HUU Community Cafe

A Talk By James J. Geary
Delivered before the Harrisonburg Unitarian Universalist Church
16 May 2010

Chalice Reading

The chalice is a symbol. We need symbols in our lives; we can’t do without them.
We utilize hundreds of symbols every day, including the words we use.

What does the chalice symbolize for you?

For me the chalice symbolizes itself — fire. Think about fire. Fire is energy. Fire is the essence of the universe. Fire is everything. Everything is from fire. Our sun, from which we come, from which we gain sustenance, is fire. The stars, from which we have come, are fire. We are fire, slow-burning, very complex fires. The stars are energy in action. Our sun is energy in action. And we, carrying within us the life force, are energy.

Like the Hindu god, Shiva, fire is the creator and destroyer of worlds. Fire is life, fire is death, fire is we, fire is the essence of the universe.

Talk 5%. A Very Long Spiritual Journey

Good morning.

Well, here we are — again. Oh, I know I said I was 95 per cent sure my last talk was really my last talk. That’s the meaning of the 5 % in the title of today’s talk.
I had a five percent chance of speaking again.

I have a piece of trivial news. Two days ago I turned 96. I don’t believe it!

I have a couple of readings:

The first is a short poem by the famous English novelist, Thomas hardy. The title
is: Waiting Both

A star looks down at me,
And says: “Here I and you
Stand each in our degree:
What do you mean to do, —
Mean to do?”I say: “For all I know,

Wait, and let Time go by,
Til my change come.” —
”Just so,” The star says: “So mean I: —
So mean I.”

The following reading is an excerpt from Pleasures, a poem by the California poet, Robinson Jeffers.

There is a higher pleasure;
To lie among cold stones my older bothers — God knows I am old enough,
But not like granite — to lie quietly embarnacled
Under the film of surf and look at the sky,
I strain the mind to imagine distances
That are not in man’s mind: the planets, the suns, the galaxies, the super galaxies, the incredible voids
And lofts of space: our mother the ape never suckled us
For such a forest: the vastness here, the horror, the mathematical unreason, the cold awful glory,
The inhuman face of our God: It is pleasant and beautiful.

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During the past 20 years, I have enjoyed some inspiring services from members of this fellowship, especially personal spiritual journeys. So I thought I’d try to interest you in mine..

In this talk I discuss the two principal intellectual loves of my life, philosophy and natural beauty.

I‘ll begin this talk with a mental picture, a picture of me crying when I was about 11 years old.. I had been promised I could visit with a family friend on his orchard estate for a few days. And then the promise had been withdrawn; and I was weeping. And my Uncle Leslie said something strange. He said the grief I was suffering was balanced by the joy I had felt when the promise was first made.

I couldn’t handle that. What he said certainly didn’t do anything to assuage my hurt feelings. But I remembered it. Little could I have imagined, however, that the philosophy or psychology that my uncle expressed would become one of the two sustaining pillars of my mature philosophy of life. Continue reading 5%. A Very Long Spiritual Journey

By Rev. Emma Chattin
March 14, 2010

First Reading
John 6:1-13
Feeding The Five Thousand

Some time later, Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee– also called Lake Tiberias –and a huge crowd followed him, because they saw the signs he gave by healing the sick. Jesus climbed the hillside and sat down there with his disciples. It was shortly before the Jewish feast of Passover. Looking up, Jesus saw the crowd approaching and said to Philip, ‘Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?’ Jesus knew what he was going to do, but asked this to learn Phillip’s response. Philip answered, ‘Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread to give each of them a little mouthful!’ One of the disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said, ‘There is a child here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?’ Jesus said, ‘Make the people sit down.’ Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; and as many as five thousand families sat down. Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed them to those who were seated; so also with the fish, giving out as much as they could eat. When the people had eaten their fill, Jesus told the disciples, ‘Gather up the leftover pieces, so that nothing gets wasted.’ So they picked them up, and filled twelve baskets with the scraps left over from the five barley loaves.

Second Reading
Adapted from~
Jesus and Buddha as Stories by Professor David Loy

…. Our minds need stories just as much as our bodies need food. ‘Story’ in this case means….all our mythologies, folktales, legends, epics, novels, philosophies, ideologies, including, of course, our religious beliefs. Just like food builds and rebuilds our bodies, stories build and rebuild our minds (or spirits, if you prefer) because it is through them that we learn what the world is, who we are, what is important in this world, and how we are to live in it. ….. If we look at religion-stories from this perspective, we can appreciate them in a different way. Continue reading What Feeds You?

Sunday service by Robin McNallie
3.28.2010

Readings:
1) “thy eyes look to me mild. Out of maize @ air/ your body’s made and moves. I summon, see,/ from the centuries it./I think you won’t stay. How do we/ linger, diminished, in our lovers’ air,/ implausibly visible, to whom, a year,/ years, over interims; or not;/ to a long stranger; or not; shimmer @ disappear.”
John Berryman, “Homage to Mistress Bradstreet”

2) “Sometimes the sun is only shadowed by a cloud that we cannot see his luster although we may walk by his light, but when he is set, we are in darkness till he arise again. So God doth sometime veil His face but for a moment that we cannot behold the light of His countenance as at some other time.”
Anne Bradstreet, “Meditation 50”

When I agreed to do this morning’s service, I was in the middle of reading Sarah Vowell’s well-received 2008 book on the 17th c. Massachusetts Bay Puritans, “The Wordy Shipmates.” I recommend it highly. Vowell, an audaciously cheeky commentator on that society, is also true to the historical record and shrewd in her judgments on it. She is essentially a stand-up comedian doing a sort of antic impression of Perry Miller, Harvard University’s pre-eminent authority on the New England Puritans and the later Transcendentalists. Although Vowell doesn’t seriously contradict H. L. Mencken’s oft recycled definition of Puritanism as “the sneaking suspicion that someone somewhere is having a good time,” she does suggest that there are, at least, a few redeeming qualities to Puritan society which should perhaps come as good news to UUs since our Unitarian branch is the evolved offspring of Puritan congregationalism; we won’t be harmed either from owning up to that dour and dyspeptic past or knowing it more fully. Since Vowell devotes considerable space to Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, we can infer that a positive attribute she finds in the Massachusetts colony is the quality of the dissenters it produced—before banishing them to Rhode Island.

I would like, however, to direct my own remarks to another woman of that patriarchal world not covered by Vowell, the other Anne—Bradstreet. To students seeking to pass their masters exams in American Literature Anne Bradstreet is the answer to the question: “ What poet was the first in the English speaking New World colonies to have a volume of poetry published in London in the year 1650?” The title of that book, probably supplied by a market savvy publisher of the time, is “The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America.” Anne, incidentally, was peeved initially, because her brother-in-law had delivered the draft of it to London without her knowledge. The universal moral here: Keep your best china and all loose manuscripts hidden when having your in-laws over. Continue reading MISTRESS ANN BRADSTREET: GODLY AGNOSTIC

Eric LaFreniere addressed HUU members and friends gathered for the Stewardship Sunday luncheon. His comments follow.

Greetings!

In case you don’t know, my name is Eric LaFreniere, and I’m chair of your HUU Membership Committee.

Recently I’ve had the opportunity to reflect on the idea of HUU membership as membership in a kind of extended family, with all the challenges, rewards – and food – that entails. Our HUU family encourages us to be our best selves: to adhere to core principles, to participate in and buuild community, to evolve through positive if sometimes difficult relationships with others, to seek and supply solace and support, and to quest for spiritual meaning together. Like a biological family, our HUU family is worthy of our attention, time and energy. It is both a value in the present moment and an investment in the future.

Speaking of which, on this Stewardship Sunday, as chair of your Membership Committee, I beseech you to pledge generously to your HUU family. Yes, these are troubling economic times – and Lord knows many of you have already given amply of your time and energy – but our HUU family is on the verge of expansion in terms of both membership and programs – just as a biological family might be about to be transformed by a birth or a marriage, or by sending someone off to college, or by the start of a business. All of those things take money, which is what I’m frankly asking of you, so that our HUU family can transform into a bigger, better vehicle for the realization of our principles, our relationships, and our spiritual journeys.

Thank you.