To Be Little: You Are Enough, by Dr. Daniel Parsley, Music Director, worship service March 16, 2025

Worship service given March 16, 2025
Prayer by Mary Breen, Worship Associate
https://firstparish.info/

First Parish
A liberal religious community, welcoming to all
First gathered 1739

In a world that often rewards the loudest voices, what does it mean to embrace being little—to be soft-spoken, to move gently, to love quietly? True strength is not always found in grand gestures but in the quiet persistence of kindness, in the humility of service, in the grace of listening. Music Sunday selections —Haydn’s “Little Organ Mass, Missa brevis sancti Joannis de Deo” and Pederson’s “Choose Love”—remind us that small acts are actually transformative. In being little, we find the space to be fully present and to engage with each other without anxiety, pretension, or fear.

Music pieces featured in this video, in order of appearance:

"I Choose Love," Kyle Pederson, performed by the First Parish Choir

Musical Reflection

Missa brevis Sancti Joannis de Deo ("Little Organ Mass"), Franz Joseph Haydn
I.    Kyrie
II.    Gloria
III.    Credo
IV.    Sanctus 
V.    Benedictus
VI.    Agnus Dei

The First Parish Choir, featuring:
Mark Dirksen, organ
Erin Matthews, soprano
Sabine Gross, violin
An Chi Lin, violin
Jenna Wang, cello

 

Offering and Giving First

For March 2025, the Giving First recipient is the Resilient Sisterhood Project. Cambridge-based Resilient Sisterhood Project’s mission is to educate and empower women of African descent regarding common, yet rarely discussed, diseases of the reproductive system that disproportionately affect them. They approach these diseases and associated issues through a cultural and social justice lens since they understand that poor knowledge of reproductive health is primarily related to health, racial, and socioeconomic disparities.

RSP brings an expansive definition to and understanding of the word “women” to include transgender women, cisgender women, gender queer, and gender non-conforming people who have a female reproductive system.

The remaining half of your offering supports the life and work of this Parish. To donate using your smartphone, you may text “fpuu” to 73256. Then follow the directions in the texts you receive.

About our Lead Minister: Rev. Marta Flanagan began her ministry as our twentieth called minister at First Parish in the fall of 2009. She is a genuine and forthright preacher. In conversation she is direct and engaging. She speaks of prayer with as much ease as she laughs at human foibles. We call her “Marta.” Marta is a religious liberal, a theist, a feminist, and a lover of the woods. As a student of American history at Smith College she was captivated by the stories of social reformers who were motivated and sustained by their faith. That led her to consider the ministry and to study at Harvard Divinity School from where she was graduated in 1986. She was the first woman minister in the city of Salem, Massachusetts, serving at the First Universalist Church there (1987-1997). She served in a co-ministry at South Church (Unitarian Universalist) in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, (1997-2005) from where she is minister emerita. Marta served as interim minister in Montpelier, Vermont (2008-2009). She is trained as a spiritual director. For three years she lived in the Vermont woods practicing voluntary simplicity and the spiritual life. Marta enjoys the vitality of First Parish and our strong sense of community. She celebrates the yearning for depth and the desire to make a difference in the world that she finds here.