 Greetings, friends. Welcome to CTUCC Conference Cast for March 27, 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 Dr. Michael Seba, Southwest Regional Minister, read this week by your podcast host. In the fourth chapter of Genesis, God finds Cain, one of the two sons of Adam and Eve, and asks where his brother Abel is. Cain has in fact murdered his brother, and so he answers, I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper? In Genesis, the first question a human being asks God is, am I my brother's keeper? For all his faults, Cain asks the right question. While God doesn't answer Cain's question directly, God rarely does, Scripture's answer is a resounding yes. We are the keepers of our sisters and brothers, just as we are the caretakers of all creation. We cannot love God without loving our neighbor. The ministry of the Church has always included caring for those in need. The Acts of the Apostles and Paul's letters to the Corinthians and Romans mention an offering for believers in Jerusalem who are suffering from famine. The Apostles encouraged believers in distant lands to give of their resources to help people they had never met. Why? Because we are all connected to one another as the body of Christ, and we are all called to offer God's extravagant loving hospitality to everyone. For nearly 60 years, churches in the United States have responded to an appeal during Lent to meet the needs of the world. We know this appeal as one great hour of sharing. You can learn more about the good things made possible by your gifts and how you can promote this offering in your church by visiting ucc.org slash o-g-h-s. And as you think about your gift to one great hour of sharing, and how you will invite others in your church to give, ask yourself the question Cain asked God, am I my sister's and my brother's keeper? And let your gift be your answer. Here's a prayer for this week. Giving God for you every hour is an hour of sharing. May it also be so for us. Amen. Please remember the loved ones of the Reverend Dr. Frank Andrew Stone in your prayers this week. Ordained in 1952, he gave his career to a teaching ministry, including missionary service in Turkey and a distinguished career as professor of educational studies at the University of Connecticut. He died on March 6th at the age of 85. And please remember the friends and family of the Reverend Albert Beardsley in your prayers. Ordained in Salisbury, Connecticut in 1953, he spent the majority of his career as chaplain and professor of religion at Hollands College in Virginia. Retiring back to northwestern Connecticut, he served as a part-time interim pastor in several churches. He died on March 21st at the age of 87. In the news this week, the Connecticut Conference's new legislative advocate, Michelle Mudrick, had to hit the ground running as the General Assembly began this year's session just two days after she took up her duties of bearing the concerns of the Connecticut Conference to the state's lawmakers. She has worked diligently to introduce herself to legislative leaders, often in company with their constituents, and to follow the progress of four bills upon which Conference delegates have registered interest through the resolution's process. Mudrick submitted written testimony in favor of a bill that would withdraw authorization for keynote gambling in the state, and in favor of a bill that would continue support for legal aid to the poor. She is also working to prevent interrupted coverage of children who are in Connecticut's Husky Health Care Plan. One final measure has just been lifted from her plate. As yesterday, both chambers of the General Assembly voted to raise the state's minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, and Governor Dan O'Pee Malloy has pledged to sign the bill into law today. One of the lesser known treasures of the United Church of Christ is the Our Whole Lives Program, a set of age-appropriate curricula for teaching children, teens, and adults about the complex world of relationships, sexuality, and identity. The UCC developed it along with the Unitarian Universalist Association over 10 years ago. For the second year, a conference at Silver Lake will use Our Whole Lives schools to help a group of young people better understand themselves and the choices they will make in the months and years ahead. Co-deans Missy Sturdivant and Gabrielle Joffee took some time with me during the dean's retreat to tell me more about it. Miss Sturdivant answered my question about why camp? Have you done this in a local church setting? No. Okay, so why do it at camp? So we really wanted to do this at camp because I know not every church is doing this curriculum and the churches that are just are really finding that it's really helpful for people to have a safe place to get this information and have that spiritual background be a part of it as well in the spiritual integration. So for all the folks who do not have this program happening in your churches, this is a really great opportunity to get some of this information for youth and we also really specifically wanted to look at this age group of seven to nine grade because that is the beefiest of all of the curricula. I think it says a lot for that being the prime time for people to get this information and really soak it in. Many schools teach health and sexual education but the camp setting offers an opportunity to cover things schools rarely can including relationships, emotions and ethics. As Miss Jofi told me. And I think it's cool because it's also outside of that school home church community where you can have that space to kind of say, you know, think things out loud that you might not feel like, you know, at your school, everyone has their friends and gossip and stuff. So it's just kind of a place that, you know, for those for that whole week you can kind of step outside your usual routine and have these conversations and also, you know, we do all the other camp stuff, the swimming, the crafts. So it's all built into that really fun camp environment. So you kind of build a community out of our little crew that is there. This is a place where they can take a risk. Yeah. And where and you're not going to get that spiritual integration at school either. You're not going to talk about how God loves you and God made you to be who you are and what that really looks like and they're not going to be talking about scriptures or singing songs about Jesus and how that has to do with this. So, yeah. Last year both conferees and parents really appreciated the program. The young people made good use of a safe space where they could talk and not be judged. And the parent gave thanks for the opportunity their parents would have that they might wish they'd had when they were young. The opportunity to discuss questions like. Am I normal? Yeah. Am I normal? Is this okay? Is it okay to do this? What does this mean about me as a spiritual person and like what does God think about these kinds of things? And also this happened to me where there's a safe place I can get more resources on this or just more information around what kind of support I can get and have other people gone through something like that before. Sturtevant and Jofi along with their counselor staff will be waiting this summer for these questions and plenty more about my so-called life. At Second Congregational Church UCC in Coventry last weekend girls got together to play with their dolls and also to raise money for mission programs. They enjoyed an American Girl Garden party including characters from the series of books and videos that accompany the well-known set of dolls. The kids thoroughly enjoy this said dad Stephen Flickenschild. I know my daughter does. And the church raised over $1,100 for their outreach ministries. We've continued to add invitations to summer conferences from Silver Lake's Deans to the Silver Lake YouTube channel. And here's two more. Hi I'm Craig. And I'm Allison. And we're the co-deans for God's Imaginarium which is a conference for fifth and sixth graders this summer at Silver Lake Conference Center. We're excited to have you join us this summer because we're going to swim and do arts and crafts and climb trees and go play in the garden. And go play in the garden. Which are all things that you'll do no matter what conference you attend at Silver Lake Conference Center. But at God's Imaginarium you'll also... All kinds of amazing things are going to happen and we don't actually even know what all of them are going to be because some of it is going to be because of you. Things that we create together, that we build together, we'll use our bodies, we'll use our imagination so come join us and play. Because God is a creator. God used God's imagination to create this world and we're going to imagine right along with God at Silver Lake Conference Center this summer. We hope you'll come with us. Hi my name is Missy Sturdivant. I'm Gabrielle Jaffee. And we are the co-deans of my so-called life. One really cool thing we want to let you know about this conference is that we get to have really awesome and honest conversations about things like dating and relationships and friendships. And we get to have conversations where the youth really find out questions that they have and answer them. And we're also basing the week loosely off the our whole lives curriculum that some congregations use for sex ed. And we're also leaving some time for you all to decide what we do and what you want to learn about. And so we're keeping it open for that. You'll find all those videos at youtube.com slash Silver Lake CT. And of course you'll find more on these stories plus all the current headlines on our website at ctucc.org slash news. The ninth UCC New England women's celebration will be held this weekend in Portland, Maine. Learn about fossil fuel divestment on Saturday in Hamden. Father Tom Ryan offers a meditation workshop called The Divine Indwelling on Sunday in Southport. The next webinar session on Children's Ministry of the Way of Jesus is March 31st. The spring women's spirit retreat of yoga and sacred chant will be held at Silver Lake the weekend of April 4th through 6th. The film Gasland Part 2 about the risks of hydraulic fracturing or fracking will have a showing in Southington on April 11th. The 86th annual gathering of the Connecticut women of the UCC will be April 12th in Plainville. The weekend of April 25th is a busy one. That spring action weekend will be held at Silver Lake Conference Center for the summer program. It's also the weekend of the Awakenings Conference in Holyoke, Massachusetts. On Saturday the 26th the historians workshop will be held in Coventry and the Connecticut Conference Choir begins rehearsals for next fall in Nagatuck. This year's Journey to the Waters Edge Conference on Trauma Ministries is titled Joy Need Not Wait Till Morning. It's the 29th in Madison. 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. By all means come then but also visit silverlakect.org to find out about summer offerings and to register. The year is now for May 17th, the 4th annual youth revival to be held this year at Dickswell Avenue UCC in New Haven. And golfers go get your clubs 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 conclude today with a spirited Wednesday thought from the Reverend Allison Buttrick Patton pastor of the Soggy Talk Congregational Church UCC in Westport. She writes, Our own ideas about perfection are completely off base. Maybe God who works through a blind beggar works in all of us, rejoices in each of us just as we are whole and precious. And that brings this conference cast to a close. Thanks to Michael Siba 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 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.