it will prompt you to seek out some of her work. The podcast that is linked directly below the interview is worth your time, as well. https://www.christiancentury.org/article/interview/centering-sacred-work-spiritual-direction-people-color

We had a lot of graduates this year! Three of our high school graduates - Nora Burrows, Nathan Cideciyan, and Nick Cideciyan - offer their reflections on where they've been, what comes next, and what the church has meant to them. Congratulations to them and to all of our graduates! Nora Burrows I am planning on going to Montgomery County Community College for a year and graduating with my Associate's degree in May of 2022. I will be working and doing freelance art in the meantime, so I definitely won't be short on things to do! After ...

One of the lovely things that has emerged in our church over the last year is a collaboration that crosses the globe, generation, gender, and more. Sitting at her childhood piano, one person records a song on her iPad and sends off an audio file by email. Having received it, the other person sits at his computer, scrolling through hundreds of thousands of images that he has taken over the years, looking for pictures that capture the feeling of the music. Kyoko Makino, a classically-trained pianist who has been our church accompanist for ...

We've been issuing an open invitation for more voices in worship. On May 23, Eli Krych took us up on that and read an original poem as our First Reading for the day. Stay Strong Some say you are weak. But no, you are powerful, you are strong, stay that way. Sometimes it is scary, stay strong. We are with you, your family is with you, God is with you. You are strong. You have courage. You can rise from the darkness because you are strong and powerful. Your courage brings light so you can end the dark and we will be there ...

If you go out into your yard, or a place where people have not sprayed chemicals on the grass, you might find tiny, beautiful, purple violets. If you pick some of these, you can make some super-cool, color-changing violet syrup. Here is a short video that will show you how to do this by Alexis Nicole (AKA the “Black Forager” - she’s also on Instagram) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLGdRoTuYLs   In this picture, Sarah and Sonja Noonan-Ngwane have been “foraging” - collecting violets and dandelions. (You can ...

As we marked the 51st celebration of Earth Day last month, and as we move ever-closer to irreversible climate catastrophe that disproportionately impacts low-income and communities of color, Joy Bergey, the Director of our Environmental Justice Center, co-authored a piece in the Chestnut Hill Local about a bold initiative that would make a difference. You can read the piece at https://chestnuthilllocal.com/stories/take-on-our-biggest-crises-with-30-million-solar-homes,17138. To learn more about the 30 Million Solar Homes Stimulus Package, ...

During lockdown last spring I began to take stock of my relationship with alcohol. Like an increasing number of Gen Xers, I was “sober curious” and had been flirting with the idea of going alcohol-free for some time. I was an occasional, social drinker in my 20s and 30s. My heavier drinking started when I hit middle age and became a parent. Motherhood transpired for me at the same time that I moved to the U.S. from the U.K., leaving behind a career and a lifestyle that I loved. Suburban stay-at-home parenting left (and still leaves) me ...

(I am large, I contain multitudes). - Walt Whitman Don’t worry; I’m not going to make you go find a copy of Leaves of Grass so you can puzzle your way through “Song of Myself.” If you feel motivated, you are perfectly free to send me a brief essay laying out your case for Whitman’s choice of punctuation here. Why parenthesis? The declaration seems bolder than a parenthetical comment. Do they represent the container of the multitudinous self? Does the ephemeral nature of parenthesis suggest the porousness of the self? Assignments are due on ...

In September 2011 Chestnut Hill United Church, along with about forty other congregations of different religions and cultures, brought the country’s newest faith-based community organization - POWER Interfaith - to birth. Initially created as “Philadelphians Empowered to Witness and Rebuild,” our work has jumped the boundaries of this city and moved across the state of Pennsylvania. We are now “Pennsylvanians Organized to Witness, Empower, and Rebuild.” (Good thing our city and our state both begin with “P”!) Ten years later, POWER has ...

Dear Friends, Though this past year has been a very challenging year to say the least, we are starting to see the light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel and have been fortunate to have seen light all along in our faith community. We found spiritual fellowship with a larger community through worshipping online. We celebrated the Tice family officially becoming whole. We celebrated new life through baptism. We celebrated and affirmed one of our beloved trans family members through Renaming. And we celebrated the gifts and the service of ...

The world may have been a little quieter with people shut inside, but my mind certainly hasn’t been. Maybe that feels true for you, as well. This poem from Marie Howe’s collection, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, has been speaking to me of late: Prayer by Marie Howe Every day I want to speak with you. And every day something more important calls for my attention—the drugstore, the beauty products, the luggage I need to buy for the trip. Even now I can hardly sit here among the falling piles of paper and clothing, the garbage trucks outside ...

Our Environmental Justice Center has been busy pushing for stronger public policy to rectify long-standing injustices that disproportionately hurt People of Color and those at the margins of our society. We're fighting hard in Harrisburg for action on climate change. We're advocating for the implementation of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which would force the reduction over time of carbon pollution from coal- and gas-fired power plants. Linda testified powerfully before the state on our behalf in December. Assuring safe ...

After choosing from my list of potential names I faced a new task: telling other people. As with most personal decisions, there is something vulnerable with sharing that decision with others. And with this, I was both sharing that I was no longer satisfied with my birth name and declaring that my name is Emery. I was never too worried about telling the church. I’ve been relatively open about my relationship with gender since I started coming so logically this wouldn’t be treated differently. It was more the logistics of telling a group vs ...

It was October, 2000. I had just moved to Philadelphia from Chicago with my husband Zolani, who had just accepted a job as professor at Haverford College, and our 3- and 4-year old toddlers, Sonja and Sarah. I was singing with the Anna Crusis Women’s Choir in a concert held in a little stone church in Chestnut Hill. Like most churches in which I’ve spent time, this one felt warm, welcoming, and just a little… “rustic.” The pews were arranged in a circle, and the objects in the space – the Jewish seder plate and a Muslim Quran on the altar ...

POWER Interfaith Has Helped Philadelphia Move Toward Policies That Protect Black and Brown Bodies Note: The following is adapted from information on POWER Interfaith's website. You can read the original at https://powerinterfaith.org/campaigns/livefree/ The Headlines: Because of the work of POWER and our allies, Philadelphia is one step closer to establishing a new watchdog group for its police department. City Council is moving on legislation demanded by voters in November in a ballot initiative to create the Citizens Police Oversight ...

Since we've had so many new faces in church lately, we thought it was about time you meet someone whose face you usually don't see: Karen Bruhin, our church administrator. Karen has been our administrator since 2013, so she has definitely learned how our denominations work singularly and together here at the church. Like everything else, many of our regular office activities changed when the pandemic hit. Instead of having Karen in the office 5 days a week, she’s currently only in 3 days - Monday, Wednesday and Friday. She works ...

Please note: This article contains sexually explicit content. In our American culture, sex is pervasive in entertainment, media, and advertising. Yet so many have difficulty openly discussing sexuality. Our bodies were designed for pleasure, yet we have been indoctrinated by a culture that tells us that pleasure, desire, and sex are dangerous and taboo. Especially Christians. Especially women. And most especially,  Christian women. As a minister I want to help challenge cultural norms surrounding sexual health. I believe that sex-negative ...

Here are some ways our church celebrated Christmas in the old days, according to notes from the Sunday school board: There was a Committee appointed called the Committee on Candy and Oranges. There was also a Decorating Committee. Each Sunday school class was allowed to decorate with a budget of up to $3.20. There was also a child care person, but back then it was called the cradle roll. By 1922 each Sunday school scholar received, at the Christmas party, a half pound box of candy (which was worth $0.22) and an orange. Prizes of books and ...

When white supremacist "Zoom-bombers" tried to stop us from worshipping, church member and Council co-chair Leslie Hamilton forged a powerful poem-prayer in response. You can’t take us out with your chat your hate speech Your white supremacy Your ill-conceived disruption plan Your unsuccessful plot to rob us of unity and focus and comfort and certainty Your … HACKING BY WHITE SUPREMACY Hate Speech cutting into chat like scissors, scraping to etch pain like acid Acting out anger at solidarity Coming in our midst ...

This reflection begins where all theological reflections these days perhaps should: TikTok. Check out this TikTok video from British comedian Gina Barrett, who appears as an animated talking sun rambling about being late to work, going home early, and maybe coming back tomorrow. It’s too real, right? I don’t know about you, but I’ve noticed that with staying home more this winter season due to coronavirus, I’ve been even more attuned than usual to just how early the sun goes down in December. My phone and computer’s “night” setting is ...