Montclair Presbyterian Church

Celebrate 15 years of California faith community climate action and honor outstanding green congregations at the Interfaith Service for the Climate and 2015 Cool Climate Awards. Montclair Presbyterian Church will be receiving the Green Building Award this year. The event will be held at the Cathedral of Christ the Light on Lake Merritt in Oakland.

To RSVP or for more information, visit Interfaith Power & Light.

Tuesday, November 10 2015, 6-8pm at Cathedral of Christ the Light (on Lake Merritt), 2121 Harrison Street Oakland, CA 94612

Saturday, October 31 from 10-11:30am in the Thornhill Room.

Come and learn what our denomination is up to in Latin America! A Mission Co-Worker from Costa Rica, Elizabeth (Eli) Cook, will speak with us , in a presentation sponsored by the Peace & Justice Steering Committee.

Eli’s “day job” is as Bible Professor and Academic Dean at Latin American Biblical University (Universidad Bíblica Latinoamericana – UBL). The Instituto Biblico Pastoral program at UBL trains lay persons throughout Latin America, especially those with limited opportunities, such as the underprivileged, women, and indigenous peoples.

Eli says, “I am continually challenged … to be aware of the multiple forms of injustice, exclusion, discrimination and prejudice – forms of violence that are often justified legally and even Biblically in our communities and congregations.” She seeks to help UBL prepare leaders from partner churches to actively participate in the quest for reconciliation and justice.

This year’s retreat was again held at the picturesque Ralston-White Retreat Center located on the side of Mt Tam above Mill Valley. Julie Cline, our facilitator, guided us as we learned about the characteristics of our learned patterns of behavior & unconscious biases.

During the weekend, there was time for reflection, songs, hikes, ping-pong, reading, and a competitive game of Sequence.

Saturday afternoon included a brief Taize service, followed by the creation of a liturgical banner that will eventually be displayed at MPC. A worship service brought our retreat to a close on Sunday morning.

Sunday October 18, 1:30 p.m. Come to a talk in the Family Room by author Peter Mathews, professor of political science and sociology and a TV/radio analyst. His recent book is Dollar Democracy with Liberty and Justice for Some: How to Reclaim the American Dream for All. This event is sponsored by the Peace & Justice Steering Committee. Refreshments will be served. This event will kick off a postcard writing campaign to elected officials over the ensuing weeks.

On Sunday, November 1st at 4pm, author Kimberly Burge will be at MPC to discuss her new book The Born Frees: Writing with the Girls of Gugulethu, detailing her experiences with a South African girls creative writing group. We hope you can join us for what is sure to be a thought-provoking and inspiring event.

About the Book

When Kimberly Burge organized a writing group in the township of Gugulethu, South Africa, she discovered a group of extraordinary young women who belonged to the first generation born into a post-apartheid world. Though they were “born free,” the young women of the townships around Cape Town still face daunting challenges. Their families and communities have been ravaged by poverty, violence, sexual abuse, and AIDS. Yet, as Burge quickly learned, the spirit of these girls outshines the often extremely difficult circumstances they share with so many of their peers throughout the world.

The group is made up of girls with wide-ranging personalities and varying levels of education—girls such as the irrepressible Annasuena, whose late mother was one of South Africa’s most celebrated singers; bubbly Sharon, already career-bound; and shy Ntombi, determined to finish high school and pursue further studies—all of whom find reassurance and courage in writing. Together they also find temporary escape from the travails of their lives, anxieties beyond boyfriends and futures: for some of them, worries that include HIV medication regimens, conflicts with indifferent guardians, struggles with depression. Driven by a desire to claim their own voices and define themselves, their writing in the group Amazw’Entombi, “Voices of the Girls,” provides a lodestar for what freedom might mean. (source: KimberlyBurge.com )

About Kimberly Burge

Kimberly Burge is a narrative journalist, a longtime activist, and a Fulbright Scholar to South Africa. She earned a bachelor of science in journalism at Bowling Green State University, a master of fine arts in nonfiction writing from George Mason University, and was a fellow in global religion reporting for the International Reporting Project at Johns Hopkins University.

Kimberly has published feature stories, editorials, and reviews on issues of culture, politics, global poverty and development, faith and public policy in places such as The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, and Salon. A contributing writer for Sojourners magazine, she previously worked for twelve years at Bread for the World, a Washington-based advocacy organization combatting hunger and poverty in the United States and worldwide. In 2005, she accompanied 150 grassroots activists to the G-8 activities in Scotland, where an international mobilization organized by grassroots leaders, along with Bob Geldof and Bono, called on world leaders to increase efforts to fight poverty in Africa. (source: GoodReads.com)

Please contact the church main office with questions. Hope to see you there!

We are coming up to World Communion Sunday, which is my favorite minor church holiday of the year. Perhaps because it’s the most delicious, or perhaps because being so minor has saved the holiday from being co-opted or commercialized, I will always have a special place in my heart for the first Sunday in October. On this day we remember that we are one with the Church throughout the world and all ages, and we show this in our worship as tangibly as possible. This means Irish soda bread, Indian naan, Italian focaccia, New York bagels, Palestinian pita, Native American fry bread and much, much more. Debbie Fallehy’s bread-baking Family Life Small Group will contribute a loaf, and you are also invited to bring bread from your family’s culinary heritage.

I celebrated this holiday for the first 17 years of my life in a very diverse church. At Broadway Presbyterian Church in New York City, we were near Columbia and all its international students, adjacent to Harlem’s historic African-American neighborhoods, and just blocks away from the vacant lots where the legendary gangs of West Side Story battled out their ethnic rivalries in song and dance. World Communion Sunday brought so many people together, and as we stood around the table in saris and kente cloth, kimonos and suits, the vision of our multicolored clothes and faces taught me an image of heaven, where all shall be reconciled with God and one another.

Montclair may be a less diverse neighborhood than the Upper West Side… but we are well-traveled, and many of us have left bits of our hearts in one country or another. A piece of my heart is in Uganda. Some of our MPC members are in Bolivia right now. So I would invite you to bring a loaf, a tortilla, a rice bowl, or another alternative — either from your family’s heritage OR from a country you especially love.

You have advance notice so you can get excited and choose your best international outfits and recipes. This is happening on Sunday Oct 4th. If you can contribute bread please RSVP to me, and be there to deliver it early (9:45) before church.

Every Blessing,
Rev. Talitha