 Greetings friends! Welcome to CTUCC Conference Cast for March 6, 2014, the regular podcast of the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ. Whoever you are and wherever you may be on life's journey at this very moment, you are welcome here. We begin this week's conference cast with this meditation from the Reverend Eric Anderson, Minister of Communications and Technology, and your podcast host. One of the revised common lectionary suggestions for Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Chapter 6 in Paul's letter to the church in Corinth. He entreats them to be reconciled to God who has done so much to reach out to us in Christ. As a result he says, we are as dying and see we are alive, as punished and yet not killed, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing and yet possessing everything. For some years I have taken on a special spiritual practice for Lent in the spirit of the traditional fast, and so one of my annual challenges as Ash Wednesday approaches is what will it be this year? In some years I have given up a pleasure or a stressor. I truly enjoyed the year I gave up anxiety for Lent. In other years I have taken on an activity or a discipline such as a daily exercise program. I generally hope that these will have an effect on my life in the rest of the year, and while they generally do, I can't say that they guide me as thoroughly then as they did during Lent itself. I still get anxious, even if it's less often, and I'm afraid there is sadly little evidence of an exercise program in my day beyond climbing the stairs regularly to the coffee maker. Two things I know about my Lent in practice. I cannot repeat a previous year's discipline successfully. It has never worked. Second, it is important to me that I don't make a big deal of my practice in public. I don't put on metaphorical sackcloth and ashes. I strive, as Jesus recommended in Matthew 6.17, to fast with a cheerful countenance. This year though, I will give my Lent in discipline to the public eye. Because my chosen task this year is to raise up, via social networking, surprise, surprise, a daily celebration of the grace of God. It's hardly new or original to me, and it runs the risk of false piety of the Pollyanna variety, but this is an important time for me to make this particular choice. My Aunt Sonia Kirk died at the end of January, and with the rest of my family and her wide circles of friends, I am grieving. There is a raw and painful gap in my soul, in our souls. It will take time, far more than the short month that has passed, to heal it. And that makes this daily celebration a real challenge for me. It will be an effort to see that it has not become a spiritual anesthetic, but to make it a deep appreciation of God's grace in the midst of a broken world. It will require discipline to move my eyes about from the all-too-present images of tragedy with which I, with which we, are so familiar. And it will demand my attention to the positive forces active in the world, those which confront the forces of evil. As a pastor, I always favored the Ash Wednesday formula, turn away from your sins, believe the good news, as my fingers made the cross with ashes on a worshipper's hand or forehead. And thus this year's Lenten Discipline. Because in brief, I challenged myself to believe the good news. Here is a prayer for this week. By whatever means, oh God, your children come to you in this season or in any other season. May each one of us find you and your grace at the close of our search. May we believe the good news in the blood and the bone, the heart and the soul, the hands and the feet. Amen. In the news this week. The Twitterverse offered a snapshot of last weekend's Super Saturday experience, which brought over 650 of us from both the Massachusetts and Connecticut conferences to Ludlow, Massachusetts for a day of workshops and the keynote address of author and historian Diana Butler-Bass. The adjectives included inspiring and amazing. One Connecticut pastor wrote, Diana Butler-Bass left me tweetless, didn't want to miss a word. And it certainly didn't hurt that the keynote speaker herself declared, thanks mass and C-T-U-C-C, you rock. Butler-Bass's address emphasized the new dynamics of the American religious landscape, which she believes indicate a fourth great awakening. In every awakening previous in North American history, and then really every awakening that you can find through church history over the last thousand years, they always have the same result. And that is the church or the faith community winds up with a bigger table at the end of an awakening than when it began. There are always new and different people who are sitting in a circle. An awakening has come through its progression and is fondly manifested in our communities and in our structures and in our politics. It's always bigger rather than smaller. At the close of her morning sermon, which had been accompanied by a set of images, landscapes and portraits on a great screen, the image changed to show one single blank slide. Like communities all over the state and the nation, there are plenty of residents of East Haven who find it difficult to make ends meet. Catherine Mallory, a member of the first congregational church UCC, better known as Old Stone Church, and now a member in discernment of the New Haven East consociation, did the head and leg work to bring a discounted grocery service to the town and then found herself having to do it all over again when the first ministry went out of business. Today the church is the first and only host site for family table food ministries, which allows members and residents to stretch their limited resources with reduced prices on food. Conference Minister the Reverend Kent J. Silotti returned to the video sphere yesterday with a new edition of Vantage Point. Be welcomed yours truly as the guest for the Ash Wednesday program, where we discussed what Henry Nowan called the gentle and demanding time of Lent. So we are finding ways to deepen our relationship with God during this season of Lent. There are various ways that's done, some in writing, some in reflection, some in prayer, some in giving alms, a word that we don't talk about very much, but a way of making contributions to those who are in need of some support. Among the topics we raised, the new spirited Wednesday weekly devotional, which premiered the same day, and will feature spiritual writing from clergy and lay people around the conference, and the Lenten carbon fast, which summons us to repentance and a new life of caring attentively for the planet Earth. Last Sunday the First Church of Christ in Farmington, UCC held a special afternoon service in remembrance and celebration of the Amistad event. When an American Revenue Vessel hailed the Cuban schooner la Amistad in 1839, they discovered that a group of formerly enslaved mendee had escaped their shackles and taken control of the vessel in an attempt to sail it back home. Connecticut Congregationalists were among those who rallied to the Africans' defense, and many of them were housed in Farmington before the courts affirmed their freedom, after which the Amistad Committee turned to the new work of raising funds to send them back to Sierra Leone. Are you committed to the partnerships we have together, to the call we have received, asked the day's preacher, the Reverend Dr. Maritza Angulo de Gonzalez, pastor of Mananciao de Gracia, UCC in New Britain? To promote God's justice, and to trust God in the process, our commitment will bring us to the final step. Visit our website for more stories, including an invitation to this summer's Craigville Colloquy, which in July will take up the topic of creation as theology and ecology. You'll find that along with all the current headlines at ctucc.org slash news. It's crazy cold out, Tim. I know, Ann. I can't even feel my toes. But you know what I'm really psyched for? What, sledding down the hill on an old camp mattress? I'm really totally excited for summer at Silver Lake. I can't wait for those kids to come down the driveway ready to take the plunge and spend a week at their new favorite place in the world. And even if summer, not so sure, I'm excited for them, too. Because they don't even know yet what a great time is in store for them. Oh, songs are going to sing, all the swimming. Toasting marshmallows, all the ways they'll just get to be themselves and be accepted. And make new friends. We can't wait for you to come to Silver Lake. So sign up today, www.silverlakect.org. Come to the place that can change your life. Really, this summer, Silver Lake. We can't wait. A workshop on community and church gardens will be held on March 8th in Vernon. A series of webinars on the new resource Children's Ministry in the Way of Jesus will begin on March 10th. Stepping Stones takes up the challenges of the pastoral care of youth on March 19th in Sutherington. Silver Lake's maple sugaring weekend for young people in grades 6 through 8 will be March 21st through 23rd. Tapping trees, boiling sap, and renewing a sense of the sweetness of God's creation. Stepping Stones holds a workshop on sacred dance on March 25th in Sutherington. The New England Women's Celebration will be held on March 28th through 30th in Portland, Maine, and you can register at uccwomencelebration.org. Learn about fossil fuel divestment on March 29th in Hamden. The Spring Women's Spirit Retreat of Yoga and Sacred Chant will be held at Silver Lake the weekend of April 4th through 6th. See the film Gasland, part two about the risks of hydraulic fracturing or fracking in Sutherington on April 11th. Spring Action Weekend, which prepares Silver Lake Conference Center for the summer program, is April 25th through the 27th. That's also the weekend of the Awakenings Conference in Holyoke, Massachusetts. The Farmington Valley Association and Simply Smiles are teaming up for a mission trip to the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Reservation in South Dakota, beginning May 3rd. Silver Lake will host an open house for those interested in learning more about its summer program on May 4th. And by all means come then, but make sure to visit SilverLakeCT.org ahead of time to find out about summer offerings and to register. Mark your calendars now for May 17th, the 4th annual Youth Revival, to be held this year at Dixwell Avenue UCC in New Haven. And golfers, go make sure your clubs are ready for the 8th annual Silver Lake Golf Tournament on June 3rd in Waterbury. You can always learn more about what's coming up in the Connecticut Conference by visiting us at ctucc.org slash events. We end today's conference cast with these words from the Reverend Maxwell Grant, Senior Minister of Second Congregational Church UCC in Greenwich. Receiving ashes can feel like a performance to some, but we need to remember how grounded it is in a truth we might just as soon forget. And that brings this conference cast to a close. Thanks to you for listening and to GarageBand for our music. Primary funding for conference cast comes from your congregation's gifts to our church's wider mission, basic support, changing lives to the United Church of Christ. This is Eric Anderson, the Minister of Communications and Technology for the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ, praying that your days this week may be filled with the presence, the guidance, and the grace of God.