 Greetings friends! Welcome to CTUCC Conference Cast for January 23, 2015, 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 Tim Hughes, Executive Director of Silver Lake Conference Center. Tim has this verse from Psalm 46 in his heart. Be still and know that I am God. I am exalted among the nations. I am exalted in the earth. Imagine you're in the waterfall chapel at Silver Lake. If you've never been, then imagine this. A forest of mature trees, mostly white pines, envelops you. The stream nearby gurgles gently. Sunlight streams down between the branches, highlighted by a slight mist in the air. Others sit around you on rustic log benches on a warm summer morning. A primitive cross hangs on the tree at the front of this peaceful little clearing. Your leader asks you to choose a one-inch spot on the ground by your feet and look closely at it. You think about all the amazing miracles represented there. Tiny life forms of wildly different varieties are there, some too small to be seen. Dirt created over centuries of rotted leaves and washed down from the hills above. Roots help hold the dirt in place and also nurture the trees above you, which provide the very air you breathe in as you smell the damp, earthy fragrance surrounding you. Roots that also provide a potential trip and stumble that help teach each of us to be careful, to pay attention to where we're going. A near-miss fall that provides comic relief as we each remember moments when we ourselves stumbled and were caught or recovered too quickly, looking around and thinking, did anyone see that? Suddenly we become instant fools for Christ, vulnerable in a way that lets others reach out and help us if we slip, to be accidentally connected to one another by our now shared moment of awkward vulnerability. Stones give strength to the earth, steadfast in their hardness, at times useful to us, ancient art that encourages us to glimpse a timeline on which our whole lives are the tiniest of dots. Bugs tirelessly working as a team remind us to be persistent, diligent, and to work for a common cause together. Old leaves remind us of the cycle of life, constantly revolving participants in a never-ending dance of living communion with and for our Creator. We finally look up from our spot of earth and rejoin the gathered group with new eyes, new awareness, new connectedness to the divine and to those around us who are similarly yet profoundly differently changed by our shared experience of the miracle of outdoors, of God's gift of creation. That which urges us to look closely and feel small while thinking big, that could be called God's Holy Spirit. And it flows in and through each of us and between us joining us one to another on a deeper than cellular level, joined together and to God. Here's a prayer for this week. Creator God remind us to take a look closely at your creation today so that we are once again reminded of the care you took in preparing our world and all that dwells within it. Make us truly stewards of this spaceship earth and all of our fellow travelers on it. Amen. Please hold the family and friends of the Reverend Dr. Donald Ketchum, Pastor Emeritus of the West Avon Congregational Church UCC in your prayers today. He served 32 years as Pastor of the West Avon Church and was a beloved and well-respected leader in the Connecticut Conference. He died early in the morning this Thursday at the age of 72. In the news this week, the Connecticut Conference released a video announcement from Conference Minister the Reverend Kent Solati this morning saying, well, why don't we just have him say it. On behalf of the Associate Conference Minister for Transitions Search Committee, I am very pleased to announce that we are calling the Reverend Michelle Hughes to serve as our Associate Conference Minister for Transitions. This is a newly created staff position and it is intended to help our congregations with transitions and to bring to our churches the best leaders that we can possibly find. Michelle is coming to us from Chicago, Illinois, where she has served in an interim capacity in two congregations. She brings a very background to this work. She has been a pastor, an educator, a trainer in diversity. She's had her own business and she's worked in organizing. Michelle is a person of deep faith. She has a great sense of humor. She is intelligent. She brings a passion for the United Church of Christ and she brings particular gifts and insights for organizing our search process and for helping us do the work that we need to do for leadership development. So I hope you will join me in welcoming Michelle Hughes to our midst. Her start date tentatively is March 1st and we'll be sharing more information with churches about Michelle. We wish you blessings, Michelle, as you join our conference. Monday churches around the conference honored the life of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., frequently joining with other congregations and with other faith communities in their observances. The Reverend Verdi Powers, Associate Conference Minister in the Illinois Conference, UCC, brought a powerful message to the Hartford area observance held at Faith Congregational Church, UCC, on Main Street. She called on African Americans to continue their quest for full participation in American society. I believe we can celebrate the life of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., when we realize that we black for our mind place, all that God has scored. This is not a passive trusting or passive waiting. God will act. God will act through us. Treat everybody. Other speakers, including Conference Minister Solati, addressed the question, does justice matter with a resounding answer of yes. The congregation included members and friends of UCC churches throughout the Hartford area with some coming many miles to attend the service. As worship closed, host pastor the Reverend Stephen Camp invited visiting clergy to stand at the front of the sanctuary and the line stretched all across the front of the church. On Thursday, January 15th, a single candle flickered in the chapel of the Asylum Hill Congregational Church UCC in Hartford at a service where the state's ecumenical organization, the Christian Conference of Connecticut, formally ended its ministry. Board President the Reverend David Baird presented the commendations and significant financial gifts to four organizations which continue to do work consistent with the commitments of Chris Kahn. The Connecticut Council for Interreligious Understanding. Congregations organized for a new Connecticut Food Share and the Connecticut Food Bank. Board Secretary the Reverend Bruce Steinway offered a homily based on Jesus' parable of the seed. We need to acknowledge that institutions also are called to die. That is the pace right now for the Christian Conference of Connecticut. But in dying, we need to recall our Lord's words about that ring of grief. So long as it refuses to die, it remains only a single ring. And we remind you that registration is open for Silverlake Summer Conferences. We've got a new video online that gives you a sense of what a week at camp might be like for a young person in your life, and which explains our new three-tiered pricing system. You can learn more at SilverlakeCT.org. And you'll find more information on all these stories when you visit us at ctucc.org. Pray and Play is a retreat for UCC clergy under the age of 40 at Silverlake running January 27th through the 29th. If you're a high school age youth who's thinking about working for God for a living, there's a weekend retreat for you at Silverlake the weekend of January the 30th. Learn about the human costs of the war on drugs at a screening of The House I Live In with a discussion following on January 31st in East Hadam. Clergy women are invited to a special retreat day to refresh themselves with soul food for the journey on February 3rd in Glastonbury. There are still openings in this year's confirmation retreats in February and March. Sign your group up soon while there's space for you. Get ready for summer with a workshop called Unpacking Vacation Bible School on February 7th in West Hartford. The Stepping Stones Workshop team building with youth groups and adults too will be February 10th in Cheshire with another Stepping Stones event on Church Asset Mapping for Faith Formation on February 26th in Milford. And you can learn more about all the Stepping Stones workshops at ctucc.org slash Stepping Stones. Young people have an opportunity to prepare to be a counselor in training at Silverlake with a weekend conference March 13th through 15th. Make sure you've got Super Saturday on your calendar. This day of workshops features keynote speaker the Reverend Ruben Duran who works on promoting new church development for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. This joint venture with the Massachusetts Conference will be held March 21st in Ludlow, Massachusetts. The women's yoga and spirit retreat is at Silverlake March 27th through the 29th as is the Maple Sugaring weekend. Stewardship in the Changing Church moving from consumerism to generosity is the theme of this year's Ecumenical Stewardship event on April 17th and 18th in Boxborough, Massachusetts. To learn more about these events or to register, visit us at ctucc.org slash events. Our spirited Wednesday thought comes from the Reverend Dr. Robert LaRachel who serves at Christ the King Lutheran Church in Windsor. Reflecting on Jesus' call to come fish for people with him, Dr. LaRachel asks us to concentrate on the person of Jesus. He writes, A church that does not focus on Jesus and the way his life can move ours simply ceases to be what a church must be. A community of people willing to fish for others to join this movement which can change people's lives and transform God's world. And that brings this conference cast to a close. Thanks to Tim Hughes for his reflection 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 through the United Church of Christ. This is Eric Anderson, the Associate Conference Minister for Proclamation, Identity and Communication 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.