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Kimberly P Chastain, Pastor
We have so much to celebrate.
Our little ones are growing — all 23 in our gathering community, and more in our extended community. Although we have not been able to see all of them together, we know from pictures and reports that they are learning and changing and becoming who God created them to be. And more on the way!
Our elders have learned new ways to participate in the things they love, so that distance and disability does not prevent worshipping together and learning from each other.
Our young adults are finding their way forward into new relationships and new beginnings, here or in different places, and are building a new world that they share freely with us, so we are not left behind.
We have learned new ways to connect to each other, we have formed new friendships, and we have found ourselves called into new ministries, from food pantries to witness in different places, with immigrants and refugees.
We have new stories to tell, new adventures to share, and new dreams to dream.
We are finding our way forward after nearly two years of feeling like everything is up in the air. There’s a Lewis Carroll kind of feeling to the way the many months of the pandemic have played out: nothing was happening, but it was all we could do to keep up!
“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”
“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
—Through the Looking Glass, chapter 2, p. 23
It was tiring, trying to figure it out as we raced along, not getting anywhere but not able to stop. Small wonder that adjusting to a “new normal” as we are coming back out of it has also felt tiring.
Both Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass ended with Alice waking up and finding it had all been a dream, with her life unchanged by all of the experiences she had in the stories. The calm at the end of the day was reassuring and hopeful for her, and for the readers of the stories.
But our hope is in something completely different: we know that there is no “going back” — we have all been changed by our experiences. We know that the world has changed, some things forever, some for good. We also know that God has been at work in all of that time, in ways we can see and in ways we have not yet dreamed. And so we celebrate God’s goodness to all of us in giving us resilience and good companionship in our community, and dreams of a possible future.
As you read this newsletter, I hope you are celebrating our life together, and thinking about what you’d like to see growing and flourishing in the years ahead, and where you think God is calling us next. And I hope you will share it with each other, with the pastors, and with the session. As we remember, let us also dream.
Grace & peace,
Pastor Kimberly
Becky Kindig, Associate Pastor
Greetings friends!
Another year and a half has been accomplished in our life together as United Presbyterian Church of Binghamton! Our last congregational report ended in December 2020 and we have come through this time with persistence, creativity, care, and joy, continuing to bring God’s love to our corner of the world. This year has seen us get our footing a little more as we come into this phase of the pandemic becoming endemic. We had learned how to protect ourselves and our community with masks, distancing measures, and doing things outside. We have also gained an arsenal of medical protections from vaccines to antiviral medication and found better techniques to help protect us.
So this year we celebrate that we can see the other side and we celebrate the things we learned along the way, even those things that we didn’t want to learn!
One of the things that I personally did not want to learn was that I have a rare autoimmune neuromuscular disorder called Myasthenia Gravis. I did not want to learn how to use a rollator/walker or a cane. I did not want to learn I needed surgery to remove my thymus gland. And I did not want to learn that I needed to be on strong immune-suppressing medication making me more vulnerable to germs —especially while we were in a pandemic! But I am thankful that I finally found an answer, found a doctor that knew what was wrong and that there is a treatment if not a cure. I am thankful for K-N95 masks that allow me to be out in public a bit again. I am thankful for the technology that came out of the pandemic that allowed me to Zoom into meetings and conferences and Presbytery Assembly meetings from the safety of my home. And I continue to be thankful for Zoom because when my legs are not working well, I can continue to work. And if I’m honest, I like Zoom because I’m not disabled on Zoom.
People only see my usual smiling face and not the cane or the legs that are difficult to move. And I am extremely grateful for the care, concern, and encouragement that all of you have shown to me through this diagnosis, treatment, and especially my surgery. I am thankful to have been on the receiving end of your cards, quilts, and calls. And exceedingly grateful for those that stepped in to cover Sunday school and Easter egg hunt. Thank you! But I also learned that there is nothing like being in the same space with people. And now that things are safer and we do have the protections I mentioned earlier, and I am feeling better, it is so great to be with people again. And you all have been quite wonderful as I adjust to working with a differently abled body. You are gracious and kind, and no one has made me feel like I shouldn’t be included even if I can’t do all the things I used to. I hope that going forward, both being with people over technology and being with people in person can be used to build the kingdom of God.
As for this community here at United Presbyterian Church, I learned things too. I am thankful for how this community continued its commitment to caring for people, including me, during the pandemic. It’s easy to say you care, it is harder to show it, but show it you did. And when times got tough, when many other people in the United States cared more about their own freedoms, this congregation said that you are committed to loving other people and keeping them safe. Even if it meant an inconvenience for yourselves. The way you all committed to doing things online, or outside, and to staying masked. To volunteer to drop off Advent packets, ashes for Ash Wednesday or palms for Palm Sunday, or meals from our Tuesday community meal to people who were too at risk to come out or who were stuck at home with Covid. You developed a card committee to make sure that everyone felt remembered on their birthday or cared for if they were sick or grieving and you called people regularly to check in.
As it was getting safer, we found ways in the spring of 2021 to do more things together like our Lenten Sunday’s in the Park for Prayer walks. Groups of us met at local parks, I read a passage from the book Braiding Sweetgrass, and we set out walking spending time in nature with God and with each other. It was so good to try something new and get together in person, even though the walks started out in February very cold. But it was good to be in nature, marvel at the beauty around us, pray, and spend time with each other.
In the meantime, we continued our online worship with wonderful music, our Friday cocktail hour, and our reaching out to the community with our community meal to go and food pantry. And by May of 2021, our congregation has now been back into a hybrid worship setting, with some in person and some online, for a whole year, (with an exception of a snow storm in there!) Pentecost to Pentecost and now a little more.
During this year and a half, I was also blessed to be able to continue with my work with our youngest. Our Sunday school packets continue to be sent out on a weekly basis and we have added young at heart to our number! We are up to 23 young people that we send packets to. In a time where other small churches are losing young people, we have gained! And while I think that is partly because we choose to create and send Sunday school packets to each child every week so they feel connected, even when they can’t be here, and that we continued to stay masked since our youngest are only now just able to receive the protection of vaccines, I think that the welcome children receive in this congregation also has a big part to play. We welcome EVERYONE in our worship, and one way it shows is with the children who quietly play in the pray-ground, or who wander up the aisles giving coloring pictures to those in the pews or who decide to climb on stage and add drums to a musical offering. Kids feel welcome in this congregation because we all take interest in what they are doing, we talk to them and not ignore them or shoo them away. We ask them to help clean up communion, join in asking questions in worship during the time for the young at heart, and no one bats an eye when they dance around behind their dad who is reading the scripture lesson. All are accepted as they are, and our congregation is so much the richer because of it! We see the face of God in each person here and celebrate what they add to the mix.
But we don’t just stay within our congregation. You will see in this newsletter many of the ways we are involved in the community here in downtown Binghamton and beyond. Our community meal, our food and hygiene products pantry, our prayer quilts, and our help with the asylum seekers from Afghanistan are some of the things you will read about in this newsletter. One extension of us into the community is our outreach to the Binghamton University community by our involvement with the Binghamton University Interfaith Council. Kimberly and I are members, and I continue to have the privilege to have part of my job here to spend time on campus engaging students, faculty, and staff in interfaith dialogue and pastoral care. We tabled at orientation to let them know there was a multi-faith group of clergy and congregations in the area new students could seek out. We offered monthly Common Ground Conversations to discuss what our different faiths had in common to foster dialogue across difference. And we showed up in dining halls to have conversation and we offered hot chocolate during finals to lift their spirits.
So what’s next? That’s a good question! Most of us alive have never come out of a pandemic before. And as we are coming to the other side, we are realizing that priorities are different. We are different. We have realized that there are many places hurting in our world and our community but we have also realized that we are resilient and we can find a way to help when we ask God to show us and we faithfully listen and use our gifts to get to work. So I am sure that we will continue to have spirit filled worship filled with music, we will continue to strengthen our discipleship with book studies or walks in nature, we will continue to care for each other by being there for each other in numerus ways, we will continue to reach out to the community, and we will continue to be surprised at what we can accomplish when we answer God’s call.
Kimberly and I say on a regular basis that we are so thankful for this community because you are so amazing in the way that you welcome and care for people and you continued to show that during this pandemic all the way through and continue to do so. Thank you for allowing me to serve with and for United Presbyterian Church of Binghamton! I look forward to what God has in store for us next!
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Becky
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