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You're Welcome at UBBC! Sunday Worship Service 9:30 AM Sunday School for all ages Coffee & refreshments at 10:30 Adult forums at 11 411 South Burrowes
Street 814 237–2708
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Feeling Gratitude“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice.” – Meister Eckhart “You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing, and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.” – G.K. Chesterton “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” – William Arthur Ward These days my heart is full of gratitude. I’m saying “thank you” for many things especially in our life together at UBBC. Join me as I express my thanks to God. Thank you for Thursday night dinners where 40-50 people gather for great food and fellowship each week and for Deb Ritter who loves to cook! Thank you for the financial resources needed for a new roof, windows, Robin Alley stairway, and peace pole landscaping. Thank you for our partnership with the Women’s Resource Center and the families that have come to live at our house on West Nittany. Thank you for a dedicated, creative staff and new Administrative Assistant, Gloria J. Horner. Thank you for UBBC children and youth who challenge us to support their mission and service efforts as they collect materials for school kits and participate in summer workcamps. Thank you for the growing partnerships we have through Churches Supporting Churches and St. John’s Baptist Church in New Orleans. Thank you for the invitation from the Unitarian Church to participate in an intergenerational work camp in New Orleans over spring break next March. Thank you for the Penn State students who have chosen to join our community of faith regularly in worship and service. Thank you for the new Fellowship Teams that invite all of us to share in the hospitality and service roles each Sunday and for the community developing within them. Thank you for the faithful members and friends of UBBC who volunteer in many agencies in our community. Thank you for new members, newcomers, and the old-timers who graciously welcome them into our congregation’s life. Thank you for the prayers and support of our homebound members who are with us in spirit each week. Thank you for the spirit of vitality and renewal that is pulsing among us. Thank you for calling us over and over again to grow in faith AND to put our faith into action. Thank you, God, thank you. The list could go on and on, for this is a season of gratitude. What would you add to my litany of thanks? Bonnie Kline-Smeltzer, Pastor Reflections on Time AwayIt’s great to be back in State College after three weeks away – one at Annual Conference and ten days vacation! While I was definitely ready for some time away, it is always good to get home even if the weeds are high, the mail needs sorting, and the dog duty is never ending. As I reflect on my time away, there are several things that come to mind – family, church business, and real rest. Family - We spent quite a bit of time with our California family. Some of the aunts and uncles are noticeably frailer than last summer, our nieces are continuing educational and vocational exploration, and the youngest children in the family are all growing leaps and bounds. It was difficult to see the decline in health of the saints of our family, and it was a joy to witness the growth, curiosity and enthusiasm of the youngsters. Together, however, I sensed I was connecting once again to the circle of life and love we’ve shared through the years. I was also keenly aware of my own path along this journey and that I am moving into the circle of elders. Church Business - After some time with
family, I traveled to San Diego for the
Annual Conference of the Church of the
Brethren. I was the UBBC delegate,
Ken was the delegate from his congregation,
and each day we sat with Carolyn
Gong who was the delegate from her congregation in Colorado. I guess
I’m getting older, wiser, and perhaps a
bit too cynical because I found myself
caught between being amazed at this
gathering of delegates making decisions
for the denomination and thinking this
was such a cumbersome, outdated process! Real Rest – From San Diego, we drove north to Carmel, on to Modesto, and a week of Song and Story Fest at Camp Peaceful Pines in the Sierra Nevada mountains, elevation 6400 feet. Besides being in one of the most beautiful mountain ranges in the country, with a community of folks I love, listening to great storytellers and folk musicians, I realized what a gift of rest I received in the wilderness. Prior to arriving at the camp, I let folks know that this was going to be my technology free week in the mountains – no cell phone, no computer, email, television, etc. And no electricity after 11 pm. until the generator was turned back on at 6 am. What a gift! I found myself letting down, breathing deep, smelling the pine trees and listening to the birds. I had long conversations with friends, took a drive over Sonora Pass (9800’), hiked up to Sunrise Rock to see the moon rise, and had some great pillow talks at the end of the day. Real rest! As some of you await those much needed vacations this month I hope you too will receive the gift of rest. I recommend the techno free approach! Time for a SabbaticalThis month’s page is a potpourri of your pastor’s ponderings…these days, in addition to the usual sermon ideas, pastoral care, and regular duties, I’m deep in thought about sabbatical plans and summer reading picks. How can it be time for a sabbatical? In October of this year, I will have completed seven years of service at UBBC. Hard to believe, isn’t it? I have been fortunate in my 28 years of ministry to have had one sabbatical. The only problem with that experience was I filled it with too many adventures and returned to my congregation needing some rest. I do not plan to do that again. This time I am looking at a 4- to 6-month time of rest and renewal that would include an international trip of some sort with my family. I am currently working on a proposal (due May 14) for the 2009 Clergy Renewal Program. Funded by the Lilly Endowment, this program provides as many as 120 grants of up to $50,000 each directly to congregations for the support of a renewal program for their pastor. Up to $15,000 of the grant may be used to help the congregation fulfill pastoral duties during the pastor’s absence and/or to support activities that enable the congregation as a whole to be renewed in its ministry. Recipients are notified in October. I would be anticipating a spring through early fall sabbatical in 2010. So these days I’m trying to put my dreams down on paper. In fact, the question that all applicants are invited to reflect upon is this, “What will make your heart sing?” While I’m not far enough in my writing to give any specifics, I am very grateful for the words of encouragement and support that the Coordinating Council adopted at the April meeting: “The Coordinating Council notes that Bonnie Kline Smeltzer is eligible for a sabbatical leave this Fall 2009 after seven years as our pastor. A sabbatical was negotiated in her original employment contract in the spring of 2002. As congregational leaders we want to offer our support and encouragement to the planning that she has already begun with the Staff Relations Committee. • We encourage her to explore all options for such a leave and to apply for grants to help finance that leave and supplement budgeted professional development funds. I’ve also been pondering my picks for the summer reading group that meets on the third Thursdays of June, July and August. The Shack by William P. Young is a book I’ve been hearing about for a while. It’s the fictional exploration of a man’s unusual encounters with God in the shack where his daughter may have been murdered. One of the back cover quotes is, “In a world where religion grow increasingly irrelevant, The Shack wrestles with the timeless question, ‘Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?’ One of my colleagues recommended the spiritual memoir Take This Bread. It is Sara Mile’s telling of how she stumbled into St. Gregory’s Church in San Francisco only to have her life changed forever by her experience of God in the Eucharist. She now operates a food pantry to feed the hungry around the same altar that feeds her hunger on Sundays. Joan Chittister is a woman I’ve admired for a long time. I enjoy most anything she writes so I decided to take a chance on this book. One reviewer writes, “I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Was I really the right person person to be reviewing this? After all, I am in my thirties, transitioning from youth to middle age….As it turned out, The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully is a wonderful lesson in how to live, regardless of our chronological age.” Dreaming, writing, and reading, Bonnie In Need of ResurrectionI need your resurrection today, O God. It feels like Good Friday has come early this year. The news of pain from the world, from friends, from the church is more than I think I can bear. Is this how your disciples felt as they watched the crucifixion? From the world…the cries of the people of Zimbabwe, Darfur, HIV-AIDS orphans, refugees, the groaning of the earth at its destruction, the victims of war and conflict in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel/Palestine…these cries are deafening. I just want them to go away. I don’t want to hear of their pain anymore. Make it stop, God, make it stop! I need your resurrection today, O God. From friends…my friend’s father died suddenly, just a year after his mother. It’s too soon, too sad, too painful. Another friend learned recently that her husband has days, weeks, maybe a month to live. She’s trying to be strong when her heart is breaking. Another friend lost his job yesterday. It wasn’t just a job. It was his life’s passion, his vocation, his calling. Budget cuts are the reason given, but what reason can soothe this wounded spirit? I need your resurrection today, O God. From the church…the Brethren Witness/Washington Office was closed on March 19th, the sixth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War. We continue to kill and silence the prophets among us, don’t we? Their message is expendable in tough times like these. More pain, as members of a congregation struggle to support a widow whose husband was murdered, while trying to keep their convictions against the death penalty given to the young adult murderer. Still more pain as congregations face difficult decisions as financial resources dwindle, members lose jobs and face unemployment, and needs in the community increase. I am caught between your death and your rising. I’m not sure I can wait…come quickly God…the world, my friends, the church, and yes even I need some signs of new life. I need your resurrection… Closer to the Spirit of GodAs a preacher, I usually begin thinking about sermon themes for Lent in December. I know it sounds odd to begin thinking about Jesus’ journey to the cross right before Christmas, but that’s how it goes in a preacher’s life. This year, I found myself resisting the usual trek through the gospel stories of Jesus and his disciples on the road to Jerusalem. Not that this journey and these stories aren’t important — they are crucial to understanding Jesus’ life, ministry and mission. But I was struck once again about how Jesus doesn’t point or draw attention to himself in the gospels. Instead he pointed people’s attention to God and God’s realm breaking into life. Jesus invited people time and time again to experience the sacred moments of life all around them. As we observe the season of Lent this year, we will do the same thing — we will look for the sacred, the holy, the divine all around us. I’ll be using Barbara Brown Taylor’s new book, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, as a guide. In the book, Taylor writes about twelve practices that have helped her encounter the sacred in the small ordinary things we do and see. In such things as hanging clothes on a clothesline, making eye contact with a cashier at the grocery store, or allowing yourself to get lost, we can discover altars everywhere. In the introduction to the book Taylor writes: “If you have run out of breath yourself — or out of faith — then this book is for you….I have no idea what you will see when you look at your life – but if you are tired of arguing about religion, tired of reading about spirituality, tired of talk-talk-talking about things that matter without doing a single thing that matters yourself, then the pages that follow are dedicated to you….my hope is that …you recognize some of the altars in this world – ordinary-looking places where human beings have met and may continue to meet up with the divine More that they sometimes call God.” Taylor writes about twelve practices that taught her what it means to be more fully human. During Lent, we will explore several of these practices - paying attention, getting lost, feeling pain, wearing your skin and living with purpose. I hope these practices will be ones that guide us daily, enriching our faith, and bringing us closer to the Spirit of God all around us. Bonnie Traveling Through MarkEach month I struggle with what to write for this column. I wonder what kind of article is needed. Do I provide words of inspiration or words of challenge? Do I share some personal reflections, something that I’m wrestling with in my own journey of faith? Do I write about programs or activities in our congregation? Do I share some of my hopes and dreams for our life together? As I look back over some of what I’ve written in the last six years, I’ve covered all of these – inspiration, challenge, personal reflections, church program, hopes and dreams and more. So what do I write about this month…. Reviewing my sermon topics for February, I realized that I’m preaching from the gospel of Mark. To help prepare you for worship each week, I’ve included my sermon texts, titles, and descriptions at the end of this article. I share this information with the Worship and Music Committee each month for our worship planning. I invite you to take some time early each week to read the scripture for the next Sunday and let it begin to live in you, much the same way I do as I work on a sermon. Read it silently, or read it aloud, if you like. Notice the words or phrases that grab your attention. Notice if you are drawn to a particular character in the story, or the actions or inactions of one of the characters. What speaks to you from the text? Stay with whatever that is. Let it settle into your body, your heart, and mind. When you do this, you are praying the text. And I believe God is at work in this praying, helping the word to “become flesh,” to come alive in you. In worship, preaching, prayer, meditation and Bible study, we engage in this process of incarnation – God’s word coming alive, coming to dwell with us – over and over. As we journey through Mark’s gospel, I invite you to let its word dwell and live in you. Mark is the oldest of the gospels and gives a much different point of view than Matthew, Luke or John. There are no birth stories and no post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. The stories are concise, giving a snapshot view of events. In Mark, we discover, as one author says, “a lively, forceful Jesus, given more to actions than to words, in contrast with the other gospels.” In these days of economic turmoil, political change, and global upheaval, I think we need to rediscover a lively, forceful Jesus, one who calls us beyond words of faith to actions of faith. Join me then to travel through the gospel of Mark together, listening and living with the stories of Jesus, letting the word come alive in us. Traveling through Mark Jesus does not wield his authority to gain personal power. Instead in this story, he uses it to free a man possessed by demons, to heal him and restore him to community. As “Christ’s living body,” how does UBBC, how do we use our God given authority? Do we even recognize this authority? Feb. 8 – “Sustained for Ministry” Mark 1:29-39 If you’re not careful, you might think that this text is all about Jesus’ healing ministry. It begins with the healing of Simon’s mother in-law, followed by an evening of healings and concludes with Jesus casting out demons. But in the middle, we see that Jesus got up early one morning and went off to a deserted place to pray. I suspect that time alone for prayer is what sustained him in his demanding ministry. Let’s examine what sustains us in our journey of faith. Feb. 15 – “Seeking Healing” Mark 1:40-45 A leper approaches Jesus and begs to be healed. Jesus is moved with pity and heals him. With confidence in God’s power and faithfulness, we are free to ask for the healing we need. This will be a service of prayer for healing which includes the ritual of anointing. Feb. 22 – “A Sacred Moment” Mark 9:2-9 The story of Jesus’ transfiguration is a turning point in Jesus’ ministry. It marks the end of his ministry in Galilee and the beginning of his journey to Jerusalem. Jesus is revealed to the disciples in a new way, shining in glory. It is a sacred moment from which the disciples and hopefully we, will see the world in a new way. Bonnie A New YearThe beginning of a new year is always a threshold for me. It is a time to stand still and look back over the year past, remembering the joys and celebrations, the milestones reached, the challenges met and those still pending, as well as the losses survived and still being weathered. It is also a time to look ahead, to dare to follow my dreams and discern new paths, to listen to my heart and to let my mind wander and imagine. The new year may also be a time to take a new direction, or make a new beginning. I’m not usually one that makes a new year’s resolution, but each new year, I do find myself thinking about what I hope the year holds. Come the first of January, I also delight in putting up a new calendar or two, writing in the events of the coming year, travel plans, birthdays, and anniversaries. It’s fun to write these on my new calendar and wonder what surprises await me in the blank spaces. The year 2009 is a threshold in many ways. Personally, I will turn 55 this year. Professionally, I will be completing my 28th year of pastoral ministry and my seventh year at UBBC. As a congregation, we will begin to implement some of the action ideas we adopted in 2008, and discern future staffing needs. As a nation we are facing some of the most difficult economic challenges and foreign policy issues under the direction of a new administration. And as a global family, we are becoming more and more aware of our interdependence and the challenges that brings. In her book, Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas, Jan L. Richardson writes, “The thresholds of our lives serve as places to choose, to discern to sort out what we consider important and where we feel called to go. We may find ourselves at a threshold by choice or by circumstance, arriving by our own design or landing there by events seemingly beyond our control. Whether or not it seems sacred at first, a threshold can become a holy place of new beginnings as we tend it, wait within in it, and discern the path beyond.”1 As we stand at the threshold of a new year, may we discover the holy places and moments of our lives. And may we sense God’s presence there with us.
So be it! Amen! Bonnie 1,2Jan L. Richardson, Night Visions: Sea rching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas, (Cleveland: United Church Press, 1998) p. 112, 115.
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