Pacific Currents
From Your Conference Minister
It’s not unusual for me to wake up with a song rambling through my brain. This morning, though, it wasn’t the usual fragment of a Gospel hymn, or snippet of reggae, or the odd phrase from Handel, that led me out of my dream state. For the first time ever it was a patriotic song. “My country ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing; land where my parents died, land of the pilgrims’ pride, from every mountainside let freedom ring!” read more...
Pacific Currents - Easter 2009
RESURRECTION
by Rev. Dr. Mary Susan Gast, Conference Minister, Easter, 2009
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New life never comes easy. Nothing is born without effort and pain.read more... |
Pacific Currents - February/March 2009
THE GATHERING COMMA-CLOUD
by Rev. Dr. Mary Susan Gast, Conference Minister, February-March, 2009
We are blessed to live among commas. Commas, commas, everywhere, punctuating our lives with the persistent reminder that God has more in store for us than we can imagine. That just when we’re ready to give up, say it’s all over, call it a day, and plunk down a period at the end of a sentence, Divine playfulness and wisdom come swooping onto the scene and tweak that stable sphere so that it overflows with possibilities.read more...
Pacific Currents - January 2009
LIGHT OF THE WORLD
by Rev. Dr. Mary Susan Gast, Conference Minister, January 6, 2009
In the season of Epiphany we celebrate the manifestation of God in our lives, the Light of the World breaking through the shadows and gloom, the Wise Ones coming from the ends of the earth to bring homage to the Prince of Peace.read more...
Pacific Currents - November 2008
PALLING AROUND WITH RADICAL MONOTHEISM
by Rev. Dr. Mary Susan Gast, Conference Minister, November 4, 2008
You and I worship the same God. As do Anne Lamott, Ann Coulter, the Ayatollah, and my neighbor Larry Grossman. I make this assertion because I wholeheartedly believe that there is only one Supreme Being, Who dreamed up the cosmos and loved us into existence.read more...
Pacific Currents - October/November 2008
SACRED CONVERSATION: Songs of freedom
by Rev. Dr. Mary Susan Gast, Conference Minister, October-November, 2008
The chronological roadway that we travel from October through November is slippery, the site of major collisions. Election Day and Thanksgiving, Advent and pre-Christmas hype crash into each other and send our sensibilities sprawling. We hurtle with limited visibility toward hazardous junctions of the secular and the liturgical.
read more...
Pacific Currents - July/August 2008
SACRED CONVERSATION: Speaking the truth in love, in joy
by Rev. Dr. Mary Susan Gast, Conference Minister, July 14, 2008
“Here’s My offer,” God said, inaugurating a sacred conversation recorded in the 65th chapter of the book of Isaiah. “I’m willing to forget all our old troubles; gone; they “are [as of this moment] hidden from My sight.” [65: 16] “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.read more...
Pacific Currents - May 2008
CHERISHING OUR DIFFERENCES IN AN ELECTION YEAR: It’s Gospel
by Rev. Dr. Mary Susan Gast, Conference Minister, May 14, 2008
Five years ago, just before Annual Meeting, I received a letter. It was probably a difficult letter to write. I know it was a painful letter to read.
It came from a life-long member of the United Church of Christ, someone whose views on social issues and political realities would most assuredly be at odds with mine, someone whose faith is indisputably rooted in the same gracious Love as mine.read more...
Pacific Currents - March 2008
ELECTION COMMENTARY - an engaging scintilla of uncertainty…
by Rev. Dr. Mary Susan Gast, Conference Minister, March 17, 2008
Monthly Reflections from The Pacific ~ News and Events of the NCNC United Church of Christ
Pacific Currents - December 2007
The soft baby face of the Author of Lifeby Rev. Dr. Mary Susan Gast, Conference Minister, December, 2007 read more... |
