Jean is the third of three musical sisters who were raised in Northampton, MA. Her older sisters both became professional musicians. Jean moved east to attend nursing school but met her late husband John, a native of West Concord, and got married instead. At first they lived in an apartment right above what is now the ’99 Restaurant. They joined WCUC in the early fifties. When the choir director at the time heard Jean singing in the church kitchen while heating a baby bottle, he told her to get out of the nursery and join the choir, and she has been there ever since, some sixty years.

Jean’s loyal tenure at WCUC has seen many changes in the church and the music program. Jean remembers when the organ and choir were at the front of the church, then at the back of the church blocking the stained glass window, and finally at the side. She laughs about the infamous green curtain behind which “the choir could do anything it wanted.” She recalls the music committee going to New Hampshire to buy our wonderful tracker-action organ. And Jean has seen music directors come and go, some of whom did not play the organ pedals! Jim Barkovic wins the prize as Jean’s favorite choir director and best all-around WCUC musician. Music is what keeps Jean at WCUC. She especially loves music from the Baroque era; Handel’s “Messiah” ranks as Jean’s favorite.

Last month in Polly’s profile of long-time member Holly, we learned that Holly ’s mother had played the harp. When Jean’s daughter Karen was in the hospital, she awoke to harp music and feared that she had died. It turned out that Holly’s mother was a patient in the next room and was playing her harp. Fortunately Karen survived and is the grandmother to Jean’s two great-grandchildren all of whom live in Georgetown where Jean visits regularly.

Next Sunday listen for Jean’s rich voice. About ten years ago she moved from the alto to the tenor section where she now keeps the other tenors in line.

~Susan A.

Holly and his harmonica were rarely parted all the years that I sang in the choir with him.  Our most senior member, Holly joined our church and choir in 1948, a record-breaking 65 years ago!  Every so often, as we waited for Jim to call us up to the front to rehearse, Holly entertained us with a lively tune on his “mouth organ.” On Sundays, his deep bass was always a welcome sound coming from the back of the choir.

Hollis Holden was born in Belmont, where his mother played the concert harp in their church and taught piano.  As a young boy, Holly would accompany her to the lessons.  This is when, he believes, his love of music got started.  After the Second World War, when Holly served with the army in Europe, the family moved to West Concord, where Holly met Carolyn, a West Concord native, on a blind date.  They were married in 1950, raised two children, and have lived in West Concord ever since.

Just one year after Holly settled in our town, he opened his Acadian Machine Shop on Beharrel Street, a familiar building which still stands in its original location and which he continued to operate until 2010.  His mother lived for a while in an apartment in back of the shop, where she would play her harp and fashion handmade wooden clothes- drying racks to sell.  Imagine yourself walking into the shop to witness Holly operating his machines to the sound of a gentle harp!  Holly explained the name of his shop, which had always been a mystery to me:  his mother came from Nova Scotia.

Holly and Carolyn loved ballroom dancing and acquired their nicknames that way.  So the next time you see them, say hello to Fred and Ginger!

~Polly

This past Sunday, we welcomed 14 new adult members and four children!  On her own blog, new member Linda reflects on her decision to join. Take a look.

This past month, we have been asking members and friends to reflect on the question, “How does my faith impact my daily life?”

A give-it-away revolution took place in my kitchen this morning. The seeds of this revolution were only planted two days ago when I saw a video that recommended that people give away to charity the excess or duplicate “stuff” we all have in our lives/homes. The revolution gained momentum yesterday when my friend Priscilla told me that Household Goods (HG) where she volunteers is in desperate need of kitchen goods.

But the shot heard ‘round the kitchen was fired this morning when I tried to put a plastic storage container into the kitchen drawer, but it wouldn’t fit because there were so many other similar containers in that drawer.

That last event was, as they say, the “ah ha moment.” I realized that I have so many kitchen goods that I can’t even fit them in my spacious drawers and cabinets. The call from the video to give away my excess stuff came rushing back. And Priscilla’s plea for kitchen goods for HG sealed the deal. So in less than an hour, I filled five boxes with excess or duplicate kitchen items for HG. I found that there were generally three categories of items for donation from my kitchen. Here are a few examples of the many things in those five boxes:

I have too many of this: The second blender, excess steak and paring knives, potato mashers (how could I have accumulated 3 of these?), the second wok

I use this too little :3 sets of chopsticks, 4 plastic serving bowls (great when my kids were young, but they are in their 20’s now), a stainless steel pitcher

Would I keep this if I were moving? Good stuff, but forget about it…including 6 extra coffee mugs, a large cooking pot, a brand new cheese cutting board that I got for Christmas, still in its box.

How refreshing for me! Several drawers that had so many kitchen tools crammed into them are now freed from their clutter! I can quickly see the cheese grater that I really like, and I no longer have to cram it in with those surplus potato mashers. Removing that large cooking pot lets me see the three other pots in that drawer that I love cooking with.

But lest you think I am perfect, I will admit that I did not donate the pastry rolling pin even though I have never actually used it. Who knows, now that a de-cluttering revolution has taken place in my kitchen, maybe a baking revolution can take place too?

~Maureen

On February 2nd, David shared this reflection during worship as part of a series in which members and friends were asked, “How does your faith impact your daily life?”

Many years ago (over 30 actually) there was a very interesting television show on called “Connections” hosted by James Burke, a British historian.  Don’t know if any of you saw any of the episodes but the premise of the show was that unconnected seemingly random events would occasionally collide to produce very unexpected outcomes.  My little testimony this morning is an example of this phenomenon and hopefully you will find it a bit inspiring, or at least somewhat interesting as I share a piece of me that, heretofore has been only known by a couple of people in my life, namely Ruth and Keith and even they have never heard the whole story.

To begin this little saga I need to gather all of you as we step into Mr. Peabody’s WABAC machine and travel back in time to October, 2003.  We had just moved to the area, I had a new job in Cambridge and was undergoing daily cancer treatments at MGH.  That in itself is a bizarre story but that’s not what I’m going to talk about this morning, but it’s an important part of the story.  So, every day I would hop on the T and make the joyous commute on the Red Line from Central Square to the Charles/MGH T Stop and head over to MGH.  This went on for about 8 weeks.  Well, for those of you who remember that beautiful edifice known as the Charles/MGH station back then, it was slated for demolition back in 2003 and for good reason but while it was a dilapidated piece of steel and concrete, it had one feature that the current station does not – a viaduct that connected the station to the north side of Charles Street allowing passengers to avoid crossing the street to get to the hospital.

Now those of you who regularly ride the T know that there is a certain culture that exists among the passenger community – a type of anonymity that allows you to ride almost cheek to cheek without ever actually acknowledging that you are surrounded by a sea of people.  So, it’s with that mindset that I’m trudging off for daily treatments and you couple that with the brain fog that kind of develops when you’re getting daily radiation treatments to your head and neck, well lets just say I was in my own world most of the time.  I just wanted to get in get treated and get back to work.  So, during these daily jaunts back and forth on this walkway I would notice but not really pay attention to the fact that there would be a pile of clothes in the corner at the top of the stairs on the hospital side of Charles Street.  Then one day for no apparent reason than I saw the clothes move I realized that there was a person inside the pile and realized that one of Boston’s many homeless had camped out there to get out of the cold and accept whatever meager offerings the passersby would donate.  One day I decided to contribute to her needs and, as I gave the person some money, she looked up and said God Bless You.  Well, something clicked inside – actually it was more like a snap.  It’s one of those rare ‘moments of clarity’ that you get a few times in your life, when you see a path and just know that it’s the one that you need to take.  You can call it an ‘Aha Moment’, a ‘Jesus Story’, a ‘Vision from God’, whatever, but what I said back basically was going to change our two lives forever.  So I said, ‘God has already blessed me, dear; it’s about time he started to bless you.’  That began a love affair that my wife knows about and fully supports, BTW, that continues to this day.  So the story has many turns and twists and like any relationship has had its rocky moments and its happy ones.  A recent one was just last month Debra (that’s her name) called me up and said, “Dave, I’m turning 60 on Saturday and I’d like to have a party with my grandson.  Can you help?”  Well, how can you say no to a request like that?

I’ll not take you any further down this path.  I was hesitant to even share this because this has been part of my life path and, you know, some things you just like to keep private.  I decided to talk about this, though, because I wanted you to think about this little vignette the next time you see a homeless person asking for help.  Buried inside the tattered clothes is a person who needs help and, when you do, God truly does bless you.  Amen.

On February 16th, Sharon shared this reflection during worship as part of a series in which members and friends were asked, “How does your faith impact your daily life?”

When Keith asked me to talk about how my faith had impacted my everyday life, I immediately thought of an experiment I had done a few years ago, which I nicknamed, “Just Say Yes.”

I was and am involved in a variety of different groups, and had reached that point where people in those groups were always asking me to volunteer for different tasks. Some of you are very familiar with this issue! And so when I was asked, I would go through the usual thought process: “Is this something I feel comfortable doing? Is this something I can do well enough that I’d be good at it? Is it going to fit into my schedule easily?” Sometimes I’d say yes, sometimes I’d say no, but there was always a lot of internal debate. But then I felt my faith pushing me to take all those thoughts out of the picture, and just trust that if I were needed enough to be asked, then I should Just Say Yes, and it was what I was meant to be doing.

Now, I wasn’t totally crazy about this; I felt OK saying no to things that were logistically impossible, and I didn’t feel like I had to make a life-long commitment to this approach.  But I did feel that my faith was pushing me to do it for a couple years. So how did it play out? I’ll give you just 2 of the many possible examples.

One came up when I was a deacon, and we were discussing who could bring communion to Mary Crocker, over at Acton Life Care. I had a mental laundry list of reasons why I didn’t want to do this: I hadn’t visited a nursing home in 30 years and didn’t know how they worked. I’d only met Mary once, and didn’t think she’d remember me. And although Hannah had written a great script for home-based communion, I still felt awkward about the parts that involved praying out loud, and exactly how to handle everything. But I said Yes. And I bet you can guess how it turned out.

First, visiting a nursing home as an adult is much less scary than as a child visiting a dying grandparent. And if you tell a staffer that you’re from a church bringing communion to a resident, they’re more than happy to help you find the right room and let you wheel the person down to lunch whenever you’re done. Mary wasn’t too clear on who I was, but her face lit up when she realized someone from West Concord was there to bring her communion. And the look of utter peace on her face, as she received communion, reminded me that she had loved and felt blessed by this sacrament for nearly a century, and whatever words I might say, she was also hearing a century’s worth of other blessings right along with it.

So here’s a second example, far more secular. For 8 years now, Mark and I have been doing set up at Open Table. Typically we’d do it one Monday each month, so it wasn’t a big time commitment, although it was always a bit of a hassle for me to leave work early. But then some of the other volunteers left, and I was asked if we could do it twice a month. So I said Yes. And wouldn’t you know it, by volunteering just slightly more often, we finally managed to get the routine down pat. I didn’t need to bring a checklist each time, and Mark didn’t need to be shown how to do each step.

After a few months, Mark’s best friend Ravi noticed that Mark wasn’t as available afterschool on Mondays. Ravi’s mom found out why, and mentioned that she’d been looking for a way that she and Ravi could volunteer together. And to make a long story short, for the last few years, they’ve been volunteering two Mondays each month, I volunteer once unless I’m also covering for someone else, and Mark winds up there 2 or 3 Mondays each month since he helps Ravi’s shifts almost as much as he’s there with me.

Life changes, and other commitments and energy levels change.  I’ve since taken a step back from some things I used to do.  But I’m very glad that my faith pushed me to approach volunteering in a new way, and taught me to let go of my perfectionist and somewhat neurotic approach, and Just Say Yes.

~Sharon

Carole won the Juror’s Choice award at the most recent Concord Art Association Show!  Here is a photo of her lovely work, “Prayer Flag.”

At church this past Sunday, members spoke about how the guiding star they picked up last Epiphany had influenced them, leading them in surprising directions and deeper into God’s call for their lives. Then each of us chose a new star for this new year.

Did you miss it? Come by the church and choose a star of your own. No peeking or changing — let God surprise you.

Struggling to connect with your word?  Try looking it up in a dictionary or searching for it in a biblical concordance (there’s a search field in the middle of this page).

May your star be a blessing to you as you bring the light of Christ into your daily life this year.

Walking into Jean’s home is like walking into a gallery of fine needlework. Magnificent quilts and exquisite embroidery line the walls. Jean is an artist whose tools are needle and thread. Our church has been the beneficiary of her gifts for many years.

Jean is a third generation member of WCUC. Her grandmother Margaret worshipped here and brought her two children, George and Jean’s mother Emma, to the church’s early cradle roll. After Emma married Charles, they moved to Connecticut, where Jean was born, but they would come back often to visit her uncle George in West Concord. George and his wife Gladys, long-time members of WCUC, just happened to live next door to a young man on Harrington Avenue named Jerry. And so it was that, soon after Jean and Jerry were married, they moved to Old Marlboro Road and Jean joined WCUC.  Their four children became the fourth WCUC generation of the family. They were all baptized by Rev. Nylen and attended Sunday School here.

Jean has been an active member of the church for fifty years, serving on the Board of Trustees and for over twenty years as a member of the Fellowship Committee. She was the church secretary in the late sixties into the seventies, working with three different pastors. Familiar names to the old-timers among us are the women who came in to fold the (mimeographed) Messenger every week for her: Marguerite, Edie, Ola and Ruth, all members of the Helping Hand women’s society. But what this writer didn’t know was that there existed another group at that time, the Santa Chiara Guild, for the young married women, whose purpose was also to meet, socialize and provide assistance in the community. My guess is that there are some folks in our community who were recipients of Jean’s handiwork then and who are still as grateful as we are for Jean’s generosity and talent.  ~ Polly

On Sunday, Joanna offered this reflection:

How do we magnify God?  The first thing this question made me think of was a favorite Far Side cartoon from the 1980s. These cartoons by Gary Larson were a favorite of mine because the humor was a little twisted and he had a great time poking fun at geeky scientists, and ALL of my friends were geeky PhD students (myself excluded of course). Anyway, this cartoon shows a woman driving down the road in her car, glancing into her side view mirror.  In the mirror is a close-up view of a huge bloodshot monster eyeball, and of course the mirror says “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear”.

Now how do I get from this image to a reasonable reflection on how to magnify God? Imagine the same scene, but replace the scary monster eyeball with your favorite image of God. Now…BE THE MIRROR! In this season of seemingly hopeless commercialism, and traditions that have little to do with Christ’s holy birth, strive with me to be the lens that magnifies God’s love. Help others to feel God is closer than they think. Create holy moments among the mundane. Give someone else your spot in line, be a courteous driver, smile a lot, offer hugs more, go out of your way to thank the person behind the counter. Diffract His Light into the darker corners of the season. (OK, so maybe I’m a little geekier than I’m willing to admit…) BE THE MIRROR.