It is October, which means that those of us who have lived in the Willamette Valley for a while can finally stop checking the air quality app every morning (and start checking the rain forecast instead). I don't know about you, but September brings memories of the Labor Day fires that roared down the Santiam Canyon and along Bear Creek in the Rogue Valley. So many beloved places changed, in a mere matter of hours. If you have driven Highway 22 up the canyon since then, you kn

A sermon text by Rev. Robin Lunn at First Congregational Church UCC in Salem Oregon Just Peace Sunday · September 20, 2026 Lfting up our Just Peace covenant with the UCC Readings: Matthew 20:1–16 and Jonah 3:10–4:11. Shared here in full by request — the version preached from the pulpit was shorter. A note on sources follows the sermon. 1. It isn't fair The children heard it first this morning, and they were right to say it out loud: it's not fair. We teach ourselves to grow o

Rachel Hackenberg wrote a few weeks ago in the UCC Daily Devotion about the sign Moses didn't want. In Exodus 4:1-4 God tells him to throw down his staff, and it becomes a snake, and Moses does exactly what any of us would do — he recoils. She wrote of her own response had she been Moses, “Nope. No snake signs, thank you. I'll take the purring cat, the whisper in the trees, the open window.” Her point lands where it should: the question is never whether we can recognize a div