This Sunday we will celebrate Thanksgiving during our regular 10:00 AM service.  (We will also be participating in the interfaith community service at 10:00 AM Thanksgiving morning at Our Lady of Light chapel in South Strafford along with the Catholic and UU congregations and Buddhist group in town, among others.)

This Sunday we will sing We Gather Together, Come Ye Thankful People Come, and a powerful, exuberant Thanksgiving hymn that we are returning to in our new old Pilgrim Hymnals–We Plow the Fields and Scatter.  (You can hear it in the youtube video below.)

We will read from Psalm 95, Philippians 4 and Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount.  We will reflect on the results of the fall’s questionnaire and small gatherings that produced a four page long list of things we love or appreciate about this congregation and all it is and all it does.

The choir will sing again Mel Goertz’s beautiful words and music in the anthem, “Be Still,” as well as “For the Love around us/among us/within us/ we give our thanks to Thee” by C. Lockwood-Pitkin and the Taize hymn, “In the Lord.”  Pianist Annemieke McLane will play pieces by Alberto Ginastera, J.S. Bach and Frédéric Chopin.

Here is a youtube version of We Plow the Fields and Scatter: