HUU Sermon Archives - 2002 & 2001

All sermons are the exclusive property of the writer.
Additional sermons will be added as they become available. All sermons are in HTML format.  Some are available for download in MS Word format.

The first paragraph of most of the sermons is included.

2002

The Greatest Gift delivered December 15, 2002 by Merle Wenger.

• Sing: "If I could save time in a bottle, the first thing that I'd like to do, is to save every day 'til eternity passes away, just to spend them with you." (Jim Croce) Lately I have been thinking a lot about time. How it can not be replaced like gold or cars, or grown like trees. How it can not be bought like flowers, or gifts, or precious stones. That it can not be captured, copied or traded. What makes a dog so anxious about time while a cat seems to ignore it? We measure time with the most sophisticated clocks-right up to the atomic clock which measures time within thousandths of a second, yet the time it takes in measuring consumes more time than the dot in time we need to measure, so that you might wonder, what is the purpose of the calculation?

Hypathia: The Last of the Neoplatonist delivered December 8, 2002 by Beryl Lawson and Eric La Freniere.

• The subject of the service was the martyrdom of the Alexandrian Neo-Platonist philosopher-mathematician, Hypatia. It is presented here for your edification and pleasure. Contrary to some modern thinkers, there exists the record of much ancient wisdom, going back to ancient Egypt, Babylon, Chaldea, India and beyond. Plato was student to Pythagorus. Pythagorus was known to have traveled extensively to India and been much influenced by Hindu and Buddhist teachings. So the ancient knowledge was transmitted, one to the other until we come to the time of the Neo-Platonist, the time in the first centuries of what we call the common era....

Thanksgiving: An American Tribal Holiday delivered November 24, 2002 by Elizabeth Ihle

• We have a galaxy of American holidays. The dimmest holiday stars like Presidents' Day, Columbus Day, and Veterans' Day, while certainly worthy, often just annoy the average citizen whose job continues but who can't do her banking or receive his mail. The middling holidays, Memorial Day and Labor Day, shine more brightly, marking the beginning and end of summer and at least giving the majority of us working folks a holiday attached to a week end. Then comes the Fourth of July. The downside is that the Fourth falls always on the fourth and therefore doesn't always provide a long weekend....

Looking Backward   delivered November 10, 2002 by Jim Geary

• I scheduled this talk several months ago. So during a recent extended trip that my wife, Pat, and I took, I thought a lot about what I could say to you that might be interesting. I concluded, since with a few exceptions you are all 20 to 40 years or more my junior, that I'd talk a little about what it's like to be quite old — at least for me.....

The Eye of Providence: Deism USA delivered July 21, 2002 by Eric La Freniere

• how many of us learned - as children - that the pilgrims shared an intimate thanksgiving dinner with local native Americans, or that George Washington confessed to chopping down the cherry tree? These are legends; their mythic content gives them a certain psychological resonance, but the facts are that the pilgrims refused to allow the "heathen savages" to so much as enter their compound, much less dine with them, and that the tale of the cherry tree was deliberately concocted by a minister.

Lessons from the Garden: A Celebration of the Flower Communion delivered June 30, 2002 by Elizabeth Ihle

• Morning has broken like the first morning; blackbird has spoken like the first bird. Come with me this morning to a summer's garden, a place where you can find a haven, and visit with me there. My garden is a rainbow of color produced by flowers, birds, and grass; yours may be of a more practical nature and its vegetables nourish you. Whichever it is, it offers us a respite from the world, nourishment for our souls, and an encyclopedia of musings about life.....

Theosophy: Religious Science, Scientific Religion delivered  April 28, 2002 by Beryl Lawson

• The term Theosophy is derived from the Greek theos meaning god or gods and sophia meaning wisdom. Some have translated it as the wisdom of god but it is more properly thought of as divine wisdom, such as that possesses by godlike beings. Theosophy is an old term referring, to the third century CE time of the Neoplatonists and before.

Web of Life and the World Wide Web delivered by Deb Stevens  April 14, 2002

• Teachers have to define terms, so here's an easy visual way to get a handle on what we're talking about. What IS the difference between the Internet and the WWW? The Internet is the name for the system of computers that are connected through the international telecommunications system. The World Wide Web, or "web," is a way to use the Internet . The Internet can exist without the Web, but the Web cannot exist without the Internet.. (FTP, Gopher, etc.., are other ways to use the Net). And the World Wide Web is Tim Berners-Lee's alone. He designed it. He loosed it on the world. And he more than anyone else has fought to keep it open, nonproprietary and free. And he's a Unitarian Universalist.

JC or PC - A Matter of Semantics delivered Easter Sunday, March 31, 2002 by Merle Wenger

• I like holidays. Maybe it's the inner child thing, maybe it's the food, or maybe it's tradition. I don't care whether someone celebrates Easter by going to a hilltop and watching the sun come up--some of them worshiping the sun, some of them remembering the story that it was at sunrise on Easter many years ago when Mary, the mother of Jesus and his friend, Mary Magdalene, supposedly went to the tomb and found the stone rolled aside and Jesus' body missing.....

The Greatest Miracle or Old Man Potpourri delivered February 3, 2002 by James Geary.

• Do you love the stars? I do. They provide me with . . . well, call it spiritual insight. I like to contemplate them, try to imagine their unfathomable distances from earth and from each other. And, I just like to look at them....

2001

Sorrows delivered by Chris Edwards  as part of the Seasons of Joys and Sorrows. (Note: This was one of several presentations given on Dec. 9, 2001, by members of the adults’ discussion group.)

• Legend has it that the father of young prince Gotama - who would become the Buddha -arranged the palace grounds so that his child would never see an old person, a sick person, a corpse or a monk. When the young man eventually learned that old age, sickness and death existed, he set out on his spiritual quest.