HUU Community Cafe

Responses to the Sermon on Evolution: Perpetual Easter. Looking for peoples’ responses to the sermon but also to the topic of Evolution. What does it mean to you?

by Cheryl Talley, Ph.D.
April 5, 2009

I began my 50 week negativity fast on Monday, November 26, 2007 as an act of desperation. The fast from all news media was an alternative plan from abstaining from all food for a year…which had been a very fleeting thought.  I remembered the benefit of fasting from food from back in my early thirties. Back then I had been in a church that advocated periodic fasting as part of a spiritual discipline. The longest period I had fasted was for 21 days. I knew the wonderful feeling of “after the fast” a clean feeling of having  detoxified myself physically and emotionally. It always worked. I felt more at peace after a fast…especially when it was coupled with a commitment to substitute spiritual readings instead of food…an emphasis on feeding my mind instead of my body. And I also noticed that I was less inclined to fight with people. I was much more sensitive during a fast of the impact of negative emotions. I also smiled more, especially at babies. Smelling fresh flowers or watching a sunset all seemed more intense in their pleasure. Continue reading No News is Good for You

March 15, 2009
By Julie Caran

When Kevin and I came to Harrisonburg in 2002 for his interview with the JMU chemistry department, one of my first tasks was to look at the church listings in the local yellow pages.  Because I was leaving my position as a Director of Religious Education at another church in order to accompany him on his career path, he knew there was one solid condition to my moving: there had to be a UU church wherever we relocated.  So while Kevin interviewed, I picked up a map and drove around town and into the country side, making my way to HUU.  It was easy to imagine living in such a beautiful area, and I’ll admit that I was instantly charmed by this lovely historic schoolhouse with HUU on the bell tower.

We moved to Harrisonburg in the summer of 2003 and attended HUU the first Sunday after we arrived.  That day the consulting minister, Rev. Byrd Tetzlaff, was fulfilling her promise to do a sermon of jokes, thanks to Robin McNallie’s purchase at the last HUU auction.  We saw that this was a community of people who enjoyed each other’s company, who had a sense of humor, and who really seemed to know each other well.  I had never attended such a small UU church before, but I looked forward to becoming a part of the HUU community.  That year I recognized HUU people at every educational, political, or social justice event I attended.  I knew that being a part of a UU church connected us to many different individuals with shared values.

Kevin and I did not join the church until spring of that school year, when we had acclimated to life in Harrisonburg and felt ready to truly commit to membership – which to us meant investing in this community with active participation, regular attendance, and a financial obligation.

Although growing up I had always contributed part of my allowance to my church, pledging was more than an expectation or the symbolic “giving back to God in thanks for all that God has given me.”  I had seen the practical side of church budgets and knew that running a church was impossible without its members’ generous contributions.  As a DRE I had personally depended on church members’ generosity to determine whether I would receive a raise or benefits.  Pledging also determined whether the RE program would be able to offer the same activities that it had offered the previous year, whether the church would be able to get its leaking roof fixed, and whether it would be able to contribute the necessary amount to be a UUA “fair share” congregation.  So when we became members of HUU, I knew how many benefits we would enjoy as members of the church and knew we needed to give something back – not only our time and participation, but at least some financial contribution.  At the time, I was in school full time and living off of student loans, and Kevin had his first-year-public-university-professor salary.  We couldn’t pledge as much as the church was worth to us.  But each year since then we’ve upped our pledge by about 15 per cent.  It’s part of our commitment to HUU that, as we become more financially stable, we contribute more as we are able.

March 8, 2009
by Rev. Emma Chattin

First Reading

~ from Matthew 25:29

“To those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance;
but from those who do not have, even what they have will be taken from them.”

Second Reading

~ from “On Giving”, in “The Prophet”, by Kahlil Gibran

Then said a rich man, “Speak to us of Giving.”
And he answered:

You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

For what are your possessions but things you keep and guard for fear you may need them tomorrow?
And tomorrow, what shall tomorrow bring to the over-prudent dog burying bones in the trackless sand  as he follows the pilgrims to the holy city?

And what is fear of need but need itself?
Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, the thirst that is unquenchable?

There are those who give little of the much which they have-and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.

And there are those who have little and give it all.
These are the believers in life and the bounty of life,
and their coffer is never empty.

And there are those who give with joy,

and their joy is their reward.
And there are those who give with pain,
and that pain is their baptism.

And there are those who give and know not pain in giving,|

nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue:
They give as in yonder valley

the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.
Through the hands of such as these God speaks,

and from behind their eyes
[God] smiles upon the earth.

Continue reading Giving In the Living Tradition

J. Barkley Rosser, Jr.
Presented  February 1, 2009

Economics as a Faith System

• Economics is derived from moral philosophy.  This is how St. Thomas Aquinas viewed in the 1200s when he introduced Aristotle’s economic analysis into Roman Catholic Church doctrine in a society dominated by the Church.  Aquinas reconciled the Church with Aristotle and his golden mean, a view of compromise as good in a complicated world in contrast with the purism and extremism of Platonic idealism that had long been acceptable to the Church.  Later, Adam Smith, the father of classical political economy in the 1700s, who wrote The Wealth of Nations, also wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments.  He was a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow, following in this tradition.  It was only in the early 19^th century that the first professor of political economy was appointed in Britain, Thomas Robert Malthus of the famous population doctrine, and he was an ordained Anglican minister.  As religion began to give way more to science in the late 19^th century, economics emerged from political economy and attracted people from the clerical classes who sought to “do good for society.”  In the US, this manifested itself with many economists coming out of the Christian Social Gospel movement that would become allied with the Progressive Movement.  Even now, many who become economists have at some level a motive to “do good for society,” whatever their views. Continue reading The Economy As A Faith System

by James J. Geary
December 7, 2008

Good morning

Guess what! I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m  a very old man. And lately I’ve been feeling my age.

I read that the Czech novelist, Franz Kafka, wrote that the meaning of life is that it ends. Well, as I near that end, I’ve been looking back at the various periods of my life. The period of my grade school years, is one I wish I had the power of memory and of words to describe to you. It was a time you can’t imagine, it was so primitive compared with the world of the late 20^th and the 21^st centuries.

I entered the first grade in 1920. The school was in an ancient two-story brick building. The principal’s office was off a landing half way to the second floor. It was a terrifying place with a frightening smell of iodine, or linament, or something that signaled it was a place for scrapes and cuts, of  stuff that burned,  and bandages by that formidable old maid.

Perhaps you’ve seen relics of the cars of those days. They had no streamlining, no automatic gear shift, no radios. Some were open except for isinglass that you could button on either side to keep out the weather. Dimmers were hand operated and they only reduced the brightness.

The roadbed of  U.S 11 between Roanoke and Christiansburg was packed earth and gravel, no blacktop. Later when there was blacktop, I have seen places on U.S. 11 where the edges had so crumbled there was hardly room for two cars to pass. There was no striping. Continue reading Fate and Finis

Presented by Beryl Lawson
November 30, 2008

Uncle Murray was a hobo. Well that’s not really true. He was a hobo but he wasn’t really my uncle. He was my mother’s boyfriend and I called him that even after they married  and until he became Grandpa Murray when the kids were born.

But he was a hobo during the depression.  He rode the rails mostly in search of a spiritual home. He said he tried everything in his spiritual journey: Christian science, vegetarianism and who knows what else.  One evening he found himself at a lecture in San Francisco.

After the lecture a man came up to him and handed him a card. It said “United Lodge of Theosophists.” The man indicated that Uncle Murray might be interested. He asked:  will I see you there. No, replied the man, this is for you.  Well to make a long story short he went, found what he was looking for and took the first box car home.

Theosophy is a philosophy which offers ancient teachings about the universe and ourselves in terms that the western world can understand. Its three fundamental propositions state that there is One Life, one inclusive Cause of all that exists, its nature far surpassing any human concept. That there is law in the universe which is cyclic and which pertains to all within the universe both animate and inanimate. and that all life is on a progressive march to greater and greater perfection. That there are those great beings such as Buddha, Jesus and Krishna, who, through great effort, have come to see the true nature of things and are willing to devote their efforts to helping humanity in its evolution. To be part of this great effort to help is a goal to be striven for. Continue reading My Spiritual Journey