We are looking forward to seeing you and exploring our emotional well-being together. Rachel will share some about what she has learned from her experience in Clinical Pastoral Education, but you can begin to consider emotions that come easily and hard to you. Then ask yourself why that may be. It is a particularly emotional time with all that is happening in the world, so check in with yourself and reach out for help.
Our meeting is in Room 2108, Pyon Su, Stamp Student Union. See you soon!
Visit Berwyn Presbyterian Church, either in-person at 6301 Greenbelt Road, Berwyn Heights, MD 20720 3.5 miles from campus, near Kenilworth Ave. or livestream at https://www.facebook.com/BerwynPresbyterianChurch
Chaplain Holly will be preaching as the new Stated Supply Pastor. She has begun serving there now as well as being UCM Chaplain!
Tonight we are not meeting at the Chapel. That wil resume next week.
Join the candlelight vigil near the McKeldin Library at 4 p.m. on Thursday, March 3 to commemorate innocent people killed in Ukraine by Putin’s war.
At 5 a.m. on February 24, Russia invaded Ukraine. For over a week the Russian army has shelled Ukrainian cities, targeting houses of civilians, hospitals, kindergartens and orphanages. The Russian army is destroying people’s lives and future.
Almost 1 million people have had to flee their homes. Over 2,000 people have been killed and thousands injured. Women have to deliver newborns in shelters, hiding from the bombings. According to UNICEF, the lives of 7.5 million children are endangered because of the war that Russia has started against Ukraine.
Join the vigil to express your support for the people of Ukraine and for Ukrainian students at UMD.
Please, help spread the word about the event. You can bring flowers or donate to help the people of Ukraine.
Hope you will join us! Let us know you are coming. We are meeting at the Chapel Lounge, use side door entrance, and then will walk downtown to the restaurant. See you soon and blessings,
We sigh. We sigh because words cannot express our anguish, our hurt, our despair, knowing that siblings in Ukraine are fleeing their homes for their lives, that the cities and towns that hold memories and culture and history may be destroyed.
Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans that the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. And so we sigh. Let us breathe together.
<take a deep breath>
May our sighs remind us that we all share the same air; that what impacts one of us impacts all of us; that life is precious to God and war is never necessary.
May our sighs be a prayer for every Ukrainian who worries about surviving today; for those who will not survive this invasion; for those who will survive and be forever changed by the trauma of war; for those Russian soldiers who question their orders and refuse to use their weapons.
May our sighs be a prayer for nuclear deproliferation; for an end to the sin of imperialism and colonization.
May our sighs be a prayer for truth, peace, and solidarity to guide each of us; May our sighs be a prayer for Ukraine and the whole world.
May our sighs fill our bodies with air to breathe through grief and fear and fill us with courage and connection, so that we are ready to act in solidarity with Ukraine, for an end to this war and all war.
Prayer by Presbyterian Peace Fellowship
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” Mathew 5:9
United Campus Ministry is a mission of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the United Church of Christ, and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
How are you? Let us know how the semester is going for you. What have been your high and lows?
A quick reminder that on Wednesday we will be meeting in Pyon Su Room 2108 for L3 at noon. Lunch is provided. We will be discussing cancel culture and exploring how our faith, secular, and spiritual values inform this phenomenon. We hope to see you then!
How are you doing? Have you been able to establish a routine yet?
School is underway. We are thinking of you and hope you feel supported at this time. Reach out if you need anything.
Tomorrow at 12pm we will be meeting in Pyon Su Room 2108 of the STAMP Student Union. We are going to discuss the topic of just peace. What does peace mean to you? How do you obtain peace? We would love to hear your thoughts.
Lunch is provided. We are excited to share a meal with you and enjoy some good conversation.
Due to the Superbowl, UCM will not be meeting this Sunday night. Enjoy the game with friends! And if you aren’t a football fan hope you will take time to do something you love to do!
Our next meeting will be Wednesday for our L3: Power of Purpose Weekly discussion, 12 - 1:15 pm with a free sandwich, Pyon Su Room 2108, Stamp Student Union.
Please email Rachel with your 2/16 Subway sandwich order by noon on Tuesday 2/15at koehler@umd.edu (Veggie, turkey, etc.)
See below for a reflection highlighting some inspiring thoughts by the late Bishop Desmond Tutu and Richard Rohr on how we are each a “God-Carrier”
Blessings!
Chaplain Holly and Chaplain Intern Rachel
Each a God-Carrier (From Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation, 2/9/22)
The late Bishop Desmond Tutu understood our interdependence with each other as part of what it means to live in the image of God:
God has created us, upholding us in being from moment to moment, providing us with our very existence. . . . Despite everything that conspires to deny this truth, each one of us is of immense worth, of infinite value because God loved us. That is why [God] created us. Thus our value is intrinsic to who we are. It comes with the package of being human. It depends neither on extrinsic attributes such as ethnicity and skin color nor on our achievement, however that may be computed. Our worth stems from the fact that we exist only because of the divine love. . . . [Richard: As Bishop Tutu told me when I met him, “We are only the light bulbs, Richard, and our job is just to remain screwed in!”]
We are each a God-carrier, a tabernacle of the Holy Spirit, indwelt by God the holy and most blessed Trinity.
To treat one such as less than this is not just wrong. . . . It is veritably blasphemous and sacrilegious. It is as if we were to spit in the face of God. Consequently injustice, racism, exploitation, oppression are to be opposed not as a political task but as a response to a religious, a spiritual imperative. Not to oppose these manifestations of evil would be tantamount to disobeying God.
God has created us for interdependence as God has created us in God’s image—the image of a divine fellowship of the holy and blessed Trinity. . . God has created us to be different in order that we can realize our need of one another. There is an African idiom: “A person is a person through other persons.” I learn how to be human through association with other human beings. . . . [1]
Like Desmond Tutu, CAC teacher Brian McLaren sees the Trinity as offering a healing vision of the world, in which we create holy community that overturns categories of “us” and “them”:
This Trinitarian vision of God helps us imagine a relational universe of one-anotherness, community-in-unity, unity-in-community, being-in-interbeing, where benevolence toward the other is at home, and hostility toward the other is foreign, invasive, out of place. . . .
God-with-God in community leads us to envision God-with-us in community. And that vision in turn dares us to imagine God-with-them in community. And that expansive vision invites us higher still: to envision God-with-us-and-with-them in community. This approach to the Trinity need not be a litmus test used to legitimize us and delegitimize them. Instead, it can be a gift, offered to others like a poem, not an ultimatum—given not to require assent-leading-to-acceptance or dissent-leading-to-condemnation, but rather to inspire us to reverence otherliness as a theological attribute. At that moment, Trinitarianism becomes not only a healing doctrine but a healing practice. [2]
[1] Desmond M. Tutu, “My Credo,” in Living Philosophies: The Reflections of Some Eminent Men and Women of Our Time, ed. Clifton Fadiman (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 234, 235. Note: Minor changes made to incorporate inclusive language.
[2] Brian D. McLaren, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World (New York: Jericho Books, 2012), 130, 131–132.
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