Message from the Pastor, November 2025
Dear Members and Friends,
The first weekend of November we have turned our clocks back for Daylight Savings Time — the days grow shorter and night comes early! We have remembered the Saints who have come before us, some made famous by storytelling across church history but others known only to us as friends, neighbors, beloved family. As the nights get colder, we gather food and essential items for the Lee Food Pantry to help so many of our neighbors who may be especially vulnerable in feeding themselves and their families, choosing between rent and food bills, and bring them for our Thanksgiving Collection on November 16th.
November is also our Stewardship Campaign, and in this newsletter you will see a message from your Stewardship Team, with another stirring Stewardship Moment shared at the end of October by Marilyn Fontana. This is a time of considering what we give financially to the church to support its mission and ministry, its very voice in our community. If you are like me, you have a lot to weigh as you consider if to give and how much to give, spread amidst other charitable programs you already support, and the needs of your own family. We can only continue as Lee Congregational Church with all of you, our church family, doing it together. Thank you for praying and thinking deeply about this, and bringing your pledge card on Sunday, November 16th.
Then later this month, as we gather at Thanksgiving tables, we may have people we will miss; we may be with a group of family that challenge us, or maybe a group we can’t wait to see and celebrate with! We may feel conflict as our awareness grows for the ways this holiday impacts different peoples in our land. Our worries about the suffering in our world locally, nationally and internationally may be very much weighing on our minds and hearts also as we gather. With all of this on my own heart, I thought I’d share a prayer I wrote for Thanksgiving as an offering to all of you this holiday.
Holy One, as we sit at our Thanksgiving Table today, we recognize the complexity of this tradition in the history of our country. There are many, like the first pilgrims, who gave thanks this day for a new land and would become conquerors over others, while native peoples welcomed the newcomers at first and would later come to grieve great loss; there are many who gave thanks this day for the birth of one nation, as George Washington did, while others lost the land they loved; some gave thanks on this day for the end of our Civil War and the institution of slavery, as Abraham Lincoln did, while for others, slavery has continued up to this present day in different forms no less harming. Some of us gather at our tables surrounded by loved ones in gladness, others may have chairs empty for ones who are lost; others we know may be alone; some may not be at a table at all this day. However this holiday arrives for us, we ask You to deepen in us a heart of gratitude and praise for abundant blessings and great beauty that You have provided, O God. May our gratitude lead us to greater acts of advocating, sharing, and reconciling, forgiveness, mercy, and extravagant love. May we toast together a future world in which all Your children live together not just with equality but with equity, not just in tolerance, but with great dignity and honor; not just in peace but in freedom. Amen. (Adapted from A Prayer for Thanksgiving 2022 by Marisa Brown Ludwig)
Finally, we will enter the sacred season of Advent together on Sunday, November 30 — and step into the time of reflection and waiting, of making room and preparing for the coming into the world of our Creator, God-with-us, Emmanuel. May November be a time of deep reflection and the presence of the Holy for all of us.
Pastor Marisa