You are invited to the in-person Worship Service on Oct. 8 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 or 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.
Kingdomtide
Sunday, October 8, 2023, 10 am
This Sunday is Sunday School with Joan
First, children will be in worship. Following the Special Music,
the teacher, Joan Culbertson, will lead our children to the Nursery Room.
Children’s Time “Practicing Forgiveness” Pastor John
Special Music Always on my Mind Eden Edell
by Willie Nelson
River of Love
by Eden Edell
Eden Edell grew up in the Bay Area, has been playing music for over twenty years, performing for ten, and has written more than a handful of songs. People are often moved when they hear Eden sing and the stories she tells in her music. Her musical style is Indie Folk but she also sings Blues and Jazz tunes. Her music is described as ethereal and grounding at the same time.
Message “Mystical Understanding of Forgiveness” Dr. Peter Coster
Christianity has approached forgiveness as something we must practice and do if we are to be true followers of Christ, but we fail when we are trying to forgive by our own reason and will, rather than discover that forgiveness is what or who God is and when we are able to see all reality from God’s point of view, forgiveness is all that there is to see.
Forgiveness is a necessary dimension of our human experience which no other animal species requires (as far as we know) because only human beings have the capacity to refuse to be who they are and live according to their true nature. This means in the end that all forgiveness is self-forgiveness because in God, we are all one inter-related and interdependent unity which we as Christians call the Body of Christ.
The difficulty with forgiving those who have hurt and wounded us is because we take it personally, which means we identify with egoic separateness and want to be mirrored and seen in order to feel valued and intrinsically loved.
Trauma and wounding occur because someone treated us like an object to be used and rather than a real living subject to be in relationship with.
We forgive in order to restore the broken connections by letting go of resentment, anger, and the desire for revenge. So forgiveness and death to the ego are interrelated.
Only mystics can forgive and because you are in Christ you are a mystic in the process of becoming who you already are. Forgiveness is therefore inseparable from living the divine-human mystery and not something we just do every now and then, but a lifelong journey.
“Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly.
The hard truth is that all of us love poorly. We need to forgive and be
forgiven every day, every hour – unceasingly. That is the great work of
love among the fellowship of the weak – that is the human family.”
~ Henry Nouwen
“Forgiveness is a refusal to cast someone out of your heart.”
~ John Song
Peter H. Coster, PhD, MDiv, LMFT is Relational Psychotherapist, Clinical Supervisor and the Executive Director for the Center for Psychotherapy, Spirituality and Creativity. Peter divides his time between Potter Valley, CA where he and his wife Kate have built a county home on 42 acres and the city of Sonoma where they live with their cat named Aribel.
