• Please complete your child’s registration form using the link below. It helps us make sure we have the information we need to make Sunday mornings great for everyone.

Infant-Preschool – Nursery Information Form

Grades preK-5 – Stepping Stones Information Form

• We need your help, too! Please sign up to volunteer twice during the fall with Stepping Stones. It’s a great way to be part of what’s happening and helps us provide a wonderful experience for the kids each week.

Volunteer Sign-Up – Sign up as a “helper” or talk to me about becoming a teacher.

Youth Groups

Junior Forum (5 PM) and Forum (6:30 PM)* will think about the ways God can provide us guidance and support during times of transition, like, for example, the start of a new programming year together! *To accommodate more schedules, Forum will now meet 6:30 PM – 7:30 PM on Sundays.

Junior Forum: 5 PM – 6:30 PM

Forum: 6:30 PM – 8 PM

RSVP is required by mid-day on September 6 to Rev. Maeve. RSVP HERE! (While you’re there, please also make sure your youth has an updated info form!)

We’re looking for a caring, dependable adult to serve as Nursery Supervisor on Sunday mornings during worship. This is a wonderful opportunity to help create a warm, safe, and welcoming space for our youngest members and their families. If you or someone you know would enjoy working with young children and being part of our church community, read more about the position here or contact Maggie Keeler (maggie@fcc-winchester.org) for more information.

As they have grown, Youth Villages now assembles the backpacks at their Woburn office…and we can help them by providing supplies.  Here’s how it works.

• Youth Villages has supplied this link  https://a.co/0gTLVn0U to their wish list.  You can help a Youth Villages kid by purchasing some items on this list. Amazon will then send those directly to Youth Villages in Woburn.
• Alternatively, you can buy the same item somewhere else and deliver it to Youth Villages at 12 Gill St in Woburn.
• Items need to be to Youth Villages by August 3rd

Please reach out to Betsy Goodell (or call/text 781-389-8745) with any questions or if you need help with the drop off.

Thanks for making that first day of school happy for some kids who need a kind hand at their back.

Halfway through our week here, we have already experienced extraordinary grace, beauty, suffering, and compassion.

The reservation — The Rez — is a hard place, by design. Centuries of genocide, oppression, and deprivation have made sure it is so, and continue to this day. This is one of the poorest places in the United States, where many people live without running water, heat, electric power, or adequate — let alone healthy — food. The people here are suffering economically, physically, mentally, and spiritually. There is every form of injustice. And yet we are hearing from our Lakota relatives that there is a renaissance unfolding. People are re-learning their heritage: their language, traditions, songs and ceremonies and prayers. As we offer our labor to build and deliver beds, safety ramps, and outhouses — outhouses! — they generously reciprocate with their life stories, both trauma and hope. It feels important to contribute, as Nancy put it, concrete interventions to problems that go way beyond the concrete. And it feels equally important to gratefully embrace our Lakota relatives as beloved family, to join with them in heartfelt prayer for peace, justice, and an end to White Supremacy.

As hard as it is, The Rez is also a profoundly beautiful and sacred place, as Branda captured in her poem, and as you can see in some of the numerous photographs we have taken. In our nightly closing session, we have reflected on how each day’s experiences have kindled our spirits with gratitude and wonder. There is so much more to share with you, much of which will take us time and discernment to fully process.

Thank you for sending us here with your love and support. Please continue to pray that God will work through all of us — those of us here in Pine Ridge this week and all of you at home — to re-member creation, to heal and make whole that which humans have broken.

In love —

Julianne, on behalf of Andrew, Branda, Henry, Jodie, Maggie, Michaela, Nancy, Petra, Sonia, and Rev. Will

Badlands by Branda Wilhoite

Painted desert,

desiccated to fading,

Crumbly underfoot,

Framed by wide, blue skies.

A ribbon of green, swaying grasses

Swathed at its feet

A dry creek bed- the memory of a river-

A trickle, a shrinking puddle,

In the hot afternoon sun.

Rock spindles stand like tall sentries

Guarding “The Bowl”

Unlikely life- sage, paintbrush, and thistle,

Breathe hope into this desolate,

Beautiful place.

Re-Member

To make whole that which is broken.

Please join us for a Church Bike Ride this Saturday, June 20, at 1:00 PM. We’ll meet at Michelle & Rich Crawford’s house in East Arlington at 1:00 and bike to Lexington Center via the Minuteman Bike Path. Once in Lexington Center, we’ll take a break, re-group, and then bike back to the starting point, so that’s about 11 miles round-trip.

All ages and abilities are welcome. We’ll have that stop in Lexington Center where we’ll re-group, so you may go at whatever pace feels comfortable to you!

The Crawfords live at 85 Lake Street, Unit 2, in Arlington, but their driveway entrance is on Lakehill Avenue and there’s plenty of free parking on that street so, if you’re driving over, please park there – just off Lake Street.

There’s a couple of Blue Bike stations nearby if you’d like to rent a bike for the ride. Please arrive early if you plan to rent a Blue Bike.

Last but not least, we’ll be serving a coconut chocolate chip cake made by Karen Lauterwasser at the end of the ride!

Contact person is Michelle Crawford

Text/Call: (781) 367-7725

Email

Please feel free to call, text, or email with any questions.