You are invited to the Blessing of the Animals Sunday on October 11, 2026 at 10 am. The bulletin for this Sunday is available for viewing HERE.
You can worship live on ZOOM by clicking the link below:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9658816441 Meeting ID: 965 881 6441
You can also watch Sunday services at your convenience by going to our website “watsonville1stumc.org” and click YouTube or Facebook. Each Sunday worship will be uploaded on Sunday afternoon for your viewing.
Blessing of the Animals Sunday
Sunday, October 11, 2026, 10 am
Bring your pets to our annual Blessings of Animals Sunday on October 11, 2026 at the 10 am worship service. We invite all animals, whether furry, scaled, or feathered to be blessed during the worship service. We invite you to bring your pets so we can bless them in worship!
*Children and children at heart who do not have animals may bring their favorite stuff animals. For those who cannot bring their pets, bring a picture of the pet.
Children’s Time “What We Can Learn from Animals” Pastor John
Special Music
Piano Solo Performance by Lee Juszak
First Gymnopedie
by French composer Erik Satie, 1888
Lee is 15 years old. He lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, and is currently a Sophomore in High School. He’s been playing piano for 8 years. He also plays viola in his school orchestra. He is the grandson of Joan & Bob Culbertson. He and his mom are staying with the Culbertson’s from October 10 to 17.
Message “T
Simone Weil, the 20th century French philosopher and mystic wrote, “We cure our faults by attention and not by will.” So much attention is being paid to attention these days—how it is being robbed and degraded by the ubiquity of the internet and technology, how we need to reclaim it and retrain it, how we ought to pay attention to what really matters in life. But Weil’s notion of attention was very different from our typical definitions of the word. Attention, for Simone Weil, was not a willful hardening of focus but a softening of gaze — not a closing in but an opening up. I call it a form of “receptivity.”
We will explore Greta Matos’ essay, “The Whisper of Reverence,” where she addresses our diminishing capacity to be fully present to ourselves, one another, and the sacredness of life. Matos shares her discovery of how a herd of wild horses in Patagonia, Chile, taught her the wisdom of reclaiming our sanity, sobriety, humanity, presence, and connection to the Holy.
Job 12:7-10
“But ask the animals, and they will teach you,
the birds of the air, and they will tell you;
ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you,
and the fish of the sea will declare to you.
Who among all these does not know
that the hand of the Lord has done this?
In his hand is the life of every living thing
and the breath of every human being.
