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Small Group Book Study

Contact the office to find out how you may participate in the meetings.

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Date

May 19 2025

Time

10:00 am - 11:00 am

Local Time

  • Timezone: America/New_York
  • Date: May 19 2025
  • Time: 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm

Location

St Helena United Methodist Church
1310 Adams Street, St Helena, CA 94574
Category
Book Study
Church
Church Community
Small Groups

Organizer

Pastor Audrey Ward
Pastor Audrey Ward
Email
audrey@sthelenaunitedmethodistchurch.org

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Contact Us

ADDRESS
1310 Adams Street
St Helena, CA 94574

Email
info@sthelenaunitedmethodistchurch.org

Phone
707.963.2839

 

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Saint Helena United Methodist Church

Saint Helena United Methodist Church
Saint Helena United Methodist Church6 months ago
Join us for our music Sunday with Katie Sculatti and Terry Winn—Heaven for an hour❣️—what could be better…at 10 am, corner of Oak & Adams, St Helena. All are welcome!
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Saint Helena United Methodist Church
Saint Helena United Methodist Church6 months ago
THURSDAY PULPIT
by Audrey Ward
Published in the St Helena Star
Thursday 7 November 2024

What We Need Most

During times of extreme stress—say, the last 30 days—what I depend upon most are my friends, my family and my journals. The journals I refer to are random notebooks that litter my living space.

Not the elegant Blackwing leather bound pages perfectly fit with a pencil in the elastic on the binding. Rather, spiral notebooks of all sizes from 3x5 to 8x10 usually bought for a specific purpose but then after only ten pages or so are filled, tossed into a pile of similar discards but not thrown away. Ever. Because there may be some sentence held within that I must not forget.

Like this morning finding the line “Remember Paul Goodnight’s '"Listen to the Hip Bones,’” referring to an art work I fell in love with after discovering it at the Cousens Gallery on Martha’s Vineyard. I framed a 3’ by 5’ copy of the work and enjoyed seeing it on my wall for years.

Then my living space had reason to shrink and I lost such treasures to the winds of change. But that line in my journal brought it back in full view.

What a pleasure. Looking it up again; remembering in detail the beauty of those women in an ordinary moment the artist captured, filled me with delight. During times of extreme stress, we need to be filled with delight. Call it what you will, such moments are sacred in my book.

It may be laughter of a friend whose voice you haven’t heard for months, or choosing dishes of Chinese food your family is sharing in honor of your mother’s birthday. She’s been gone for years, but your children remember her with joy and remind each other of her little “clicks and sighs of otherness” as John Updike puts it.

At the same time that we revel in the company of people we already know to relieve our nerves from possibly shorting out, it’s essential to look into the faces of those we’ve never before seen and consider their humanity. Not the outrageous quotes that may be floated above them in a newspaper clipping or coming from their open mouths on TV, but where they, themselves, originated. Why they are so badly hurt that they inflict discomfort and even harm on others.

Ordinary as it may sound, I’m choosing to visit a prayer circle on the Tuesday evening of election. Before you murmur “Of course you would” and roll your eyes, let me assure you that this is unusual behavior for me.

The group I’m visiting on November 5 th is a room full of folks who may vote differently from each other yet while they do not look away from concerns, they focus through their hearts. A kind of attention that deflects bitterness and rage, turning it to compassion by way of wonder, even awe. Plus, this group always has good things to share on the table.

Jonathan Haidt teaches ethics at the business school of NYU and calls himself a “social psychologist”. He reminds us that in trying to bring divergent neighborhoods together whether here or in the Middle East, words will probably not help. Rather, he recommends food. Yep. Food. Churches are good at that; so are neighbors.

In one congregation I served there was a group of people who felt distinctly different from their community at large. They were confident that they were hated, reviled, unaccepted.

But I kept saying, well, have you offered to walk your neighbor’s dog for them if you notice they’re sick or temporarily disabled? Do you share your chocolate chip cookies when a fresh batch comes from the oven? Have you ever invited them for tea?

They looked at me in horror. And I smiled, shrugged and repeated what has become a mantra: Everybody needs a good neighbor.

Rabbi Jesus knew that of course, it hasn’t changed since he said it definitively in the first century. And yet we are still trying to learn—and too often forget--the effectiveness of simple acts that make up being a good neighbor.

The surprise of good neighbors, friends and relations; recalling art that has provided delight in the past and still holds abundant beauty in color, form and message, these small gifts of our humanity have the power to relieve our stress in a contemporary society shredded by rage.
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Saint Helena United Methodist Church
Saint Helena United Methodist Church6 months ago
Remember! Set your clock back an hour before going to bed on Saturday night
Saint Helena United Methodist Church
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