LENT: A tiMe to prepare
we are open and affirming but our doors are still closed due to the danger to our vulnerable members. pastoral services are available by phone and facebook.
GUERNEVILLE COMMUNITY CHURCH - UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST
12060 Highway 116, Guerneville, CA
Mailing address:
PO Box 765, Guerneville, CA 95446
Pam Tinnin, Pastor 707-921-8078
We are currently having church at home
during this difficult time. Pastor Pam is preaching
in her kitchen and we are watching at home.
See video below.
"Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.” Ruth Bader Ginsburg
"Though I may not be here with you, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe. In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring.” John Lewis
FEBRUARY 28, 2021
Pilgrims on a Journey
pamela j tinnin
Pastor Pam Tinnin, Guerneville Community Church-UCC, Guerneville, California. With the pandemic restrictions still with us, I present my weekly messages from home. This week I found inspiration in an odd place. I found an old news article from 2016 that reported that New Zealand had changed their Constitution to officially recognize that all living creatures are sentient beings. As to what that means, an April 2020 article by Jane Kotzmann, described it as “Sentient beings experience wanted emotions like happiness, joy, and gratitude, and unwanted emotions in the form of pain, suffering, and grief.” From my earliest years I loved animals. In Sunday School as a five-year-old I was greatly relieved that Noah saved two of every kind of animal. Even then I believed that they were sentient beings although I didn’t know the term until much later in life. I also believe that the creatures that share our planet, whether domestic or not, have much to teach us. At times it may be something they do that echoes in our memory and points to a truth that we remember and recognize later.
Thanks to all who donate to keep our church alive.
without fundraisers and weekly offerings it is a challenge to keep up with ongoing expenses. we appreciate your support.
donate below:
See Pastor Rebecca's recently posted rant on the last page.
Archives of Rebecca's rants and Pam's sermons are found on this website.
Participate in our year round fundraiser, our premium nut and candy sale. The full catalog is online at https://gcc.terrilynn.com
GCC receives 30% of the sales.
“A Vision” by Wendell Berry
If we will have the wisdom to survive,
to stand like slow-growing trees
on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it,
if we will make our seasons welcome here,
asking not too much of earth or heaven,
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live
here, their houses strongly placed
upon the valley sides, fields and gardens
rich in the windows. The river will run
clear, as we never know it,
and over it, birdsong like a canopy.
On the levels of the hills will be
green meadows, stock bells in noon shade.
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down
the old forest, an old forest will stand,
its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields.
In their voices they will hear a music
risen out of the ground. They will take
nothing from the ground they will not return,
whatever the grief at parting. Memory,
native to this valley, will spread over it
like a grove, and memory will grow
into legend, legend into song, song
into sacrament. The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling
light. This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its possibility.
Poet, essayist, farmer, and novelist Wendell Berry was born on August 5, 1934, in Newcastle, Kentucky. He attended the University of Kentucky at Lexington where he received a B.A. in English in 1956 and an M.A. in 1957. Berry is the author of more than thirty books of poetry, essays, and novels. He has taught at New York University and at the University of Kentucky. Among his honors and awards are fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, a Lannan Foundation Award, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He married Tanya Amyx in 1957; they have two children. Wendell Berry lives on a farm in Port Royal, Kentucky.