Spiritual Touchstone

Just Another Blog about Beauty?
by Rev. Dr. Melinda V. McLain

As an undergraduate music major in the early 80’s, I first became acquainted with a remarkable book entitled, “Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid” or the “GEB”. This Pulitzer Prize winning tome continues to challenge and excite folks from many fields because it makes connections between mathematics, art, and music in an effort to find the links between them. The book also anticipates the algorithmic thinking that underlies much of our digital world, and is a well-thumbed volume among those working in artificial intelligence.

When I first read it, I was fortunate to have friends who understood the math of it. Even then I wondered if mathematically “perfect” music is more beautiful. As an organ major, I was playing a lot of Bach and it did seem to exhibit a certain perfection. Still, there was so much music I loved that did not exhibit “the golden ratio” in a way that could be easily discerned, so it failed the “perfection is beauty” test for me. Ancient philosophers also tended to think of beauty in mathematical terms and “GEB” put that notion to rest for me.

And yet, most of us find some measure of beauty in nature whether it is gazing at the ocean, a flower, or a fully-ripe peach. In GEB, Hofstadler includes many calculations of “perfection” in nature from the precise proportions in a stalk of grass to the beautiful calculations that describe the harmonic series that undergirds all music. This is often referred to as “the golden ratio” or sometimes the “divine proportion” because it is so common in nature.

Dahlias are an example of flowers that often have the golden ratio

So what constitutes beauty in the world? Certainly it is in the eye of the beholder. But is there another way to define beauty that cuts through our individual preferences and touches the transcendent even if it doesn’t conform to the golden ratio?

For Christian mystics such as Julian of Norwich, beauty is found when we seek the holy and remember that no matter what our outward appearance or circumstance, we are all beloved in the eyes of the Creator. For zen practitioners, no belief in a God or Creator is required, but the effect is still the same: all beings are beautiful without exception and our separation from one another and creation is an illusion.

Where do you find beauty? What role does beauty play in your spiritual life?

Our worship and study series entitled “Beguiled by Beauty” continues this Sunday at 12n in Zoom. Send Pastor Melinda an email to receive login credentials and materials.

A Note from Pastor Melinda

The difficulty and crisis of the world is overwhelming. It is virtually impossible to bear it without very deep resources. - Dr. Wendy Farley

The Good Table spiritual community will begin a six-week worship and study series this Sunday entitled “Beguiled by Beauty: Cultivating a Life of Contemplation and Compassion”. Email Pastor Melinda if you’re interested in joining us. Find out more about the series here.

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From the Garden

Bonnie’s Flower Power
Flowers are like children to me. Their faces change as they grow, their personalities come into focus. They can be silly, like bunny-tail grass, or saucy, like a Julia Child yellow floribunda rose. They can pop up suddenly, like an amazing three-foot tall lime-green Puya mirabilis. And they talk to me when I visit them in the garden. One says: "Here I am! Aren't I beautiful today!" Another says, "Hot hot hot. Water. Please." Another says "I wish I could move into the light."

Sunflower that came up in Bonnie’s Strawberry Patch!

Over the past few years, I've grown vegetables as well as flowers. They are good companions. Flowers attract native bees and other beneficial insects. Bees congregate by the star-shaped blue borage flowers and the long purple flower tufts of Wild Magic basil, then fly on to help pollinate the zucchini, squashes, pumpkins, and watermelon.

My oldest favorite child is the rose. When I was nine years old, recovering from pneumonia in the children's ward of a Georgia hospital, my mother brought me a single rose in a make-shift vase, a soda bottle covered in tin foil. My father could not visit at all: he was stationed in Iceland that year. My mom had two younger children at home so she could not stay long. The rose was her present and presence. Currently I am training a princess (Crown Princess Margareta) to climb up an arbor. She has a ways to go. I imagine her in full bloom, taller than me.

Purple Dahlia

Orange Dahlia

My newest favorite is the dahlia. My first attempts at growing dahlias in only a sliver of afternoon sun were terrible, really, but were good enough to encourage me to try again. We will see what September brings.

Just as I took portraits of my children while they were growing up, I take portraits of flowers in my garden. And like any good grandmother, I show them off to all who are willing! During this season of covid-19, I have been sharing #somethingpretty on Facebook to the public. For me, this is a spiritual practice. I am thankful for the abundance in the natural world of my backyard, and I hope to provide a pause, however slight, in the stream of frightening news. I look forward to the day we can gather in mass among the plants and flowers at our El Sobrante Good Table home. That day will come.

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In the Kitchen

We don’t know about you, but our zucchini is going gangbusters over here! One great way to utilize this squash is to turn it into noodles, or “Zoodles”! All you need is a spiralizer — a handy little tool that spins the zucchini into long threads. Here’s an inexpensive one: Cuisinart Spiralizer

My favorite recipe with zoodles is this one from Sugar-Free Mom: Zucchini Pasta Salad. It’s meant to be a mason jar salad, but you can easily eat it right after you make it. (Mason jar salads are fantastic if you want to make lunch to go, or prep a bunch of salads in individual portion sizes that will last the whole week in your fridge.)

Zucchini Pasta Salad with Avocado Spinach Dressing
by Sugar-Free Mom
Serves 2 (double the recipe if you’d like salads for the week or to serve more people)

INGREDIENTS

For Salad:
1 1/2 cups spiraled zucchini
1/2 cup shelled edamame
1/2 cup sliced celery
1/2 cup chopped red bell pepper
1/2 cup cherry tomatoes

Optional:
1/4 cup feta cheese
2 tablespoons kalamata olives

For Dressing:
1/2 cup fresh packed spinach
1/2 ripe avocado
juice of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons Greek yogurt plain, 2%
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper

Courtesy of SugarFreeMom.com

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Spiral or shred or thinly slice zucchini. Set aside.

2. In a high powered blender, mix dressing ingredients until smooth.

3. Pour 1/2 the dressing into the bottom of 2 mason jars.

4. Add celery on top of dressing.

5. Add peppers on top of celery then top with edamame.

6. Sprinkle feta cheese then add tomatoes and olives.

7. Last place 1/2 the spiraled zucchini into each mason jar.

8. Cover and refrigerate. Last up to 5 days.

9. Once ready to eat, shake the jar vigorously then pour onto a plate. Toss with fork if needed to mix dressing.

Courtesy of SugarFreeMom.com

In Our Community

Pride This Year

During this season filled with protest in the midst of a pandemic, we also are celebrating the 50th Anniversary of LGBTQ+ Pride. Not really sure how great it will be to “march” virtually, but it is an important milestone for our communities. The Good Table UCC (Mira Vista UCC) became an “open and affirming” church in 1994 and has been marching with United in Spirit for over 25 years!

Personally, I am delighted that my dear friend and mentor Rev. Dr. Janie Spahr is an elected community grand marshal! This honor for her is way overdue and I’m glad we finally got her voted in! I have so many wonderful memories of Janie, but one that sticks out this year comes from a civil disobedience action in San Francisco on May 27, 2009 after one of the many negative court reversals leading up to marriage equality.

Janie, and a whole lot of interfaith clergy friends, including me, gathered at St. Mark’s Lutheran and then marched to City Hall and then sat down in the intersection of Van Ness and Grove. I chose to “hold the bail money” for my friends, work the press, and lead singing around the circle. Also, it was really hot that day to be in liturgical garb and we were a bit concerned about some of our elder clergy, including Janie.

As I scanned through the really mellow detachment of San Francisco police, I saw that a female lieutenant was in charge. I went to her and asked when they planned to start making arrests. She told me soon. I then pointed over to the clergy group and asked if they could be arrested first. I knew that it would make better press to have them arrested first AND I was also hoping to spare some of our elders from developing heat stroke. The SFPD lieutenant then looked again and asked me, “Is that Janie Spahr?” I told her it was and the cop lit up and said, “She was my youth pastor!” and rushed over to hug Janie and thank her for being there for her when she was coming out in high school. Janie was one of the first arrested that day.

Clergy protesters included: Jana Drakka, Michael Mallory, Jay E. Johnson, Dawn Roginski, Will McGarvey, Danika Askanidóttúr, Annie Steinberg-Behrman, Jane A Spahr (in purple cassock), Denis Letourneau Paul and Penny Nixon

Obviously, this is NOT the experience most people of color have with the police and this protest would not have been handled this way by most cops in most places. Like Janie, I know the value of white privilege — especially when dealing with cops. And plenty of LGBTQ+ folks have been brutalized by cops for years. But on that hot day in San Francisco, we saw a small glimpse of what “community-based” policing could look like, when cops look more like you and maybe even “know you” too. It was also a glimpse into what value diversity brings to all organizations. The church that allowed Janie Spahr to be a beacon of hope to a young lesbian was a better church. And the police department that put an out lesbian lieutenant in charge of an LGBTQ+ protest did a better job of serving the public, too.

This year’s Pride celebration will hopefully be more diverse than ever and will add a bit of rainbow to all of our protests for justice and peace.

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Erasing Medical Debt Campaign Update

We are so pleased to be able to say that our combined efforts with other East Bay UCCs, and generous support from our national denomination, have erased $4.4 million in medical debt for our neighbors in Alameda and Contra Costa counties! In this effort, The Good Table UCC gave $3,500.

“As a diverse group of churches, we all knew that medical debt was a big problem for the most vulnerable in our communities: the sick, the elderly, the poor, and veterans. In addition, we learned that medical debt seriously impacts the middle class, driving many families who were formerly stable into poverty. By forgiving this debt, we hope to give struggling individuals, and their families, a fresh start. “

You can read the full Press Release from First Church Berkeley here: UCC Churches Erase $4.4 Million in Medical Debt in the San Francisco East Bay

by Rev. Melinda McLain, Pastor for The Good Table UCC, and Kelly Knight, Marketing Manager

Spiritual Touchstone

On Sunday, June 14th, we marked 90 days since the initial shelter-in-place orders were originally issued by Bay Area public health officials. As a congregation, The Good Table UCC actually stopped meeting in person on March 15th, which made June 14th our “Fourteenth Sunday in Zoom”. Now that’s a liturgical season I never learned about in seminary! Plus, many of us have been participating in sustained Black Lives Matter protests since the horrible murder of George Floyd on May 25th, while wearing masks, practicing physical distancing, and paying attention to the new dynamics for protesting during a global pandemic. 

The past few months have definitely tested our individual and collective spiritual endurance. And as a pastor, I have heard the grief, rage, and hopelessness that this season of pandemic and protest has produced in so many. So what do you do to increase your spiritual endurance? Is it possible to develop those muscles like an athlete might develop their physical endurance?

Muir Woods, by Tom Emanuel

When in need of a spiritual boost, I often find inspiration in nature. And when it comes to endurance, our beloved local redwood trees are without a doubt the champs! As most know, these trees are some of the oldest living things on earth, with many trees living from 600 - 2000 years. How’s that for endurance!

But how do they do it? Turns out, they succeed in part because they live in groves where they draw strength and stability from one another. They literally cannot do this alone. And this strategy of creating an interlocking web of roots below ground also allows these trees to rise over 300 ft. into the air (over 30 stories high) — a feat of tremendous stability too.

The lesson for me from redwood trees is to focus more on getting (and staying) connected to neighbors in the community in ways that increase our collective endurance and stability. This has been extra challenging during the pandemic, but with some creativity, we can continue to build these strong networks and connections and our spiritual endurance and stability as well.

For more on this, please listen to my recent sermon, “Enduring Hope”, on Soundcloud:

P.S. Taking care of yourself is paramount during this time. Burnout is very real, and the anxiety, grief, anger, and overwhelm we’re all feeling is very real. Here is a great resource from The Greater Good Science Center at Berkeley: Four Ways to Feel Good on a Hard Day in Lockdown

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In Our Community

• We were sorry to hear the news that a real landmark business in El Sobrante, Thrift Town has announced that it will not reopen. Read more here: Thrift Town in El Sobrante Will Not Reopen

  Many Good Table members have been to protests in recent weeks. Rev. Theresa Hardy, Vice-President of The Good Table Café board of directors attended a Black Lives Matter protest in El Sobrante with her family. Several protestors were on horseback — very El Sobrante!

• One protest passed our site on Sobrante Avenue while Gavin Raders, Co-Founder and Co-Director of Planting Justice, our partner organization, was watering plants on the property. He turned off the water and joined in!

• Some good news: The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that a landmark civil rights law protects gay and transgender workers from workplace discrimination, handing the movement for LGBT+ equality a long-sought and unexpected victory: New York Times coverage.

We’re proud of our members and our community for all they’re doing to make sure all people and all families have the same rights and protections. Stay safe out there!

By Kelly Knight, Marketing Manager for The Good Table

Welcome to our inaugural weekly communication, The Good Table At Home — a collection of recipes, gardening tips and ideas, spiritual touchstones, and community news. We’re hoping this helps us all feel a little more connected in these difficult and distanced times.

From the Garden

Some gardening tips for June:

• If you have rose bushes, now is a great time to cut them to ensure they’ll bloom all summer long. When you put them in vases, be sure the leaves aren’t touching the water (to avoid rot & stinky vase water.)

• Switch over to planting heat-tolerant lettuce varieties in the vegetable garden, and continue adding to your summer vegetables if space allows.

• Install bird netting to keep birds away from fruit trees and plants.

• Check your strawberry patch frequently for slugs, snails, and earwigs. Fertilize now for healthy plants and continued berry production. (And check out our strawberry shortcake recipe, later in this edition!)

In the Kitchen

The beginning of June always makes me crave Strawberry Shortcake. Strawberries are coming up both in my garden and at the market, so I decided to use them to make this wonderful, pretty easy recipe. It uses a simple drop biscuit for the shortcake, which only took me about 20 minutes to make.

Strawberry Shortcake
Recipe from Smitten Kitchen. If you’re looking for a gluten-free or dairy-free recipe, try this one from Gluten-Free Palate.

Ingredients

SHORTCAKES
2 1/4 cups (295 grams) all-purpose flour
2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3 tablespoons (40 grams) granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon fine sea or table salt
6 tablespoons (85 grams or 3 ounces) unsalted butter, cold, cut into chunks
2 large egg yolks (you can also use one whole egg instead)
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons (205 ml) heavy cream
3 tablespoons (35 grams) raw or turbinado sugar

TO FINISH
1 pound (455 grams) strawberries or mixed berries, hulled and halved if large
2 tablespoons (25 grams) granulated sugar, or more to taste
1 tablespoon (15 ml) fresh lemon juice (optional)
1 cup (235 ml) heavy or whipping cream

DIRECTIONS
Make shortcakes: Heat oven to 400 degrees F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, granulated sugar, and salt until thoroughly combined. Add butter and using your fingertips or a pastry blender, break it into small bits, the largest should be no bigger than a small pea. In a small bowl, whisk yolks with a splash of cream, then pour rest of cream in and whisk to combine. Pour into butter-flour mixture and use a rubber spatula to mix and mash it together into one cohesive dough.

Divide dough into 6 (for large, 3 1/2 to 3 3/4-inch wide and up to 2-inch tall) shortcakes or 8 smaller ones. I do this by pressing the dough somewhat flat into the bottom of the bowl (to form a circle) and using a knife to divide it into pie-like wedges. Place raw or turbinado sugar in a small bowl. Roll each wedge of shortcake into a ball in your hands and roll it through the raw/turbinado sugar, coating it in all but a small area that you should leave bare. (I found that the sugar underneath the shortcakes would burn, so better to leave it off.)

Place it, bare spot down, on the prepared baking sheet. Repeat with remaining wedges of dough. Bake for 15 minutes, until lightly golden all over. Let cool completely on tray or on a cooling rack.

While cooling, prepare fruit and cream: Mix berries, 2 tablespoons sugar (more or less to taste), and lemon juice, if desired, in a bowl and let macerate so that the juices run out.

In a larger bowl, beat cream until soft peaks form. Add sugar to taste, or leave unsweetened, if that’s your preference.

To serve: Carefully split each cooled shortcake with a serrated knife. Spoon berries and their juices over bottom half. Heap generously with whipped cream. Place shortcake “lid” on top. Eat immediately and don’t forget to share.

Volunteers on our last Community Day, February 29, 2020

We’re trying something new in this space: incorporating news from all the entities that will eventually be housed in El Sobrante at the site of the former Adachi nursery. For those of you who have been following our progress for awhile, this change comes because Mira Vista United Church of Christ has now legally changed its name to: The Good Table United Church of Christ.

We have also set up a new non-profit called: The Good Table Café which will operate our pay-what-you-can and pay-it-forward community café plus manage the gathering space’s schedule of educational, spiritual, and cultural activities offered by The Good Table UCC, Planting Justice, and other community groups. Starting a new non-profit during a global pandemic might not be ideal, but we’re doing it!

While current circumstances prevent us from gathering physically for our Community Work + Fun Days and have pushed our potential opening of the café, nursery, and gathering space into 2021, we hope this newsletter and our presence on various social media platforms including our growing website the-good-table.org will continue to gather and support the various communities that will be served by The Good Table. Stay connected, be safe, and be healthy!

• We are very close to completing our application to the Contra Costa County building department and we may still be able to submit it during this public health emergency. But whether we submit or not in the near future, we are in the process of refining our plans, getting bids from contractors, and we continue to prepare for construction to happen when we are able to begin, even though we are unable to hold our community work + fun days and our volunteer-led demo efforts are stopped. Sadly, however this new set of challenges means that there is little chance of being able to open before 2021.

• Mira Vista Church has been planning to create a pay-what-you-can, pay-it-forward community café for nearly four years. In preparation to do this, we actively sought guidance from the One World Everybody Eats Foundation, an organization that supports pay-what-you-can cafés across the country. We also worked with entrepreneurs and restaurant folks to develop a business plan with a double-bottom line for financial sustainability and successful social service delivery. And with the help of students at Berkley Law and its New Business Law Clinic led by Professor William Kell, we have now formed a secular non-profit to operate the café and community gathering space called The Good Table Café.

• The Good Table Café will be governed by a small board of directors drawn initially from the church and the community who will then select and hire a café director and set policies for this new non-profit. The current public health emergency made it necessary to appoint this first board and have an initial meeting online, but we have done it! The officers and members of The Good Table Café board of directors are: Elise Hariton, secretary; Heinz Lankford; treasurer, Theresa Hardy, Vice-President; and Melinda V. McLain, President and Incorporator. We hope to add one more board member with significant food and restaurant experience soon.

By Reverend Dr. Melinda McLain
Pastor for The Good Table UCC

This isn’t my first pandemic. As most of you know, I began ordained ministry as a community-based HIV/AIDS chaplain in the mid-90’s after burying over 250 people before I was 30 years old. So “plague” has always been part of my ministerial portfolio along with the dire necessity of cultivating hope in times of intense fear, love in the midst of hatred and injustice, and finally, how to cope with multiple losses over time.

This may sound impressive, but believe me, I’m still not very good at any of these things. I just know what it is to grapple with such realities. And if you’ve ever survived a terrible loss, a natural disaster, or a life-threatening illness, you probably know more than you think you do about how to live when living is hard.Right now, we all need to dig deep into our souls so that we may become courageous “for the living of these days”. With that in mind, here are a few of my initial thoughts for your consideration.

Sadly, there is still no effective licensed vaccine for preventing HIV infection after nearly forty years of work on this ongoing global scourge. But there is effective treatment and behavioral prevention, if we’re willing to do what is needed. And so, I suspect that we will not get a vaccine any time soon - or perhaps ever - for preventing COVID-19 or the next novel virus that will emerge. But don’t take this as a certainty because I’m not a scientist or physician, but I do know something about false hope and real faith. And when we know the difference between those two, we can all be part of the solution to any emergency.

False hope is based upon the illusion that there will be some sort “magic fix” that restores everything to the way things were after the pandemic, the tornado, the earthquake, or the wildfire happens and ravages everything. I may be a person of faith who believes in miracles of all sorts, but this sort of “magical thinking” is dangerous and deadly. False hope makes us prisoners of the past and will keep us from really healing from the trauma of living through a pandemic or other disaster.

So how do we have real faith and real hope? Real hope comes when our fears are named, faced, and we begin to move forward courageously. As Mark Twain once said, “courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear”. Real faith comes when we learn again to trust ourselves and each other and we begin again to create lives devoted to love, peace, and care for one another.

And so, I invite us all to use this time of public health emergency to place our faith and trust in the essentials we will need when the crisis passes as we re-create our lives from a new point of view. We can choose to be grateful for those who are on the “front lines” by supporting their efforts and by caring for them, our neighbors, and ourselves in appropriate ways.

“We can also use this time to recognize and choose to re-create our world with an eye toward ending the grotesque inequality that constantly picks winners and losers based upon wealth, instead of the inherent and sacred worth of each life.”

— Melinda McLain

I know I am particularly moved by the sacrifices being made by janitors, farm workers, check-out clerks, and delivery people working to support the heroic efforts of our healthcare professionals. And for those of us who are privileged enough to work from home this internet meme is on point, “your grandparents were asked to fight in world wars. You are being asked to sit on the couch and wash your hands. Do not mess this up!”

We can also choose to confront our own choices made through convenience instead of clarity about what is really essential for our well-being. In conversations with those who lost all their possessions during Hurricane Katrina, there was a remarkable consistency among them that “things aren’t very important” and that letting go of having so many things brought a certain freedom. We can use this time of world re-ordering to become free too.

Those of us on the Jesus path will celebrate Holy Week and Easter this year without physically gathering together. I have no clue about whether this will be the worst or best Easter ever, but it won’t be the “same old, same old” so the possibility of being surprised by real resurrection would seem to be greater. May it be so for us all.

What questions are you sitting with during this time? What helps you cope with your fear? Where do you find hope and faith? What wisdom do you have to share?

“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?”

— Isaiah 58:6

Inspired by other United Church of Christ (UCC) congregations in Chicago and around the nation, we are a group of 31 UCC churches in the San Francisco East Bay working together to erase the medical debts of our neighbors in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties.

Medical debt destroys the financial stability of large segments of America’s most vulnerable communities: the sick, the elderly, the poor, and veterans. It also targets the middle class, driving many families who are barely getting along into poverty. By forgiving this debt we strive to give struggling individuals, and their families, a fresh start. Medical debt is a huge driver of the destabilizing forces that can lead individuals and families to become homeless, so relieving our neighbors of medical debt can actually help prevent homelessness in the future.

Our local campaign will be made possible by an extraordinary non-profit organization called RIP Medical Debt, founded in 2014 by two former debt collections executives, Craig Antico and Jerry Ashton. Over the course of decades in the debt-buying industry, Craig and Jerry met with thousands of Americans saddled with unpaid and un-payable medical debt and realized they were uniquely qualified to help these people in need. They used their expertise and compassion to create a process to forgive medical debt: they would use donations to buy large bundles of medical debt and then forgive that debt with no tax consequences to donors or recipients.The results have been spectacular— $1,020,232,792 billion in medical debts eradicated so far, providing financial relief for over 520,000 individuals and families.

RIP Medical Debt says that they can purchase the available debt for Alameda and Contra Costa county for just under $45,000. If we can raise that amount, we will be able to erase $2.6 million in debt in Contra Costa and $2.1 million in Alameda.

We have asked RIP Medical Debt to begin our campaign on Ash Wednesday, February 26th with the intention of raising $45,000 by Easter Sunday, April 12th, 2020.

Mira Vista’s Social Action Team has pledged $1,000 to this effort and we’ve identified another $500 we can use from the Deacon’s Fund. We also invite additional individual gifts, as you are led, throughout Lent. Just put “RIP Medical Debt” in the memo line and make the check out to Mira Vista Church. We can also accept your donation via square, if you prefer. Just let Pastor Melinda know you want to donate this way.

Our sibling congregations are also busy raising money for this project and we hope to complete the campaign by the time we gather for our 2nd Annual Good Friday service at First Church Berkeley on April 10, 2020 at 7p. Mark your calendars now and plan to attend.

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. ”

— - Isaiah 43:1

As part of our journey toward creating a new model of community and service in El Sobrante, Mira Vista Church United Church of Christ (Congregational) officially and unanimously voted to change our name to: The Good Table United Church of Christ during our Semi-Annual Meeting on Sunday, January 19, 2020.

I’ve been singing the old spiritual “I told Jesus he could change our name” for quite some time, as we developed this project and indeed, now is the time for a new name. Mira Vista Church was founded on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1950 and has a rich history that we will not lose as we move forward even though the congregation moved out of that specific neighborhood of El Cerrito in 2006. And by moving to El Sobrante, the “name has even less meaning”, as longtime member Betty Coates has pointed out.

It is appropriate that we begin the process of our name change during the season of Lent. Changing one’s name is often part of beginning a new chapter of spiritual life. Sarai and Abram become Abraham and Sarah after their journey from the land of Ur. Jacob wrestles with the angel at the jabbok and earns a new name “Israel”. And in the new testament, Saul, who had been a persecutor of the followers of Jesus becomes Paul when he becomes of follower of Jesus himself. Perhaps you too have experienced a name change to mark a new phase of life because of marriage, death, or some other transition.

Our new name firmly places our next chapter of ministry at “the table” or “la mesa,” as we call our shared meal now. This is certainly appropriate for a church that is also a café and it also places the ritual of Holy Communion at the center of our identity too. By naming our table “good”, we are also claiming our new church as a place where all are welcome and all are invited to become a better version of themselves. We also find strength and nourishment “at the table” to do “good” in the world. To take on the mission of Jesus to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, provide release for the prisoners, and bind up the broken-hearted ones.

Bit by bit, we will claim our new name in all our materials such as this newsletter and online, legally, and during a wonderful celebration of the 70th Anniversary of our congregation on Saturday, April 18, 2020 at Fern Cottage in Kennedy Grove in El Sobrante. Save the date and plan to attend!

As we start a new decade, and inch our way toward our new church home in El Sobrante, I am so grateful for each member of this congregation, its friends, and our new partners and supporters for the unique way that everyone has nourished The Good Table.

Some of you have been swinging sledgehammers or sheet mulching at the new property. Others have been slogging through legal documents, bank statements, and building codes. But best of all, we now have a squad of first rate cheerleaders, urging us forward through the complexity of creating a whole new way of creating community and being church.

At our Semi-Annual (and perhaps final) meeting of Mira Vista UCC on Sunday, January 19th, after many months of conversation, we will formally vote whether or not to change the name of the church to The Good Table United Church of Christ.

Then on Saturday, April 18th, we will celebrate the 70th anniversary of this congregation ready to mark a brand new chapter in our history. So whether you have been spreading light by being a mirror, a candle, or by burning the candle at both ends, it is undeniable that we are collectively becoming a brand new kind of beacon of love. Happy New Year!

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. ”

— Edith Wharton