Feb 20, 2025
Rev. Wendy Page, Affiliate Minister, preaching
Worship service given February 16, 2025
Prayer by Rev. Tricia Brennan, Adjunct Minister
https://firstparish.info/
First Parish
A liberal religious community, welcoming to all
First gathered 1739
Working as a Hospice Chaplain, Rev. Wendy Page has had the privilege of accompanying patients and their families on their journey toward death. They have shared their hopes and comforts, their beliefs and their fears and have opened their lives to her. Wendy asks, "What can we learn from their vulnerability and their life journeys?"
The Reverend Wendy Page is an Affiliate Minister of First Parish Arlington. She has been a member of First Parish since 1999 and First Parish supported her on her journey into ministry. She is a graduate of Andover Newton Theological School and was ordained in the First Parish Sanctuary in 2017. She has served as a Hospice Chaplain and a hospital chaplain.
Previous to her ministry, Wendy was a Software Engineer and Manager. She is an avid cyclist and has participated for 25 years in the annual Pan Mass Challenge fundraiser for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. She also is a quilter, a gardener and loves to sing.
*Note: This service was not filmed in the Meetinghouse and was only offered live online via Zoom due to inclement weather.
Offering and Giving First
For February 2025, the Giving First recipient is the Arlington Youth Counseling Center (AYCC). AYCC is a state-licensed, community-based mental health center serving Arlington youth (ages 3-21) and their families. AYCC is the leading provider of outpatient and school-based child and adolescent mental health services in Arlington, offering individual, group, and family counseling, psychiatric evaluation, and medication management. Central to its mission, AYCC is committed to ensuring that all community youth and families have access to comprehensive, culturally sensitive, and high-quality mental health care, regardless of their ability to pay. In the past fiscal year, 22% of our clients had public insurance or received grant funding to help cover the costs of care. In addition to mental health services, AYCC oversees First Step- a support group for victims and survivors of domestic violence.
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.