When we ask ourselves to “Reimagine Thriving”, what does that mean?  Why reimagine?   Can’t we just imagine and get on with it? Here’s why it’s important to reimagine: most of us already imagine thriving, and that usually means imagining what it means for me and people like me to thrive: for people of privilege, that means imagining thriving for people of privilege; white people for white people, Americans for Americans, global majority for global majority, and so forth.  

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." Albert Camus

The New Year has arrived, and I think many of us are glad to wrap-up 2025. The anxiety and chaos that has become our daily bread in this country won’t stop because it’s a new year, of course, but the beginning of something always gives us a little boost of hope that change happens, no matter what. How it changes is largely up to us and how bad we want it. Ask 80% of people who made a resolution this week how they’re doing with that in March. 

What is hope? It is a hunch that the overwhelming brutality of facts that oppress and repress is not the last word. It is a suspicion that reality is more complex than realism wants us to believe and that the frontiers of the possible are not determined by the limits of the actual. -Rubem A. Alves

The Hospitality Committee wants to thank everyone who contributed to the successful Thanksgiving potluck luncheon on Sunday. People brought food, washed dishes, and the Sunday School kids decorated tables with place settings and flowers! We all created a festive, warm, and welcoming meal.

Join us this Sunday for our monthly Social Justice Service with guest, Sidney Murray II, New Bedford Human Rights Commissioner. Committee Chairs will be available after service on Sunday, October 19, to discuss what their committees are up to and plans for the future. This is a great opportunity to mee the Chairs and sign up for volunteer opportunities that may interest you. We will also be saying farewell to Eileen Sorrentino before she moves away.

Committee Chair Fair on Sunday, October 19 & A Goodbye to Eileen Committee Chairs will be available after service on Sunday, October 19, to discuss what their committees are up to and plans for the future. This is a great opportunity to mee the Chairs and sign up for volunteer opportunities that may interest you. We will also be saying farewell to Eileen Sorrentino before she moves away.

I know, you never intended to be in this world. But you’re in it all the same. So why not get started immediately. I mean, belonging to it. There is so much to admire, to weep over… Do you need a prod? Do you need a little darkness to get you going? Let me be as urgent as a knife, then, and remind you of Keats, so single of purpose and thinking, for a while, he had a lifetime. Mary Oliver