In this years appeal the Stewardship Committee is asking for your financial commitment from your Grateful Heart.  We know the hardships that are facing everyone but during this time of hardship, with God’s love, we find an inner strength that pulls us through.  Your pledge is important!  Your pledge gives our church the financial strength to pull so many people through their hardships.  First Church reaches out and helps so many lives.  That is why we are working towards a big goal this year.  The Stewardship Committee is hoping we can get 100% of our members to submit a grateful pledge in October.  Whether large or small your pledge makes a difference in someone’s life.   Please look in your grateful heart and see all of the wonderful gifts God has given you and turn that joy into a spiritual and fulfilling pledge to this church we all love. 

Good Morning.  I’m Sue Williams and I’m about to give a Stewardship Talk which is also a Testimony.  I’ve been a member of First Church for almost 40 years, served on all major boards (except Prudential), sung in the choir all that time and currently am the Coordinator of Parish Caring Ministries.  I love this church.  I hope that’s obvious because I’m not really going to talk too much about First Church this morning.  I’m going to talk about God and Gratitude.  Two years ago, I developed a rather strange and debilitating taste and smell disorder which kept me out of church for several months.  Over these two years I’ve sought every sort of conventional and non-conventional treatment I could find.  Nothing has helped me.  My days and nights were consumed with my illness.  I felt adrift and very far from God.  Somehow I never gave up hope.

Rick preached on the Parable of the Sower earlier this summer.  One thing he talked about was that we have to constantly be nourishing the soil of souls, even if we feel we have been fortunate enough to have seed that’s fallen on fertile ground.  I’ve always thought of myself as a ‘good, solid, church woman’ but I was going down and I sure needed help.  So I began an intentional search for ways to bring myself closer to the God that I thought might have forgotten me.  Worship and singing on Sunday always nourished me and the Taize Service on Wednesday nights helped a lot.  I continued to do my job.  Helping others is good for the soul.  I went to Rick’s Bible Study.  He’s a marvelous teacher and it was great.   I found a Spiritual Director over at the Spiritual Life Center in Bloomfield.  She is a Sister of Wisdom and a wonderful support for me.  I helped with the Women’s Retreat at Wisdom House and it felt good.  I read books and listened to a particular CD of music, called Always With You by Sister Kathy Sherman that really began to lift me up.  But in April, I began a practice of Gratitude with my art partner, Rose Amodeo Petronella. By the way, in Italian, “Amodeo” means “I love God.”   Each day, we email each other with our 5 or 6 specific gratitudes of the day.  As I began turning my attention and energy outward away from my illness to the beauties of God’s world and the wonders of my life, a transformation happened.  I guess it can best be described as a healing, if not a cure.  To me, it’s been miraculous and mysterious and very real.    

I want to recite the poetry to a particular piece of music that has continued to nurture me in this healing process.  It is a reminder of the loving omnipresence of God, the great I AM.  ( Sister Kathy Sherman)

I am in the quaking of every leaf.

I am in the song of every bird that sings.

I am in the heartbeat of everyone you love.

I Am, I Am.

I am in the darkness of a raging storm.

I am in the beauty of a painted sky.

I am in each teardrop, every time you cry.

I Am, I Am.

I am in all that your heart is holding.  All that your mind remembers,

All that your soul desires.  I Am , I Am, I Am.

I am in the moonlight and the summer breeze.

I am in the dreams that you’ve seen come true.

I am in the sunlight that wakes you every morn.

I Am, I Am.

I am in the aching of a broken heart. 

I am in the pain that has set you free.

I am in a friend’s touch,

In the one that knows you well.

I Am, I Am.

I am all that your heart is holding, all that your mind remembers,

All that your soul desires.  I Am.  I Am. I Am.

I am in the colors of an autumn day.

I am in the voice that begs you to stay.

I am in the child, whose name for love is you.

I Am, I Am.

I am in the look behind forgiving eyes,

I am in the life of every breath you take.

I am in the laughter that teaches you to dance.

I Am, I Am, I AM!

I am learning to incorporate and own these manifestations of God and to give thanks.  In addition, I give thanks for my husband, Bang, and for a loving family, for my two darling grandchildren and for friendship (both human and furry.)  I am grateful for our beautiful Earth.  I have gratitude for my love of art, music, books and gardening.  I am grateful for important work to do, for a wonderful staff to work with and for all the volunteers in PCM who make my job possible.  I am grateful for the health that is in me and that I have access to health care, unlike 47 million Americans.  I am grateful for my ability to experience joy, recognize beauty and express love.   I am grateful that I am open to mystery, metaphor and parable.   And I am grateful for that hope that never let me go.  Hope too is a gift.  And, of course, I am grateful for gratitude itself!

Luke writes in Chapter 12:48 “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required”.  As we enter this season of Stewardship and Thanksgiving, may we each live and give with the Doxology as our theme song.   “All is Gift, my friends. All is gift from a loving God.” ( Sister Kathy Sherman).  Can we possibly take that in?   If we can, perhaps you and I can make our beloved First Church in Windsor the beneficiary of our boundless Gratitude.  Thank you.

September 14, 2008