Dear friends,
As we peer toward the end of June (can you believe it?!), we are nearing the end of what has come to be known widely in the United States as Pride Month - a time to reflect on the history of those in the LGBTQ community and their stories of resilience, to bring awareness of the rights for which the community continues to struggle and fight today, and to bless the future, celebrating all that makes God's creation diverse and beautiful. This Sunday, we will be celebrating Pride Sunday in worship. It'll be an opportunity for us to give God thanks for the inclusive community we are called to create, to affirm each person gathered as beloved and important, and to be challenged to consider deeply how we might continue expanding our welcome and allyship to the LGBTQ community. While not all of us consider ourselves a part of the LGBTQ community, I suspect you have a story or two about a time when you felt excluded or disregarded. I wonder what came of your experience of exclusion? Did you learn anything about your community, or perhaps something about yourself in that process? How did that experience shape your understanding of the world and/or your own identity or practices?
As we prepare to gather and celebrate the brilliant diversity of God's people, I invite us to wonder together whose voices in the community have yet to be heard. I wonder who we welcome or how an openness to expanding our beliefs or practices might help our own efforts and impacts in being a community that strives for justice, liberation and healing.
Oh, and if you're feeling extra festive, rainbow outfits and/or brightly colored-clothing for worship are strongly encouraged this Pride Sunday for worship!
I'm proud to be a part of this inclusive community we call FCC Tacoma and I look forward to worshipping God and pondering what all the Spirit brings to us as we gather in joy and love!
Yours queerly,
Pastor Doug
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Among our Concerns
The Alvarado family as they recover as a household from COVID.
Charlene Housman, recovering from COVID.
Steve Johnson
We lift up the loved ones of neighbor of Bill McDaniel's, Emmett Moore, who died this week unexpectedly.
Daniel Davis, friend of Susan Pearson
Rachel Morford, daughter of Mary Morford
We pray for our homebound friends, Helen Bosley, Elaine Jonson, Harry and Margaret Lobberegt, Jane Nelson, Marylu and Thomas Mills and Jim and Kay Thompson.
Among our local and global community concerns:
We pray for individuals and communities living in states across the U.S. whose access to healthcare has been stripped do to the Supreme Court's decision to reverse Roe V. Wade in securing safe access to abortion during the first two trimesters of a pregnancy.
We lift up all in Ukraine in harm’s way, and refugees around the world seeking safety and dignity. Our faith compels us to welcome the immigrant and the refugee as a sibling of our own; we pray for the hearts and minds of all to open and for will and clarity to work together to mend the many broken systems of government and society to make this place more like the one God intended for all of God’s people.
We pray for the 66 current residents living at the village on 6th and Orchard, including 20 of whom are children and youth. We pray for peace in the midst of the many circumstances in which those experiencing houselessness endure. We also pray for a renewed sense of urgency in our city, neighborhood, and congregation in our work to secure housing as a right for all human beings, full stop.
We lift up all who are left in the wake of the tragedies brought to a fore by this country’s complex of white superiority and gun violence. We pray for all whose lives have been forever changed, and for all who dwell in fear. We ask for the Spirit to continue stirring in the hearts of all whose power it is to change the toxic laws, theologies and worldviews that perpetuate the subjugation of human life for profit.
This week, we lift up our Global Ministries partners in Italy.
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