Ebonié Smith-Cooper, Meadville Lombard Seminarian, preaching Worship service given March 30, 2025 Prayer by Loren Gomez, Worship Associate https://firstparish.info/ First Parish A liberal religious community, welcoming to all First gathered 1739 According to Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, Love is the call [in] our lives. Ebonié Smith-Cooper, Meadville Lombard Seminarian and First Parish member, asks how can we pursue love for one another in times of distress? Ebonié Smith-Cooper (she/they) is an aspiring minister who is currently attending Meadville Lombard Theological School. In Ebonie's free time she enjoys coaching in-town sports, listening to podcasts, and playing card games with their family. For March 2025, the Giving First recipient is the Resilient Sisterhood Project. Cambridge-based Resilient Sisterhood Project’s mission is to educate and empower women of African descent regarding common, yet rarely discussed, diseases of the reproductive system that disproportionately affect them. They approach these diseases and associated issues through a cultural and social justice lens since they understand that poor knowledge of reproductive health is primarily related to health, racial, and socioeconomic disparities. RSP brings an expansive definition to and understanding of the word “women” to include transgender women, cisgender women, gender queer, and gender non-conforming people who have a female reproductive system. 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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