From Rev. Rob - Celebrating our 390th Birthday…and More!!

Dear First Parish,

I hope you’ll join us this Sunday for a special celebration of our congregation’s 390th Anniversary! On February 1, 1636 our religious ancestors met for the first time to call our congregation into being. We’ll celebrate after service on Sunday with lunch and birthday cake!

My message this Sunday is called On Holy Ground. It’s inspired by our spiritual ancestor Henry David Thoreau, who challenged the prevailing religious views of his time (and our own) byinsisting that, “Heaven is under our feet.” With these words, Thoreau encourages us in our religious search to “get our head out of the clouds,” as it were, and discover the sacred all around us. This Sunday we’ll explore what it looks like to build our spirituality not from thin air, but from the solid matter of our beautiful world. I hope you’ll join me, Sophia and the First Parish Choir for this special service.

Finally, building on last Sunday’s powerful witness to the inhumane events unfolding in Minnesota, we invite you after service to hear from First Parish members Susan Leslie and Bruce Pritchard, who recently returned from a weekend of faith-based protests in Minneapolis. Susan and Bruce will share what they witnessed and learned there, and how we can respond.

Friends, we live in a world that is too beautiful to praise with just one voice, and too broken to mend with just one pair of hands. That’s why we need oneanother, and communities like First Parish.

I look forward to us being together this Sunday in the midst of difficult times.