Sunday Services: Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Harrisonburg Virginia
Services are held every Sunday from 10:30 AM until 11:30AM. After the service, we invite you to stay coffee and conversation in our Community Cafe. On the first Sunday of each month, we invite you to join us for potluck. Below is a list of upcoming sermon topics. You can read previous sermons from some of the speakers on our sermon archives page.
September 5
Mel Lee and Oakley Pearson will present "The World Is Ill Divided."
Oakley Pearson and Mel Lee have been making music for their own amusement and their wives' annoyance for a considerable number of years. Though both perform regularly in other contexts and regularly get together for living room sessions, they only sporadically play publicly together. Oakley hails from Minnesota, but now resides in Staunton. He was director of the regional Talking Book program until his recent retirement. He began absorbing traditional music on his father's knee and has never stopped. Six-string and resophonic guitars, harmonicas, and a tiple are the instruments most often to be seen in his hands. He is an encyclopedia of general folk music knowledge, but his particular areas of interest are blues, cowboy songs, and Bob Dylan songs. He and his sweet-voiced wife Margaret can also bring back pleasant memories of 1930's & '40's pop and swing music.
Mel, who works for the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Community Services Board in real life, has for the last nine years produced and hosted "Mel Lee's Songbag," a Saturday morning program of traditional and folk music on WEMC. If asked directly, he is likely to say that English, Scottish, and Southern Appalachian ballads are his favorite forms of traditional music, but evidence suggests he never met a genre of folk music he didn't want to try out. A houseful of instruments documents this supposition. Guitars, Irish bouzouki, autoharp, and various recorders and whistles are his current favorites. He performed with the Old-Time/Irish band "Frosty Morning" for over twenty years and currently performs with "Nonesuch," an ensemble exploring an eclectic mix of traditional music.
Both musicians delight in researching the history and background of their music and in sharing that information in their performances, or, perhaps, "informances." For this Labor Day event they are pulling together a variety of songs, ranging from highly dramatic to satirical, that were spawned by the Labor movement .
September 12
We celebrate HUU’s annual ingathering service, where we start our new church year. We’ve chosen an intergenerational service, “What will you bring to the Feast?” based on African and Chinese folk tales about trickery. You are invited to bring a vial of water from your summer travels or from your kitchen sink to this intergenerational service. (We’ll also have water at church for you to use.) As we begin a new congregational year by mingling our various contributions of water from the summer, we symbolically blend our collective experiences and gifts. Rather than looking back to where we’ve been over the summer, we ask you to look forward to what you can bring to HUU in the coming year. Each of us will have the opportunity as an individual or family to say what we hope to contribute to this beloved community.
September 19
Rev. Emma Chattin will present today's service.
September 26
Sarah Cheverton will present "Blessing of the Animals."
October 3
Rev Kirk Ballin
will present "Association Sunday."
October 10
TBA
October 17
Ken Nafziger presents "Music from Our Living Traditions."
October 24
Chuck Thompson will present "Conversations with myself about what is!!"
October 31
TBA