Grace News October 3, 2023

Announcements

October Schedule

Grocery Cards

Save the Dates!

10/29—Fall Foliage Day at Kirchenwald from 1-6 pm. Cost $15 per person. Please register online.
11/5– Daylight Savings Time Ends—-Make sure you change your clocks before you go to bed on the 4th!
12/3—Advent Fair—This year we are hosting the Advent Fair during Sunday School! More information coming shortly.

Beethoven’s Ninth!

Our Director of Music, Dr. David McConnell, wears many other hats when he is not focused on plannng, preparing, and leading music for our worship. For over 10 years he has lead two groups in the Reading, PA area – Vox Philia and The Berks Sinfonietta. The two groups combine in just a few weeks for Ludwig von Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 – “Choral”.  A number of Grace members and choristers are joining with “Vox” – over 70 singers together! – to give this “BIG” work its due!  

The performance takes place Saturday, Oct. 14, at 7:30 p.m. at Immanuel United Church of Christ, located at 99 S. Waverly St., Shillington, PA 19607.

General admission for this concert is $18 when you buy online and $20 at the door. Student and children tickets are $5 each. We are encouraged to buy tickets online, as a full house is expected! You can do so here. A list of online ticket holders will be at the door – Simply tell us your name or show your receipt.

Outreach

Gun Violence Harm Reduction

When discussing gun violence it is important to start with some data. Here is a graph of how gun violence manifests itself in our US life. We were  not aware that suicide makes up even more of the gun violence than homicides (this includes mass homicides). This is one reason it is so important to be aware of mental health signs of those around you and also to store guns securely.  

For more information—Everytown For Gun Safety https://www.everytown.org/

                                       — Mom’s Demand Action https://momsdemandaction.org/

Christian Formation

Tapestry of Pages

Our group is currently reading and discussing See No Stranger by Valarie Kaur. Our discussion includes outside works that relate to welcoming those around us and seeing the world with a sense of wonder. One of the poems that we are reflecting on is Kindness by Naomi Shihbab Nye. We’d like to share the poem with you so that may join in on our reflecting about how we can be more welcoming to strangers both as individuals and as a community.

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

From Words Under the Words: Selected Poems.
 

Our Grace Family

Thank You

We would like to thank Pastor for his prayer and hospital visit before Lou’s surgery. Also, thanks for the phone calls, emails and texts from Grace parishioners.—Lou & Joyce Loiseau