Grace Waves

Friends and Fellow Geologians:

The current difficulty is that the natural world is seen primarily for human use, not as a mode of sacred presence primarily to be communed with in wonder and beauty and intimacy.  The natural world remains a commodity to be bought and sold, not a sacred reality to be venerated.
—Thomas Berry

Earth Day/Family Service:  This Sunday we get to celebrate our Children, all the Animals and the beauty of Creation!  Christina Berg will be our Guest Musician.  We will experience only delight!  Bring your children, grandchildren and friends.  The Youth Group meets at Peace after worship.
“An absence of a sense of the sacred is the basic flaw in many of our efforts at ecologically or environmentally adjusting our human presence to the natural world.  It has been said, “We will not save what we do not love.”  It is also true that we will neither love nor save what we do not experience as sacred.”
Last Weekend at Peace
Saturday:  Korean Language School in the morning;  Council Retreat at the Interfaith Peace Center in Antioch; then an Honors Recital/Advanced Students – California Music Teachers’ Association, CCC Branch (9 Teachers and 25 Students – stunning performances); Community Jazz Series with the Leon Joyce Quartet (organ, vibes, drums and sax – a taste of heaven).
Sunday:  Worship/Homily – “Entering the Ecozoic Age – Care for our Common Home”/Forum; Early Communion Class; Chromatica Concert (Salieri, Dello Joio, Mascagni, Mancini, Bocelli)
Each event lifted up beauty and joy; both days…300 – 400 participants; may all Peace Friends feel pride in the profound quality and variety of spiritual and cultural events we provide!
  “If, as geologian Fr. Thomas Berry says, we have entered the ‘ecozoic age,’ it is important that global spirituality reflects and fosters a new sense of the sacrality of the natural world and of human identity within it.”
 Over 100 World Religious Leaders will sign the Interfaith Climate Change Statement on April 22 encouraging the United Nations to enact the decisions made at the Paris Eco-Summit.
 Keep in your prayers:  Joan Strawn, Fred, Pr. Bob, Linda, Jim, Ruth, Gun, Roy, Paul, our Early Communion Class; Sunday School Teachers, Family Service Celebrations; the people of Ecuador and Japan; those already suffering the consequences of climate change; refugees.
Looking Ahead:  The Council invites you to our May 1 Forum when they will present “Highlights and Priorities from our Congregational Survey”.  Analyzing the content of our February Survey was the focus of our recent Council Retreat.  Please join in the discussion.  Also:  St. Francis Blessing of the Animals – October 2.  Inform Greg Grebe of your willingness to assist.
The Largest Humanitarian Crisis since WWII:  Sunday, April 24^th from  5:30 to 7:30pm at Danville Congregational Church we will have an opportunity to learn more about the crisis in Syria that has caused so many people to flee for their lives. Three national leaders of the Syrian American Council will be speaking at this important gathering.  Free and refreshments will follow.
Last Sunday I referenced Dave and Ceil’s encouragement to think of the Earth as “oatmeal” rather than solid.  After worship Mark Miller suggested we think of the cosmos as a “spider web” – lacey but utterly interconnected.
“Let nature ‘bring you to your senses’ – experience the naked vitality of life emerging all around you.  Each particular thing is an incarnate word, each a vibrant koan expressing its presence and ‘suchness’ as it is.  It is most important and urgent that we that we see, become fully aware, and experience what is actually here:  not what is presented by people and society, but what has been given by God.”
Easter Blessings,
Pr. Steve