First Church in Boston

Come Home For the Holidays!

admin — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 13:41:08 +0000

Winter Solstice
Wednesday, December 21, 6 PM
Featuring the Celtic music of Áine Minogue

Christmas Eve
Candlelight Celebration With Lessons and Carols
Saturday, December 24, 5:30 PM

Sunday, December 25, 11 AM, “The Paradox of Christmas,” Linda Simmons

Summer Music in Hale Chapel

Paul Cienniwa — Thu, 17 May 2012 15:51:48 +0000

Even with the First Church Choir on vacation during the summer month, choir members will be singing as soloists at our summer services in Hale Chapel. The schedule is as follows:

June 17: tenor Richard Saunders; July 1: mezzo-soprano Christina English; July 8: baritone William Thorpe; July 15: mezzo-soprano Hilary Anne Walker; July 22: soprano Christine Teeters; July 29: mezzo-soprano Carola Emrich-Fisher; August 5: tenor Nick Hebert; August 12: mezzo-soprano Renée Hites; August 19: soprano Rebecca Teeters; August 26: tenor Ethan Bremner; September 2: baritone James Liu. The July and August services will be accompanied by pianist Bob Winkley.

Peter Neuendorffer

And what of June 24? We’ll be joined by First Church member and jazz pianist/composer Peter Neuendorffer!

Emersonia

Paul Cienniwa — Thu, 10 May 2012 12:39:01 +0000

On Sunday, June 10, Water Communion Sunday, the First Church Choir will sing all of Church member Larry Thomas Bell‘s four-movement work on Emerson texts, Emersonia. Over the course of the 2011-2012 season, the choir sang the individual movements with the plan of singing the entire work this spring. Written for the choir of First Church and designed for our service format, the original title was A Unitarian Service, and each movement was conceived for a musical place in our service: Prelude, Musical Meditation, Offertory, Postlude. The June 10 service will be an opportunity to hear the entire work as it was intended.

Click here to see upcoming service music at First Church.

“The Good (Enough) Mother,” Rev. Rosemary Lloyd, Sunday, May 13, 11 AM

admin — Mon, 07 May 2012 21:38:32 +0000

Rosemary writes: “It’s good to be back! My sabbatical travels included a retreat on contemplative practices at the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. One of the guest teachers, Frank Ostaseski, talked with participants about the vital importance of basic trust in our own inherent goodness. How do we learn that basic trust? Well-regarded psychosocial development theory says we establish that ability between birth and 18 months. How does spiritual development help us continue to cultivate trust and make all of life more joyful? Let’s explore this together on Mother’s Day, May 13.”

For Sunday’s Order of Service, click here: May 13 2012 OOS

Wishing choir member Richard Saunders farewell

Paul Cienniwa — Thu, 03 May 2012 17:31:51 +0000

Richard Saunders

We at First Church have been very lucky over the past few years in that our professional choir members have stayed on our roster year after year. Next season, all of our choir members will be returning except for tenor Richard Saunders who is finishing his undergraduate degree at New England Conservatory this spring.

When Richard first auditioned for the choir, I presumed that he was a graduate student. After all, he had already sung as a professional with the choir at Asylum Hill Congregational Church in Hartford, CT, and he sang a very, very good audition. Little did I know that he was an incoming freshman to NEC. Richard’s focus at NEC has been as a jazz singer, and this explains why I’ve had him sing solos on our less classically oriented Sundays, such as this year’s Coming of Age service. His velvety sound will surely be missed, but you will get to hear his solo singing one last time during our first summer service in the chapel on June 17. Click here to see the schedule of upcoming service music.

Farewell, Richard. We’ll miss your jazzy tones and your bizarre taste in sweaters!

Coming of Age, Sunday, May 6, 11 AM

admin — Wed, 02 May 2012 13:49:38 +0000

“The great end in religious instruction, is not to stamp our minds upon the young, but to stir up their own; not to make them see with our eyes, but to look inquiringly and steadily with their own; not to give them a definite amount of knowledge, but to inspire a fervent love of truth; not to form an outward regularity, but to touch inward springs.” – William Ellery Channing

This Sunday we will be celebrating our young people as they offer their “credo statements” in our Coming of Age service. Most religious traditions have a rite of passage for young people as they prepare to take on adult roles in the community. These rites celebrate whatever is at the heart of the community – Torah reading in a Jewish Bar/Bat Mitzvah, confirmation in the Christian tradition – but what is at the heart of our free faith? It is the outpouring from those “inward springs.” Come and hear our young people (and a bit more about Channing too).

For Sunday’s Order of Service, click here: May 6, 2012 OOS

“Helping, Hurting and Healing,” Sunday, April 29, 11 AM, Rev. Stephen Kendrick

admin — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:57:12 +0000

To want to help someone is one of the most primal, essential instincts we possess, and we all want to become better at it, more sensitive and more effective. But you don’t have to live in this world of ours for very long to realize that there are many hidden, subtle traps along the way—when is helping someone actually hurting them, by taking away their autonomy, or their own skills in helping themselves? When do we help others out of our own needs, not theirs? Discerning these kind of things is never easy, but it is vital. In our church, where we come to help ourselves, and others we love, and the wider world, there is nothing so important than learning that the path to healing is finding the right, and learning to avoid the wrong, ways of helping—a perilous art!

For Sunday’s Order of Service click here: April 29, 2012 (2) OOS

Service Music in May

Paul Cienniwa — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:53:14 +0000

This May brings a variety of special musical experiences to our Sunday services. On May 6, the Coming of Age service will feature music suggested by our coming of age candidates.

Do you remember the First Church Fiesta fundraiser last year? Church member Ernie Carroll placed the winning bid for selecting music for the service. His choice, Led Zeppelin’s iconic Stairway to Heaven, will be the organ postlude on May 13. That service will also include a Mother’s Day duet by member Nigel Harvey.

On May 20, the First Church Choir will take the week off as we welcome Voices Rising to sing for the 11am service. Voices Rising, a women’s chorus founded upon feminist principles of community, inclusivity, activism and education, sings “to give voice to their lives, identities and beliefs, and to celebrate the diverse lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and women’s communities in and around Boston.”

Héloïse Degrugillier

And on May 27, recorder player Héloïse Degrugillier and baroque violinist Asako Takeuchi will join Paul Cienniwa on harpsichord as they play works of Bach and Mouret for the service.

Join us on Sundays at 11am in May for some great music! Click here to see the list of upcoming music.

“A Faith of Balance, Heart and Joy,” Sunday, April 22, 11 AM, Rev. Stephen Kendrick

admin — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 14:15:16 +0000

As we look forward to this Earth Day, New Member Sunday, and the last active Sunday appeal on our ongoing Canvass, as well as monthly Social Justice special collection for our social witness partner Urban Edge–all I can say is, Whew!

What an ironic framework for this Sunday’s sermon on finding balance in our lives. Modern life is “too much too muchness,” and it can make our heads, and hearts, spin. How do we find, and sustain, that inner balance that makes us capable of a life of joy and fulfillment?

For help, I turn to the east, and some spiritual teachers we haven’t heard much from lately from our pulpit–so I will be addressing some balance-making there as well! See you Sunday as we welcome in our newest members of First Church.

Stephen

For Sunday’s Order of Service, click here: April 22, 2012 OOS

“Opening the Door,” Linda Simmons, ministerial intern

admin — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:49:58 +0000

I have been working with Adnan Onart for several months building a Sufi worship service. The musical group Dunya will be accompanying us during this service. They are a band that plays a wide range of Turkish traditional music. They will be playing some traditional music of the Sufi tradition for us. Our goal is to Open the Door, so to speak, to the mystical realm that the Sufis so believed was necessary to open in order to be in relationship to God, to the One, to the Mystery. We will attempt to do this through history, music, movement, poetry and traditional Sufi stories. Please join us for an experience of another time and place that still has much to offer us here and now.

For Sunday’s Order of Service, click here: April 15, 2012 OOS