Message for September 11, 2016

Sermons
Listen to the most recent message from Sunday worship at Berkeley Friends Church. The speaker is our Pastor Brian C. Young. The Scripture reading is Revelation 22 : 1-5. [audio mp3="http://www.berkeleyfriendschurch.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/2016-09-11-message.mp3"][/audio]
Read More

Message for August 28, 2016

Sermons
Listen to the most recent message from Sunday worship at Berkeley Friends Church. The speaker is our Pastor Brian C. Young. The Scripture reading is Jeremiah 18: 1-11. [audio mp3="http://www.berkeleyfriendschurch.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/2016-08-28_message.mp3"][/audio]
Read More

Message for August 14, 2016

Sermons
Listen to the most recent message from Sunday worship at Berkeley Friends Church. The speaker is our Pastor Brian C. Young.  The Scripture reading is 1 John 1:5-7.   [audio mp3="http://www.berkeleyfriendschurch.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/2016-08-14_message.mp3"][/audio]
Read More

Water on the wrong side

Reflections
I've begun contributing a monthly post to Friends United Meeting's Daily Journal project, which is in the early stages of building up a group of regular writers. Here's my first one, on a subject that some of you may have heard Stephanie or me mention... My subsequent posts are supposed to be published on the 5th of each month. I would love to have your comments, especially by entering them on the Daily Journal page itself, which will help the project get more traffic and visibility!
Read More

Message for July 31, 2016

Sermons
Listen to the most recent message from Sunday worship at Berkeley Friends Church. The speaker is our Pastor Brian C. Young.  The scripture reading is Ecclesiastes 5:1 - 2.  [audio mp3="http://www.berkeleyfriendschurch.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/2016-07-31_message.mp3"][/audio]
Read More

Message for July 24, 2016

Sermons
Listen to the most recent message from our pastor Brian C. Young.  The scripture reading was Isaiah 30: 15-18.  [audio mp3="http://www.berkeleyfriendschurch.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2016-07-24-message.mp3"][/audio]
Read More

Advocating for peace on the opinion page

Reflections
Yesterday, the San Francisco Chronicle published a brief letter from Louise Neal, "Remove Nuclear arms from Turkey." It won't be up on the Chronicle's website for long, so see the attached PDF. Louise wanted to take this opportunity to encourage everyone to to send their own letters, on this issue or another one. She reminds us that one thing Stephen McNeil said in his Shared Security talk was that Letters to the Editor is one of the most-read sections of the newspaper. Good job, Louise! RemoveArmsTurkey.pdf
Read More

Message for July 10, 2016

Sermons
[audio mp3="http://www.berkeleyfriendschurch.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2016-07-10-message.mp3"][/audio] Listen to the most recent message from our pastor Brian C. Young.  The scripture reading was Psalm 22: 1 - 2, 14 - 15. The reading at the end is the "Litany for Those Who Are Not Ready for Healing" mentioned in a previous post; note that Brian re-orders it slightly from the way it was originally written.
Read More

A Litany for Those Who Aren’t Ready for Healing

Reflections
Once again this past week, the depth of our national sicknesses has been made clear. I have very few useful words at this juncture, but today I have been challenged by the words of a litany written by Rev. Dr. Yolanda Pierce of Princeton Theological Seminary. She originally drafted it in the wake of the killing of Michael Brown in 2014, but lamentably it remains almost entirely relevant today. Much more can be said, but for the time being, here is A Litany For Those Who Aren't Ready For Healing.
Read More

At whose table would we not be caught dead?

Sermons
...this was a question I asked in the message this past Sunday. If you were there, you remember that we read Peter's summary in Acts 11 of the great vision he has of all of the animals of creation, clean and unclean, and God's voice bidding him to eat of all of them--and then, when Peter demurs, saying, “don't call unholy what I have made clean.” Of course, once Peter comes into contact with the Gentile centurion Cornelius and his household, Peter realizes that the vision is about people and not food, and the Spirit confirms this by descending upon Cornelius and his people just as it did upon the apostles at Pentecost. Once Peter returns to Jerusalem, some of the Judean apostles take him to task for visiting and…
Read More