You are invited to Worship with Holy Communion on September 7 at 10 am Service.
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.
Ordinary Time
With Holy Communion
Sunday, September 7, 2025, 10 am
Children’s Time: “How Do You Pray?” by Pastor John
Message: “The Benefit of Contemplative Prayer” by Rev. John Song
In the mid-2010s, University of Virginia researchers discovered something unsettling: when asked to sit alone with their thoughts for just 15 minutes, many students chose to give themselves electric shocks rather than face the silence. Left alone, the mind floods with regrets of the past, anxieties of the future, and the endless story of “me.” To escape, we’ve built a civilization of distraction. Yet contemplative scientists have now proven that with practice, the restless “me-network” of the brain can quiet, and a deeper “we-network” awakens, shifting us from the narrative self to experiential presence, from isolation to interbeing.
To sit with the discomfort of not knowing, to let our minds quiet enough to hear the deeper intelligence, to discover that what we thought was unbearable silence is actually the space where compassion and wisdom of God dance.
Mark 1:35
“In the morning, while it was still very dark,
he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.”
Matthew 14:22-23
Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone.”
“If 20% of the population meditate, there will be peace in the land.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi
“The most radical thing that a person can do is to come to this self-realization
and live out of that place. Because when we end conflict in here,
we are able to end conflict out there.”
~ Robert Wolfe
