Vigils for Our Immigrant Siblings

ICE raids are increasing in Palm Beach County. On Monday there were a number of raids roght inb Lake Worth. Two of our justice minitry partners, PEACE and The Guatemalan Maya Center allerted us and some of our church members were able to go and be witnesses.

This Wednesday night Susan Peterson and Nelson Stone attended a training for witnesses. Witnesses are crucial during ICE raids for documenting potential rights violations, ensuring accountability by recording agent actions, verifying details like badge numbers, and providing evidence for legal challenges, while also offering community support and legal aid mobilization, acting as an essential check on power, especially for U.S. citizens filming in public. 

Tonight at 5:00 PM, there will be a prayer vigil at the Guatemalan Maya Center, 1776 Lake Worth Road, sponsored by the GMC, Indivisible Immigration Coalition, and the Florida Immigration Commission. And on Saturday 12/12 at 10:30AM PEACE will be holding a prayer vigil at the Florida Highway Patrol headquarters in Lantana. 

This Sunday, we continued our Advent series, What Do You Fear?: Insisting on Hope This Advent. 

This week we jumped ahead in the story and imagined John the Baptist in prison with his disciples coming to Jesus with questions. 

John the Baptist sends word to Jesus from his prison cell, asking, “Are you the one?” John has spent his entire life preparing the way for Jesus, but from his prison cell, now certainly facing death, the future looks grim. Like John, even the most confident of us wonder from time to time: Is all this work worth it? Does anything I do matter? Am I on the right track? We can’t always see the fruits of our labor, yet God is at work anyway. How might we, like Jesus and Isaiah, point to the places where God is at work in our world? How might we keep hope alive? You can watch the service here.

One of the many sources for the content of this series is the book Hope: A User's Manual by MaryAnn McKibben Dana. You can see a summary of her explanation of "What Hope Is Not" here and her thoughts on "What Hope Is" here.

If you would like to chat about the series between Sundays, you can join the discussion group here.

There is a devotional booklet that goes along with the series. You can pick up a hard copy on Sunday or fill out this form and we will mail one to you.

Our friends at A Sanctified Art have provided a special e-reader version of this year’s Advent devotional, which you can access on your computer and mobile devices: online.flippingbook.com/view/361593675/ (In order to protect their work, please refrain from sharing this link or posting it on social media.)

Potluck This Sunday

Join us this Sunday after worship for our monthly potluck lunch. Bring a favorite dish and a placesetting from home to reduce waste and we will share a meal together.

Annual Cookie Sale

Bring your cash with you on Sunday 12/21 for our Women's Fellowship Nnual Cookie Sale after our worship service!

For our Advent and Christmas offering this year, we are supporting the Guatemalan Maya Center, an organization that is doing amazing work in caring for and protecting the immigrant community in Palm Beach County. Among the many ways they are doing this is educating the community about how to respond and protect themselves when approached by ICE agents and reuniting children with parents who have been deported. You can join Lake Worth UCC in giving here. Every dollar collected will be matched by the church with the total amount being given to GMC in January. You can give securely online here.

Join us Sunday evening, 12/21 at 7:00 PM via Zoom as we gather, on the longest night of the year, to hold space for one another, rembering that not everyone is joyful during the Christmas season and the all of have some grief and pain we are carrying in the midst of holiday joy. You can join us here.

Resources for Staying Centered, Grounded, and Connected

Our friends over at Sojourners magazine have published a fantastic Holiday Survival Guide - a collection of their articles on the holidays from a faith and justice perspective. You can find it here.

Conitnuing today, we are invited to join the United Church of Christ in a worship series, Finding Joy in Advent. 

🌟 Join us December 4th @ 3:30 PM Eastern, for Finding Joy in Advent Series, Part I: "Joy as Resistance," with Rev. Dr. Cheryl A. Lindsay, UCC Minister for Worship & Theology, and Rev. Dr. Neal D. Presa, author of "Worship, Justice and Joy: A Liturgical Pilgrimage."

🌟 The season of Advent invites us to embody joy. Yet, the times in which we live may challenge joyful experiences, practices, and encounters.

🌟 Worship helps bridge recognition of the current reality with hope for the future...making space for JOY. We hope you'll join us for some joy this Advent season!

No registration is required. The series will be braocast on YouTube here.

The Hope Circle Book Club

Lake Worth UCC Member Johanna Castillo is facilitating a new group, The Hope Circle Book Club. They meet every other Thursday evening in person in our office and online. They are currently discussing The Book of Hope by Jane Goodall. You can find more information here.

Together: On the Brink of Everything

Our Together group which meets on Wednesday nights at 6:30 will be taking two weeks off and begin meeting again on Wednesday, October 22nd when we will spend a few weeks discussing Parker Palmer's book On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity, and Getting Old.

From beloved and bestselling author Parker J. Palmer (Let Your Life Speak, The Courage to Teach, Healing the Heart of Democracy), comes a beautiful book of reflections on what we can learn as we move closer to "the brink of everything."

Drawing on eight decades of life -- and his career as a writer, teacher, and activist -- Palmer explores the questions age raises and the promises it holds. "Old," he writes, "is just another word for nothing left to lose, a time to dive deep into life, not withdraw to the shallows."

But this book is not for elders only. It was written to encourage adults of all ages to explore the way their lives are unfolding. It's not a how-to-do-it book on aging, but a set of meditations in prose and poetry that turn the prism on the meaning(s) of one's life, refracting new light at every turn.

We will be discussing Chapters 6 and 7 next Wedensday night on site at 1415 North K St and via Zoom. After two weeks off, we will resume meeting on January 7th, discussing Hope: A User's Manual.

Spiritual Direction 

Lake Worth UCC member Stacey Harter is a seminary student focusing on spiritual direction. She is currently open to taking new directees. You can learn more about her and spiritual direction at Nautilus Spiritual Direction.

It is easy to give online at our website lakeworthucc.org/give.

Our app is now back up and running on all of your favorite app stores. You can watch services, keep up with what we are doing, and connect with one another. Go to our app page to find the links to download.

Join us at 10:00 on Thursday morning as we gather to catch up with one another! Currently we meet only on Zoom - you can join us here. We will resume in person meetings later in the year.