April 1st: Maundy Thursday Online Worship and Zoom Fellowship

For Maundy Thursday Communion, we will join Coral Gables UCC virtually for their online worship with a Brookmeade Zoom discussion and fellowship to follow! This virtual Maundy Thursday worship will be at 6 pm CST on April 1st.  Click here for details!
To watch the live service just click on this link to sign in and scroll down:  Welcome to Worship – Coral Gables Congregational United Church of Christ (gablesucc.org)
After the virtual worship ends, join the Zoom Brookmeade Fellowship/Discussion by clicking the link in your weekly email (guests please contact the church office if you are interested in joining our discussion!).

This virtual worship for Maundy Thursday will include a time of darkness, quiet, contemplative music, communion, and Tenebrae (the extinguishing of lights) which are the mark of this annual meaningful service that marks the night of Jesus betrayal. As you watch at home, please have a piece of a piece of bread/cracker and a small cup of juice/wine ready so that we may share Holy Communion together.  

Lent 2021: Daily Poetry Series – March 24th

Wednesday, March 24th, 2021

“The Walk” by Ann Weems

Those of us who walk along this road
do so reluctantly.
Lent is not our favorite time of year.
We’d rather be more active—
planning and scurrying around.
All this is too contemplative to suit us.
Besides we don’t know what to do
with piousness and prayer.
Perhaps we’re afraid to have time to think,
for thoughts come unbidden.
Perhaps we’re afraid to face our future
knowing our past.
Give us the courage, O God,
to hear your word
and to read our living into it.
Give us the trust to know we’re forgiven,
and give us the faith
to take up our lives and walk

Lent 2021: Daily Poetry Series – March 23rd

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2021

“Sympathy for Lazarus” by Michael Coffey

He didn’t ask to be a magic trick like some dead rabbit
pulled out of a stone hat with a hocus pocus incantation

he didn’t want to be resuscitated in full decrepit stink
for his mother to see him shambling down the cemetery road

he was resting in peace after taking the dark plunge once
no one should stomach it twice, that long black falling

so Jesus, when I die and I’m put down to earthen solace
or after my ashes are scattered into entropic chaos irreversible

do not force me to go through it again like brother Lazarus
raised to face more time in suffering and second death

let your tears be so you may let me go as we all must do
grieve your best friend fully and without recourse to power

raise me then beyond time to your un-nameable dimension
where decay has died with all fear of losing myself and you

has been buried in that old entombed world where I still walk
like Lazarus already dead yet alive and yet to die and rise

Palm Sunday 3/28: Brookmeade welcomes Guest Preacher Dorothy Gager

For Palm Sunday on March 28, we will be honored to welcome Rev. Dorothy Gager to lead us in considering the historical and political context of Palm Sunday in Jesus’s ministry and now. She is a UCC ordained minister who has lived and served here in Nashville for many years.

Dorothy grew up in Pilgrim Congregational Church in Chattanooga, where she was ordained. She has a Masters Degree in Social Work and a Masters of Divinity. While a student at Vanderbilt Divinity School, she served as pastoral intern at Brookmeade. Most of her career was spent in mental health, with the last 25 years before retirement in the substance abuse field at Vanderbilt.

 A past Moderator of the Southeast Conference, she currently serves on a subcommittee of the Commission on Ministry and participates in a Circle group with other UCC clergywomen to become better versed in antiracism.

She is married to Barbara Short. They have two adult children and the world’s cutest granddaughter.

Lent 2021: Daily Poetry Series – March 22nd

Monday, March 22nd, 2021

“Just like Job” by Maya Angelou

My Lord, my Lord,
Long have I cried out to Thee
In the heat of the sun,
The cool of the moon,
My screams searched the heavens for Thee.
My God,
When my blanket was nothing but dew,
Rags and bones
Were all I owned,
I chanted Your name
Just like Job.

Father, Father,
My life give I gladly to Thee
Deep rivers ahead
High mountains above
My soul wants only Your love
But fears gather round like wolves in the dark.
Have You forgotten my name?
O Lord, come to Your child.
O Lord, forget me not.

You said to lean on Your arm
And I’m leaning
You said to trust in Your love
And I’m trusting
You said to call on Your name
And I’m calling
I’m stepping out on Your word.

You said You’d be my protection,
My only and glorious saviour,
My beautiful Rose of Sharon,
And I’m stepping out on Your word.
Joy, joy
Your word.
Joy, joy
The wonderful word of the Son of God.

You said that You would take me to glory
To sit down at the welcome table
Rejoice with my mother in heaven
And I’m stepping out on Your word.

Into the alleys
Into the byways
Into the streets
And the roads
And the highways
Past rumor mongers
And midnight ramblers
Past the liars and the cheaters and the gamblers.
On Your word
On Your word.
On the wonderful word of the Son of God.
I’m stepping out on Your word.

Lent 2021: Daily Poetry Series – March 20th

Saturday, March 20th, 2021

“God’s Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Lent 2021: Daily Poetry Series – March 19th

Friday, March 19th, 2021

“The Glory” by Madeleine L’Engle

Without any rhyme
without any reason
my heart lifts to light
in this bleak season

Believer and wanderer
caught by salvation
stumbler and blunderer
into Creation

In this cold blight
where marrow is frozen
it is God’s time
my heart has chosen

In paradox and story
parable and laughter
find I the glory
here in hereafter

Sat. March 27th: Outdoor Clean Up & Gardening Day

We are anticipating being together again, but we want to do that as safely as possible. Thus, we are going to begin occasionally having outdoor worship! In order to prepare for that, we will have an outdoor clean up and gardening day on Sat. March 27th at 12 pm for the beautification of our outdoor space at Brookmeade. This will be a fun day to see each other and work together on our beautiful property! Let us know if you can help in any way by emailing brookmeade@comcast.net or calling the office: 615-352-4702 . Thank you!