Worship

Sunday Mornings at 11:00 am

We hold an in-person worship service at Swedenborg Chapel every Sunday at 11:00 am.  Our service format is a mix of traditional and relaxed elements, including readings from the Bible and from the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, hymns, prayer and a spiritual message.  All people are welcome!

I you cannot join us in-person you can stream our services live on our Facebook Page.

First Tuesday of the Month Candlelight Taizé: 7:30 – 8:15 pm

Needing a gentle, mid-week pause? Join us for a candle-lit Taizé service of prayer, where we search for communion with God through community prayer, song, and silence. All peoples and faith traditions welcome.

We are offering our Taizé services currently in a hybrid format.  You can find them streamed on our Facebook page.

The Taizé service of prayer is music-centric, using contemporary chants with short texts that are sung again and again, inviting individuals to meditate on the texts, deepen into them, pray through them. There is also a period of silence for personal reflection.

Be Love, Be Honest, Be Useful, Thursdays at 7:00 pm on ZOOM

Are you looking for a way to connect more deeply with yourself, with others, and with that great mystery of connectedness, grace and love that some call God?

Do you long for space to be fully present?

Have you begun to feel the futility of looking for God elsewhere and are becoming curious about how God might be present fully right now as we are?

This is the first official offering of the Helen Keller Center for Spiritual Life, an initiative to build space in the world that honors our distinguishable oneness, the unique expressions we each are of the one life that we share.

What to expect?

Gatherings will be held on ZOOM, Thursdays beginning December 7th from 7-8:30 pm.

We will begin with 12 minutes to Be Love together. What does that look like? I’ll offer a meditation to ground us, but for these 12 minutes you do you!  Maybe for you Be Love means checking in with your body and taking care of its needs, making a sandwich or a cup of tea.  Maybe you have a devotional practice or a breathing practice or a prayer or meditation or movement practice that helps you remember that you are love.  12 minutes to come into the present moment, noticing and accepting what’s there, and touching if possible that essential level beneath all joys and pleasures, sorrows and frustrations where everything ultimately is okay.

Then we will take time to Be Honest with each other.  7 people for 7 minutes each.  Be honest about what?  How God is growing us.  How we are being challenged/thwarted/tested/tried.  How we are being beckoned/called/inspired/consoled.  What meaning and hope and understanding and peace are we finding/making/learning from it all.  For many of us this may be the hardest part. We are so used to speaking to fulfill some external expectation.  We speak to impress, to amuse, to argue, or to obfuscate. We rarely if ever speak honestly to share our inner experiences, avoiding uncomfortable vulnerability. But it’s time to start. Honesty and vulnerability are the path to wisdom. As we are honest with ourselves and one another we come to know ourselves and one another better and ultimately come to know God better.  Sharing is also totally optional.  Everyone will get 7 minutes and if you are done in 3 we’ll just enjoy a little extra silence which is powerful in itself.

Then lastly we will Be Useful. 3 minutes each. 7 people.  Something you appreciated about the group experience.  An action you are ready to take. A creative endeavor you want to invite others into.  A blessing, a wish, an intuitive message, a benediction, a song, a jig, whatever!  We will send each other on our way with love and encouragement, maybe a laugh, maybe a smile, maybe a new awareness that could feel any manner of ways.  We will refrain from advice giving and “shoulds,” keeping close to our own experience.

This is the first official offering of the Helen Keller Center for Spiritual Life, an initiative to build space in the world that honors our distinguishable oneness, the unique expressions we each are of the one life that we share.

Labyrinth

We are so pleased to announce the completion of our labyrinth through a generous grant from our larger denominational body, the General Convention of the Swedenborgian Church.

We pray that our community, neighbors and friends, will appreciate this offering as a way for anyone to connect with God and their own spiritual lives on our grounds.

Christmas Eve Candlelight Service: 4:30 pm

An annual service of scripture lessons and traditional carols that retells the ancient story of the birth of our Lord.  The service emphasizes the steadfastness of God’s love and the Lord’s desire to be closer to us.  The service closes with a congregational candle lighting.

Additional Worshiping Communities

We also host two other worshiping communities: The Anglican Church of the Epiphany Worship Sunday mornings 9 – 10:30 AM, and Highrock Cambridge Worships Sundays at 1:30 pm