Worship service given November 17, 2024 Prayer by Rev. Marta Morris Flanagan, Lead Minister Reading by Dr. Daniel Parsley of "I Choose Love" by Tammy T. Stone Featuring "Five Hebrew Love Songs" by Eric Whitacre, performed by the First Parish Choir and  First Parish String Quartet https://firstparish.info/ First Parish A liberal religious community, welcoming to all First gathered 1739 Join us at First Parish in Arlington as we explore the theme of “choosing love”—even when it feels beyond our reach. Through the music of Eric Whitacre’s "Five Hebrew Love Songs" and Mark Miller's "I Believe", performed with string quartet and First Parish Choir, we’ll reflect on how love can be a conscious choice and how, in moments when love is hard to choose, we can still resist apathy, fear, and the all-too-human temptation to hate. Drawing from Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, we’ll seek ways to embrace patience and understanding as we navigate and help build a more loving community. Offering and Giving First The Giving First program donates 50% of the non-pledge offering each month to a charitable organization that we feel is consistent with Unitarian Universalist principles. The program began in November 2009, and First Parish has donated over $200,000 to more than 70 organizations. This Sunday half of the offering supports Resource Organizing Project. Resource Organizing Project builds stronger movements for justice and liberation in New England with racial, economic, environmental, and gender justice partners. They offer affordable and high quality services, practices, spaces, and pathways that support both interdependence and self-reliance for community self-determination. ROP is endorsed by Episcopal Dioceses and by the Reparations Interfaith Coalition.  The remaining half of your offering supports the life and work of this Parish. To donate using your smartphone, you may text “fpuu” to 73256. Then follow the directions in the texts you receive. About our Lead Minister: Rev. Marta Flanagan began her ministry as our twentieth called minister at First Parish in the fall of 2009. She is a genuine and forthright preacher. In conversation she is direct and engaging. She speaks of prayer with as much ease as she laughs at human foibles. We call her “Marta.” Marta is a religious liberal, a theist, a feminist, and a lover of the woods. As a student of American history at Smith College she was captivated by the stories of social reformers who were motivated and sustained by their faith. That led her to consider the ministry and to study at Harvard Divinity School from where she was graduated in 1986. She was the first woman minister in the city of Salem, Massachusetts, serving at the First Universalist Church there (1987-1997). She served in a co-ministry at South Church (Unitarian Universalist) in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, (1997-2005) from where she is minister emerita. Marta served as interim minister in Montpelier, Vermont (2008-2009). She is trained as a spiritual director. For three years she lived in the Vermont woods practicing voluntary simplicity and the spiritual life. Marta enjoys the vitality of First Parish and our strong sense of community. She celebrates the yearning for depth and the desire to make a difference in the world that she finds here.  

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