Into Light

This past week has revealed, for me, a deep sense of gratitude and resolve. Gratitude for where we live, in the Bay Area of California, and resolve, to continue the work of building this new church—a space where those who have left or been pushed out of the more theologically conservative churches and communities may find a home. 

President-elect Donald Trump has given power to a voice and culture in our American society that leaves behind many of those on the margins. Fighting this culture is what propels my resolve. It feels clear to me that we need to create more spaces that are inclusive, and more spaces where we use our privilege and our privileged place in the world to draw the circle wider.

Over the past several months the launch team for this new church has been hard at work figuring out how and what we can be in the world, and so I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce you all to work we’ve been doing. 

But first, I’d like to stop calling it the “new church” and call it by its name: St. Lucys—the patron saint of sight, the patron saint of light, and of the darkest night of the year. She’s creepy, she stands up to power, she provides food to the hungry, and she carries her eyeballs on a tray. We resonate with her resilience, her subversive power, that she makes people feel seen, and that she provides for those in need under the cover of night (new website is in the works!). 

So, on December 8th from 4-6p we’ll host a drop-in gathering for all of you to learn more about St. Lucy’s. A very generous couple from All Souls (the Episcopal church where I have worked for the past nine years) has offered up their support and their home (in the Oakland hills) for us to gather (they’re even providing hor d’oeuvres, drinks, and cookies!).

If you’re able to attend on the 8th, please RSVP here (we’ll send out the address once you’ve RSVP’d), even if you can only drop in, you are welcome. And, there will be more of these, so if you have to miss this one, no worries, you can catch another in the new year. 

Anticipating what’s ahead!

Emily

What’s next.

Welcome!

I’m honored and grateful that you’re here. And where is here? Great question. This is both a new and continuing community. Some of you have been around for a while in what was the Sunday Night Service and some of you are brand new to the space. Regardless of how you got here, we are a community unfolding into what we hope will be the start to a new church here in the East Bay.

Over the course of this next year, we will host monthly hangouts, some of which will be just to hang out and some will involve discussion around topics of our choosing. We’ll also have one-off events centered around art and faith and theology and food, liturgy and worship, and building relationships. Our goal is to have an official name and denominational affiliation by late fall of this year, at which point we will likely be able to start with some regular weekly gatherings. This newsletter, and the events calendar on this same site (coming soon) will be the best way to know what’s happening.

To start, you can mark the last Wednesday night of every month on your calendar as our beer garden hang out nights. The next one is next week, May 29th. I’ve reserved some tables on the patio at Fieldwork in Berkeley* from 6-8p. The intent of these gatherings is to get to know each other and to hopefully find the ways our stories are interconnected—where our journeys in and out of faith overlap, the people we know in common and the experiences we hold in common—but also to create and learn new ways to be in journeys of faith in which we find ourselves. Anyone is invited to these gatherings, just come ready to meet new people and to share the stories of your faith journey. We’ll pick up the tab on some pizzas and salads, so there’s really no excuse not to stop by! 

See you soon,

Emily

*Fieldwork is a brewery that has a food menu including pizza and salads and plenty of fun non-alcoholic drinks as well. We’ll hang out on the patio so that those with kids, or those of us who get a little antsy sitting down for too long, can move around a bit. There are good space heaters, but I’d bring a coat. Feel free to drop in and say hello, or stay the whole time.

**art on the previous page by Brenna Hall.

Welcome

I’m honored that you are here. My name is Emily Hansen Curran. You can read more about me in my “About Me” on the homepage of this little site, but here’s why we’re undergoing the project of starting a new church in 2024 in one of the most “unchurched” parts of the world.

I think there is a collective journey that many of us have been on—we’ve been part of churches or spiritual communities that caused us harm or shut us out or asked us to forget our very selves and lives or the lives of those around us in order to stay. And at some point, we made the very hard decision to walk away.  You’ve likely felt what Audrey Assad wrote in her song Be Still—the fear and exhilaration of actually naming what it is that you desire, fearfully looking it in the eye, and moving into what could be in spite of that fear. I can vividly remember that first rush of exhilaration, fear, and grief I felt when I finally decided to step outside of the authority and grip on truth that the biblical literalist tradition had on me.

Or maybe that's not your story, maybe you've never set foot in a church, or maybe you've never left the one you're in, but you have had your own sort of losses, of community or hope, where the road ahead was not what you thought it would be.

Often what comes next is hard and dark, but also a little bit hopeful. I like to think of it as a dark hope—the kind that the poet Jericho Brown names as a “darkness which should be praised”, “a quickening dark”. Or what the poet David Whyte names as the darkness and aloneness that allows us to see that “anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you”. But the hope from this darkness does not come easily or quickly, if it comes at all. My guess is that if you’re here, reading this, it’s likely that you’ve seen glimpses of this dark hope. A Good Friday kind of darkness. That is, a darkness latent with grief, sadness, loneliness, but also with possibility and maybe even life. Perhaps it’s why you’re here, still wondering about what could be.

But, I believe that there is life on the other side. And after you’ve stopped running, from fear or weariness or something in between, I believe that there is so much more. 

It’s why I’m in the process of starting a new church here in the East Bay—one rooted in what could be, but with the knowledge that we’ll never fully get there. What we’re starting won’t be for everyone, and it certainly won’t be perfect, but I’m hopeful that it could be a healing path forward for some of you, and for myself, and my family.

If you’re looking for a church that is progressive, liturgical, and centered around the life and death of Jesus, please consider joining our mailing list and coming out for one of upcoming events. We’re hoping to start hosting actual services sometime in late 2024.