Open Table United Church of Christ

06/18/2026

“Blessed are you when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourself the proud owner of everything that can’t be bought.”
~ Matthew 5:5, The Message

photo: Margaret Jordan

06/18/2026

What kind of spiritual movement could challenge willing sectors of Christian faith to migrate from their systems of belief to a shared way of life centered on love?
—Brian McLaren, The Great Spiritual Migration

What kind of spiritual movement could challenge willing sectors of Christian faith to migrate from their systems of belief to a shared way of life

06/18/2026

06/18/2026

A Prayer For a More Human World

God of every nation and every people,

We grow weary of systems
that place so much power
in so few hands.

We grow weary of wars
chosen by some
and endured by others.

We grow weary of waiting
for leaders to discover wisdom
while ordinary people carry the cost.

Teach us another way.

Give us the courage
to share responsibility,
the humility
to listen to one another,
and the imagination
to build communities
where power serves life
rather than controlling it.

May we never stop believing
that a more human world is possible.

Amen.

A Meditation by Rev. Cameron Trimble

06/17/2026

“Blessed are you when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourself the proud owner of everything that can’t be bought.” ~ Matthew 5:5, The Message

Read our latest Open Table Update here:

9:20-10:20 Godly Play 9:30    Adult Ed in parlor 10:30  no worship        Financial Report for May Income: $360 Expenses: $334.64

06/17/2026

The king commanded all the people, “Keep the passover to the Lord your God as prescribed in this book of the covenant.” No such passover had been kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel, even during all the days of the kings of Israel and of the kings of Judah; but in the eighteenth year of King Josiah this passover was kept to the Lord in Jerusalem. - 2 Kings 23:21-23 (NRSV)

We gathered out of desperation, because we did not know what else to do. The news was bad, and getting worse. We could not see a way forward. The damage we had kept locked inside for so many years had come seeping out in ways that felt dangerous, debilitating.

So, one evening we came together. We sat in a circle of chairs. We sang an old song and a new one. We heard laments and stories about strong women and a fable that made us, unexpectedly, laugh. We lit candles. We dipped our fingers in a bowl of water. We prayed. And then someone found some leftover cupcakes covered in orange frosting, so we ate. The times are still desperate, but we are navigating better now.

It was desperate times for King Josiah’s people, and because he did not know what else to do, he reminded them of the simplicity and strength of the rituals of their ancestors. Josiah’s resurrected passover was different than our little ritual, but it was also the same: Circle. Song. Scripture. Fire. Water. Prayer. Food shared.

Now, as then, these things do not make desperate times less desperate, but they do shine a light so we can see a path through them.

Prayer
Dear God—Give us circles, song, scriptures, fire, water, prayers and food shared in your Name. Amen.

A Recipe for Desperate Times, Jennifer Garrison, writer, spiritual director and pastor living in the Pacific Northwest

Circle. Song. Scripture. Fire. Water. Prayer. Food shared. These things do not make desperate times less desperate, but they do shine a light so we can see a path through them.

06/16/2026

“Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love.” — St. Thérèse of Lisieux

St. Thérèse of Lisieux never expected anyone to remember her. She was born in France in 1873 and joined a Carmelite convent when she was fifteen. She didn’t travel far, lead any movements, or speak to crowds. Most of her days were spent in a small convent, doing everyday tasks with a handful of other women.

She died of tuberculosis at twenty-four. By most standards our culture uses to define success, her life seemed ordinary. And yet more than a century later, millions of people still read her words.

I’ve been thinking about Thérèse lately. The world feels overwhelming right now. Each day brings a new crisis, another outrage, another war, and more reminders of suffering we can’t touch. It is easy to feel small in a moment like this.

Many people I know feel exhausted. They care about what’s happening in the world and want to help, to make a difference. But as the problems get bigger, their energy fades.

There’s a special kind of grief that comes from loving the world and knowing you can’t fix it.

Thérèse understood something about that grief. One of the stories she tells is about a nun in her convent whom she found difficult to love. She never explains exactly why. The woman simply irritated her.

Most of us know what that feels like. Some people bring out the best in us. Others seem to reveal the rough edges we’re trying to smooth out.

Thérèse decided that every encounter with this sister would become a spiritual practice. She greeted her warmly. She listened carefully. She offered kindness whenever she could. Over time, the other nun became convinced that Thérèse genuinely enjoyed her company.

One day she finally asked, “What is it about me that attracts you so much?”

Thérèse was astonished. The woman had no idea there had ever been a struggle. She had only experienced her love.

That story strikes me as both beautiful and a little unsettling. Most of us want our lives to matter. We look for proof that what we do makes a difference, that our work means something. But the most meaningful changes often happen quietly.

A conversation changes someone’s day.

A kindness interrupts a loneliness we never knew existed.

A word of encouragement arrives at exactly the right moment.

A patient response prevents a wound from deepening.

Most of these moments disappear almost as quickly as they arrive. But this is where much of real life takes place.

Thérèse called her approach “the little way.” She was not suggesting that the world’s problems are small. She understood suffering. She lived through illness, loss, doubt, and disappointment. She found that love always comes through something specific: this conversation, person, moment or choice.

Maybe that’s why her example still speaks to people after so many years. She reminds us that being significant isn’t the same as being big or well-known.

The world tells us to wonder if our lives are big enough. Thérèse asks if our lives are loving enough. Those are very different questions.

Perhaps that is good news for those of us who wake up each day feeling overwhelmed by the state of the world. None of us can carry everything. None of us can solve every crisis. But each of us can choose how we treat the person right in front of us.

The little way begins there. It begins with the conviction that love is not measured by size. It is measured by presence.

~ Rev. Cameron Trimble

A Meditation by Rev. Cameron Trimble

06/16/2026

Religious scholar Huston Smith describes how the first Christians spread the gospel message through their happiness, beyond any particular words they shared:

The compassion the disciples had encountered in Jesus was powerful—victorious over everything. This conviction had transformed a dozen or so disconsolate followers of a slain and discredited leader into one of the most dynamic forces in human history, and the tongues of fire that descended upon them at Pentecost set the Mediterranean world aflame. People who were not speakers waxed eloquent. They exploded across the Greco-Roman world, preaching what has come to be called “the gospel”; in the original Greek the phrase is “the Good News.”

They spread their message with such fervor that in Jesus’s very generation it took root in every major city of the region….

The people who heard Jesus’s disciples proclaiming the Good News were as impressed by what they saw as by what they heard. They saw lives that had been transformed—men and women who were ordinary in every way except for the fact that they seemed to have found the secret of living. They evinced a tranquility, simplicity, and cheerfulness that their hearers had nowhere else encountered. Here were people who seemed to be making a success of the enterprise everyone would like to succeed at—life itself.

Smith highlights two remarkable qualities witnessed in the first Christians:

One of the earliest observations by an outsider about Christians that we have is, “See how these Christians love one another.” Integral to this mutual regard was a total absence of social barriers; it was a discipleship of equals. Here were men and women who not only said that everyone was equal in the sight of God but who lived as though they meant it. The conventional barriers of race, gender, and status meant nothing to them, for in Christ there was neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female, slave nor free. As a consequence, in spite of differences in function or social position, their fellowship was marked by a sense of genuine equality.

Their second distinctive quality was happiness. When Jesus was in danger, his disciples were alarmed; but otherwise it was impossible to be sad in Jesus’s company. And when he told his disciples that he wanted his joy to be in them, “that your joy may be complete,” to a remarkable degree that objective was realized.
Outsiders found this baffling. These scattered Christians were not numerous. They were not wealthy or powerful, and they were in constant danger of being killed. Yet they had laid hold of an inner peace that found expression in a joy that was uncontainable. Perhaps “radiant” would be a better word.

“Radiance” is hardly the word used to characterize the average religious life, but no other word fits as well the life of these early Christians.

Religious scholar Huston Smith describes how the first Christians spread the gospel message through their happiness, beyond any particular words they