Harrisonburg UU We are a lay-led, religious community offering a unique spiritual and moral witness in the Shenandoah Valley.
We meet each Sunday in the historic Dale Enterprise School House. Most of our services have a community dialogue or "talk back" after the service. Each of our services is followed by coffee and refreshments in our "Community Cafe." Quite often the dialogue will carry over to the community cafe.
 |
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.
Back in November, the Sunday Services Committee asked for congregational feedback on services and heard from about a dozen people. We paid particular attention to comments about Joys & Concerns. Several members had spoken publicly about their dislike for this feature of our services. We wanted to know if this feeling was widespread. We did not find that this was the case.
HUUs don’t have a regular minister to turn to for immediate personal communication in a time of crisis. People are unsure how to connect to the caring resources of HUU, and Joys & Concerns is an obvious avenue for doing that. Listening to Joys & Concerns helps listeners learn important things about our fellows that might emerge in more private settings if HUU provided them.
UUs share many values but have a full range of human temperaments. Recent discussions showed that we don’t define appropriate public disclosure in the same ways. What some are eager to share, others would not; and what some are glad to learn, others find irrelevant and uncomfortable to know.
Moreover, some of us recall Sunday services in other houses of worship that create an atmosphere of calm, quiet, and order. Some treasure a certain formality and consistency of tone even as they distance themselves from the creeds and politics of their churches of origin. This worshipful dimension is not easy to recreate in the informal atmosphere of HUU, and Joys & Concerns create many of our most informal of moments.
What to do? The responses we received didn’t show any groundswell of desire to remove Joys & Concerns from Sunday mornings. People valued it even though it sometimes made them uncomfortable and irritated. Still, most respondents hoped that people would
- avoid strong and hostile political statements;
- be brief, focused and audible.
There was also a sense that some announcements of events belong in Joys & Concerns, while others do not, but there was no consensus on how we would define the difference.
The Sunday Services committee will continue to remind you of how your fellows hope you will use this precious Sunday morning time. If you will introduce yourself, it will help those who do not know you yet to make a connection with you and make Joys & Concerns a moment that includes both long-timers and newcomers.
We will encourage members who want to address the congregation at greater length to speak to the worship leader earlier in the week, so that his or her remarks can be part of the fabric of the morning. Memorial statements are an example of a kind of sharing that deserves its own moment. Standing at the podium and using the microphone system is another way to be sure that all your listeners are included.
Occasionally, we will use the time customarily devoted to Joys & Concerns to experiment with rituals that other UU churches use to acknowledge our commitment to mutual support. Spoken joys and concerns are powerful, but so are other rituals that may also open doors for people who do not resonate to joys and concerns.
Finally, we hope that emerging programs of small group ministry and adult religious education will meet more of the need to know about each other’s deepest concerns and support each other on our journeys.
Written by Judith Hollowood and Submitted to the congregation by the Sunday Services Committee: Bernie Mathes, Pat Geary, Judith Hollowood, Beryl Lawson, Barkley Rosser.
Encountering Divinity Through Community (Or…. Is It The Other Way Around?)
January 10, 2010
by Rev Emma Chattin
Words of the Mystics - Thoughts for Reflection
“The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”
~ Jalal ad-Din Rumi (Persian Poet and Mystic, 1207-1273)~
“You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience.”
~ Teilhard de Chardin quotes (French Geologist, Priest, Philosopher and Mystic, 1881-1955) ~
“The trouble is that everyone talks about reforming others and no one thinks about reforming [themselves].”
~ Saint Peter of Alcantara quotes (Spanish Mystic and Founder of the Discalced (i.e. barefooted) Friars Minor. 1499-1562)~
Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~
“Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~ Jalal ad-Din Rumi ~
“(said of God ): If this is the way you treat your friends, it’s no wonder you have so few!”
~ St. Teresa of Avila ~
Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit.
( Bidden or not, God is present. )
A statement that Carl Jung discovered among the Latin writings of Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536), who declared the statement had been an ancient Spartan proverb. Jung popularized it, having it inscribed over the doorway of his house, and upon his tomb.
The fault of others is easily perceived, but that of oneself is difficult to perceive. The faults of others, one lays open as much as possible, but one’s own faults one hides, as a cheat hides the bad dice from the gambler. ~ (Buddha, Dhammapada, vv. 252, 253) ~
Reading
~ from Nevada Barr in Seeking Enlightenment Hat by Hat: A Skeptics Guide to Religion
Church is for finding and adoring God in community: with others, through others, because of others, in spite of others. Only by finding this place of human interaction, focused around the need for the spiritual, was I able to recognize God in other people, and so in myself. Without community, how would I learn to share? Who would I help? How would I learn to accept help? … Community is God rubbing elbows and passing the tuna casserole, a place where we can snuggle down with the Divine. Though I’d never have suspected it when I began this spiritual journey, God is not separate from people. Sure we’re hypocrites, liars, boasters, blasphemers, and cheats, but we are God’s hypocrites, liars, boasters, blasphemers, and cheats. The spark is in each of us. When we work together for what we sincerely hope is good, worship together in the belief we will touch God, sing together in the hope (God) hears our praises, then the spark is fanned, and God becomes as visible in us as God is in new snow, or a sunrise, or in a mountain lake.
Sermon
Good Morning. And welcome on this very binary morning of 01 10 10.
My father would begin all of his Sunday morning services with “Welcome all who gather here today, this is God’s House”, and I learned at an early age exactly what that meant.
We were stationed at Mt Carmel Methodist church in Covington, VA, and whenever I heard that phrase, I always took some pride in it. After all, THIS was God’s house. Our place. Our little church was where God lived.
As I went to school, I had Jewish & Catholic friends, and while I knew some of the differences between us, I took a secret sanctimonious pride… that our little church was God’s place, God’s pad. This pride continued to swell in me, until one day, I blurted out to one of the church members that this was God’s house, Mt. Carmel was where God lived. The member, I can’t remember his real name, but everyone called him Chestnut, looked down at me with that bristly burry flattop haircut of his (which my have been the source of his nickname), and pointed to the front of the church. Behind the altar and pulpit, at the very forward part of the church, hung a HUGE burgundy velvet curtain as a backdrop. Chestnut told me that God lived behind that curtain. Continue reading Encountering Divinity Through Community
“The Certainty of Uncertainty: Do you welcome the uncertainties of life or do they just make you anxious?”
Sunday Service January 17, 2009 by Merle Wenger
Chalice Lighting
by theologian, Paul Lakeland from Paul Rasor’s Faith Without Certainty.
The postmodern sensibility, let me suggest, is nonsequential, noneschatological, nonutopian, nonsystematic, nonfoundational and ultimately, nonpolitical. The postmodern human being wants a lot but expects a little. The emotional range is narrow, between mild depression at one end and a whimsical insouciance at the other. Postmodern heroes are safe, so far beyond that we could not possibly emulate them, avatars of power or success or money or sex—all without consequences. Postmodernity may be tragic, but its denizens are unable to recognize tragedy. The shows we watch, the movies we see, the music we hear, all are devoted to a counterfactual presentation of life as comic, sentimental, and comfortable. Reality doesn’t sell. So here we stand at the end of the twentieth century, a century that has seen two world wars, countless holocausts, the end of the myth of progress, and the near-depth of hope, playing our computer games and whiling away the time with the toys that material success brings.
My “I Believe” statement
I believe in science and the inherent mystery of the universe. I believe change and unsettled truth are two constants of liberal religious thought. I believe it is my daily religious task to prevent my senses from being numbed by the demands of cerebral information overload. I believe great joy is borne out of the struggle to experience our feeling and thinking selves and at the same time to integrate with the living and non-living forms of our planet. I believe a good life is inherently available when we see ourselves as good. I find it fascinating that sooner or later we all become involved in doing less than good. I experience great hope and fear and peace, but I choose to believe in peace.
Message: The Certainty of Uncertainty
Raking the fluffy yellow-brown leaves in my sun-drenched backyard on this past Thanksgiving Day, I reflected on what I was really thankful for in 2009. Putting my finger on one specific item was difficult, and my mind wandered to more philosophical and spiritual aspects of the past year. It had been a difficult year: the economy faltered, my business followed suit; a relationship I was in ended, I felt lonely, and two friends of mine were dealing with difficult legal problems that worried me. I felt like the proverbial dingy lost at sea. I struggled to find any contrasting events that made me feel grateful. I was starting to feel a little like the grump pilgrim who stole Thanksgiving but really did not want to dwell on such negativity, and set about seeing if I might find some remote positive aspect of my difficulties that might be worth celebrating.
The leaves were really fluffy. I notice this attribute because for some reason, the farm boy in me isn’t too keen on raking leaves. It’s easy for me to observe the beauty of newly fallen leaves, contemplating, rather than raking, during the subsequent 30 day picturesque “fluffy period” and then watch guiltily as the leaves are transformed to a mat of brown, mulchy, slippery, organic thatch covering my backyard. I look and see “protection for the lawn” through the winter: I imagine my neighbor sees a “lazy neighbor who doesn’t care about keeping up the hood.” But I really felt determined to change my non-urban tendencies and move into a more urban lifestyle. I was enjoying the raking: I was stymied about my gratitude. Continue reading The Certainty of Uncertainty
All Souls Day service
by Chris Edwards
Nov. 1, 2009:
These few days are observed as Halloween, Samhain, All Souls Day, All Saints’ Day, Dia De Los Muertos…days when nature slows down toward winter and legend says the veil between living and dead becomes most thin.
I took our title from Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse 5. The character Billy Pilgrim gets abducted and taken to the planet, Tralfamadore, where past, present and future are one. When Tralfamadorians encounter death, they say, “So It Goes.” Billy had first survived the same WW2 traumas Vonnegut had…so the story contains many instances of death. Each one –from the most hideous carnage down to the demise of an insect– concludes, “So it goes.”
I found that mantra running through my mind one summer evening here, watering the new plants. A laurel had died: So it goes. A truck full of birds headed to the plant for butchering: So it goes. And… around the bend to the east, a cross bears the name of Tiffany, a girl killed there in an accident two years ago. So it goes.
Commentators have called “So it goes” a memento mori (remembering we will die), comic relief, “fatalism, stoicism and the acceptance that no use will come of shrinking away when the worst has happened.”
To me, it just says what is.
I’ll offer two other accounts, about ways of dealing with death:
1 (one): In a memoir whose title I’ve forgotten, the author visits a small Irish village and gets to know her in-laws’ extended family. They often talk about a relative named Fred—not somberly; they tell funny stories about him—but she can tell this man is especially loved. One day she says “I can’t wait to meet Fred.” They tell her, “Oh, Fred lies in the churchyard under the roses . . .but I guess we still can’t think of him as gone.”
2 (two): In Watership Down, the rabbit heroes meet a colony of rabbits who seem to live in great luxury. Fresh carrots appear each morning for these rabbits, who are big and sleek, but somehow sad and spiritless. They have a taboo: never ask where another rabbit is. Truth is, the same invisible hand that sets out the carrots sets snares. If you ask where Flopsy’s gone, the others just turn away. If she doesn’t come back, her name is not mentioned again.
Which of these is more like our culture in dealing with death: the nonfiction memoir, or the talking-rabbit fantasy?
During El Dia de Los Muertos, the Mexican custom of grave-side picnics with the departed one’s favorite foods sounds like the Irish memoir in spirit. But for most middle-class, fairly healthy 21st Century Americans, death is a far-off abstraction. Except when it isn’t.
Both my parents died before I turned 24. More recently I’ve lost a few friends, and a nephew who’d been like my little brother growing up, and my former husband, who was a member here. The passing of generations brings sadness, but it’s natural. My son, Albert, died eight years ago from an auto accident. That wasn’t natural. Albert’s life was a work in progress, filled with struggles and promise. He was 31. Continue reading So It Goes
 October 11, 2009
21st Annual
National Coming Out Day
&
The National Equality March
On Washington DC
First Reading
~ from 1 Corinthians 13
The Gift of Love
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
Second Reading
~ from Paul Robeson in
Singing the Living Tradition
I shall take my voice wherever there are those who want to hear the melody of freedom or the words that might inspire hope and courage in the face of despair and fear. My weapons are peaceful, for it is only by peace that peace can be attained. The song of freedom must prevail.
Additional Thoughts for Reflection
Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for [humanity] to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. [Humanity] must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
~ Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., December 11, 1964
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars… Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
~ Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Continue reading Marching on the Side of Love
Presented by Julie Caran
August 30, 2009
Adapted from a 2001 service by Rev. Enid Virago and Julie Goldman Caran presented at First Unitarian Church of Richmond.
Good morning. I’m Julie Caran, and I’ll be directing the Children’s Religious Education program at HUU this year. Those of you who are new to HUU and even some of the current members might be curious about what we teach the children in our church, being that we are a non-creedal congregation and do not require people to subscribe to a specific statement of faith. If you take a look at the yellow paper in your hymnal, you’ll see the list of seven principles that the Unitarian Universalist Association espouses, as well as the sources from which our tradition draws its lessons and principles.
This year our youngest members, ages 0 to 4, will be in the nursery with Pax Helferstay and parent volunteers. The older nursery kids will be using a curriculum called Celebrating Me and My World. The curriculum does not tackle major theological stories or debates, but rather speaks to the children where they are at this age. As psychologist David Hay explains in the book The Children’s God, “All children are interested in the fundamental questions of meaning: ‘Who am I?’ ‘Where have I come from?’ ‘Where am I going?’ ‘What am I meant to do?’” (Crompton 51). Celebrating Me and My World helps to address these questions. Its lessons emphasize our first principle, the inherent worth and dignity of all people, and lead the children through activities that teach them to appreciate their own unique abilities. As the year progresses, they will gain understanding of how their actions impact the world around them, and begin to figure out what kinds of choices make a positive impact.
Children ages 5 and up will begin an imaginative exploration of “God.” Tabatha LaFreniere, Robin McNallie, Angelina Gonzales, Kevin Caran, Jenn Spiller, and I will be leading them on this journey. As UUs are particularly aware, “God” can be a hot button word because it can mean so many different things, depending on who is saying it, claiming it, and using it. The curriculum Stories About God will give our children the context they need to have meaningful dialogues about God with people of diverse views. They will gain some idea of what “God” means to people of different faiths, and participate in exploratory exercises that allow them to express their own thoughts and feelings concerning God. The curriculum recognizes that one perspective is an atheistic view of God, and thus introduces each perspective on God in the context of a story that some people believe, but not as one ultimate truth that we should all agree upon. Continue reading Questions from the Children
Dale Enterprise School
A talk presented to the Harrisonburg Unitarian-Universalist Church
on the Occasion of the 100th Anniversary of the Schoolhouse.
Dale MacAllister
July 19, 2009
Fifty-seven years ago last month, another centennial celebration was held in this very building. In June 1952 a large celebration was organized to mark 100 years since Walnut Grove School opened down the hill from here, just on the other side of Cooks Creek. The event was organized to celebrate all the schools that had served children in the Dale Enterprise community. Former teacher Annie L. Heatwole gave an address about the history of education in the community. She was a daughter of Lewis J. Heatwole, who also taught for a number of years in these schools. Miss Heatwole also mentioned that the earliest schools were often held in “unused shops and other private buildings.” She added that the teachers were usually men who were known as “schoolmasters.”Because teaching was considered a “soft job,” teachers were often those who were not physically fit for hard manual labor.
Let’s take a brief look at the three schools operated closest to this community: Walnut Grove, Pine Grove, and finally this Dale Enterprise building. The name Dale Enterprise, by the way, was chosen for the post office name of the village in 1872. The previous name had been Millersville, named for the Miller family that ran an early store here. After the Civil War, Mr. J. W. Minnick started a new mercantile “enterprise” at the crossroads of Silver Lake Road and Route 33. Minnick’s store was located near a “dale,” so the chosen name became Dale Enterprise.
Walnut Grove
Walnut Grove was a log schoolhouse located in a grove of walnut trees at Dale Enterprise in the 1850s. It was opened about 1852 as a neighborhood school 18 years before public education became a reality in Virginia. Since it opened before public education had begun it operated during the time that most local schools were part of Virginia’s “Common School” system. This system was designed to allow poor children to get a basic education paid for by money from the State Literary Fund. Walnut Grove Schoolhouse was located just east of Cooks Creek along the old roadbed of the Harrisonburg & Rawley Springs Turnpike. The school lasted only about seven years. When it closed, the building was sold to Albert Fishback in 1859 or 1860. Fishback, the village blacksmith, used it for his dwelling. A report about the log building, written by Jim Duncan in 1979, told that the old structure was later used as a repair shop and garage and even as the community post office for a short time. The building eventually formed the nucleus of the Raymond Burkholder house here at Dale Enterprise.
Pine Grove School
Pine Grove School, sometimes called Piney Grove, was located here at this location. In 1877, Peter S. and Nancy Reiff Heatwole deeded 80 square poles of land for the Pine Grove School along the “Harrisonburg and Rawley Springs Turnpike” to the Central District School Board. Abraham Swartz, who was also a trustee of the school, built the schoolhouse.
The school was called Pine Grove because of the many yellow pine trees surrounding it. The schoolhouse was constructed from the salvaged lumber of the earlier Fairview School, which was located where Belmont is now. Foundation stones from the old Weaver’s Schoolhouse were also used in the construction of Pine Grove.
Pine Grove School was intended for those children in the community who lived west of Cooks Creek, while those east of the creek were assigned to Weaver’s School. By the 1908–09 school year, the year it closed, Pine Grove was very crowded with 42 pupils in its single room, but amazingly two teachers, Lewis J. Heatwole, mentioned earlier, and his daughter Elizabeth (Lizzie M. Heatwole), were both teaching in the building. In a report that year, Mr. Heatwole described the building as “an old, weather-beaten school house, with rattling windows, leaking roof and old-fashioned furniture.”
Patrons of the school were already well aware of the need for a new schoolhouse. During Pine Grove’s February 1908 Patrons’ Day gathering, plans were made to meet later in the month to discuss securing a new schoolhouse. Interested citizens from the Dale Enterprise community, who attended the meeting, decided that a larger, three-room graded school was needed and that it should be built on the same site as Pine Grove. George F. Senger, L. F. Ritchie, and E. W. Burkholder were appointed to help raise money for the new schoolhouse. Patrons at the meeting immediately pledged more than $400 toward the building. Continue reading Dale Enterprise School
Presented by Eric LaFreniere
6.21.09
Chalice Lighting: “Olympism [is] exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, mind, and will”
Good Morning! And Happy Father’s Day. Father’s Day. I hope that a service on the relationship between sports and religion makes good sense on today in particular. Actually, I was inspired by an associate who, knowing that I’m not a huge fan of either popular religion or popular sports, sent me a youtube link to a commercial for a videogame called Blitz: The League II. In that ad, “football legend” Lawrence Taylor manhandles a pigskin while shouting these words from the center field of a CGI coliseum:
“Every Sunday, when America goes to church, we go to war!
While they pray for salvation, we play for survival.
This is our cathedral! The game is our religion!
And every religion has a judgment day.”
Which prompted me to ask myself: What does the coliseum have to do with the cathedral? Thinking about it, I realized that there are obvious major similarities between religion and sports: both excite our emotional core and mobilize masses of followers, both prescribe our thought and behavior and provide meaningful epics and exemplars, and both inspire us to create institutions dedicated to their orderly expression and perpetuation. Moreover, both religion and sports have been with us for as long as we can remember; they are beyond ancient – their beginnings are shrouded in the mists of prehistory.
Given the parallels between, and hidden origins of religion and sports, it’s tempting to treat them as if they’re actually the same thing, or as if one were a subset of the other. As it turns out that, some folks have espoused exactly those positions, but others have argued that the similarities between religion and sports are only superficial and that they’re essentially different.
But another approach is possible: using a broad evolutionary framework, we can say that religion and sports share a common ancestor – that is to say, they are simultaneously different but essentially related. Indeed, this service makes them out to be fraternal twins. Continue reading Religion & Sports: Kissing Cousins or Fraternal Twins?
|
