a blue december offering: sunday, december 22 @ 3 pm

This coming Sunday, 12/22, we reprise our Blue December presentation at Richmond Congregational Church, (515 State Rd, Richmond, MA 01254) at 3:00 pm. Here is a set list with songs and poems:

CENTERING
Only a River/” Kindness” – Naomi Shihab Nye/River
Welcome and Sanctuary
In the Bleak Midwinter/Paint It Black
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REFLECTING
“Peace of Wild Things” – Wendell Berry
Can’t Find My Way Home
Runnin’ on Empty
Missing/Angel
Find the Cost of Freedom/Hold On
Teach Your Children
The Stars Shine in the Sky Tonight
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CANDLELIGHTING
“Darkness” – Jan Richardson/Thinking About You/Prayers and Candles
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RETURNING
Helplessly Hoping
“Last Night I Dreamed” – Auroa Levins Morales
Joy to You, Baby
Wednesday’s Child

The six members of Wednesday's Child are time-tested friends and artistic partners who have been making music together on and off for 17 years. Individually, we have performed professionally throughout New England in a variety of jazz, rock, and folk ensembles. Our shared roots go back to the culture-care ministries of First Church of Christ, Congregational in Pittsfield, MA. Like America itself, we hail from different religious traditions – Congregational, Roman Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal and Episcopal – and we share a commitment to simple acts of compassion in the spirit of sacred and radical hospitality. Our music expresses solidarity by raising funds for local eco-justice projects, regional hunger centers, refugee resettlement, and the quest for common ground. We stand in opposition to hatred. We have hosted concerts celebrating the 50th anniversary of “A Love Supreme” by John Coltrane as well as Paul Winter’s “Missa Gaia,” too.

It is our conviction that beauty invites us into a shared vulnerability that can evoke awe as well as gratitude. The late Leonard Bernstein used to say: “This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” This winter we have assembled a meditative gathering based upon the music of Josh Ritter, Joni Mitchell, Carrie Newcomer, Jackson Browne, Sarah McLachlan, Tom Waits, the Eels, the Stones, and the Grateful Dead - as well as the poetry of Naomi Shihab Nye, Wendell Berry, and Jan Richardson – as a tender reprieve from the brutal banality of the blues some of us experience during the so-called “most wonderful time of the year.” There will be song and silence, poetry, and candle lighting, with a few inter-faith seasonal prayers.

For more information, contact The Reverend Dr. James Lumsden