​​​​​ ​​Sunday, July 6th, 2025
10:45 AM
Rev. Dr. Althea Smith
Living in This World Requires Improvisation
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This week’s service is a Jazz service. It is reported that Jazz was born in New Orleans in a place called Congo Square, around 1820. This was a place where enslaved peoples gathered and played music. People from different countries, different parts of countries, came together, each contributing their own unique sound.
African music, Caribbean music, joined by instruments from marching bands. Marching band play was big during the Civil War. All of this with an overlay of spiritual music and the blues.
One of the pillars of Jazz is improvisation. The Cambridge Dictionary defines improvise: to invent or make something, such as a speech, at a time when it is needed without already having planned it. As I look around at the world, the US, my neighborhood, Nantucket, I see a great need for the coming together to make something new. Life is asking us for improvisation.​
​
This week’s service is a Jazz service. It is reported that Jazz was born in New Orleans in a place called Congo Square, around 1820. This was a place where enslaved peoples gathered and played music. People from different countries, different parts of countries, came together, each contributing their own unique sound.
African music, Caribbean music, joined by instruments from marching bands. Marching band play was big during the Civil War. All of this with an overlay of spiritual music and the blues.
One of the pillars of Jazz is improvisation. The Cambridge Dictionary defines improvise: to invent or make something, such as a speech, at a time when it is needed without already having planned it. As I look around at the world, the US, my neighborhood, Nantucket, I see a great need for the coming together to make something new. Life is asking us for improvisation.
​
For this special service our Music Director, Nigel Goss, will be joined by Anthony Healy on piano and Colin Harrington on drums along with some Special Surprise Singers! Join us as we celebrate with the musical among us.
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Please join us at 10:45 AM
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Upstairs in the Sanctuary
Sunday Service
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/92316986312
Meeting ID: 923 1698 6312
Password 001809
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Happenings
Tea Time Wednesday
is paused for the summer
2
The Common Read
Parable of the Sower
By Octavia E. Butler
Undrowned
By Alexis Pauline Gumbs
​
The Fire Next Time
By James Baldwin
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
By Paulo Freire
​
Children of the Same God
By Susan J. Ritchie
