With fewer staff around during the summer months – Rev. Hannah on parental leave, Rev. Kelly taking some weeks off for her five-year sabbatical, Louise Halsey retiring, we invite you to imagine ways to gather (outside of worship!) in small groups to further enhance our connections to one another.
If you have an idea about how you’d like to bring folks together – for a hike, a picnic, host a movie night, cook and eat a meal together, etc. during July and/or August – and you’d like to organize and host the group, please email your ideas to [email protected] in the next few weeks (before Mon., June 23, please)!
To help you plan your event – especially if you’d like to host at the church – you can view the church’s Google event calendar and Public Room Use Calendar on our website here: https://www.firstchurchberkeley.org/events/
Here are a few offerings with more to follow:
July Book Group, hosted by Rev. Molly Baskette
Wed., July 9, 7 pm on Zoom & Sun., July 20, 11:30 am in-person at church
We’ll read and discuss a short, zesty new primer out by my friend Ron Cole-Turner (whom some of you may know!), called Psychedelics and Christian Faith: Exploring an Unexpected Pathway to Healing and Spirituality. In our discussions, we’ll chew on these and other questions about how the Christian church should engage the psychedelic movement:
- What should we make of medicines that are potentiated by ceremony and ritual?
- How should we understand the ecstatic and mystical experiences many people have on psychedelics?
- How should we understand the ecstatic and mystical experiences many people have on psychedelics?
- How can we support people who have difficult experiences on these substances?
- How should pastors respond to parishioners who might seek these substances out for healing?
- Could the church be a landing pad for people who have mystical experiences on psychedelics and desire a community and tradition in order to live more deeply into those experiences?
- And then, how could Christians even begin to explore these questions and not contend with our role in destroying the cultural knowledge of the Indigenous peoples who were the original stewards of plant medicines?
Intergenerational Gentle Hikes, hosted by Annis Kukulan & Gail Poust
Saturdays, July 19 (Point Pinole), Aug. 16 (Redwood Park, Oakland), Sept. 27 (Inspiration Point)
More details to follow.