by Michael Quayle
February 6, 2011

For many of us the term theology holds a lot of negative baggage.  There is a tendency to associate theology with a specific approach or doctrine.   If we have rejected certain religious beliefs or teachings, there is a tendency to reject theology.

Within the Unitarian-Universalist tradition there are as many Religious or spiritual beliefs as there are people in this room. Some of us have suffered oppression and even violence in the name of Judeo-Christian practice and theology to the point that we reject all theology as limited or at best, not useful.

I come from a traditional or some would say orthodox Christian background.  My pastoral ministry was in the United Methodist church and my time as a lay-person has been in the Episcopal church.  In these traditions, theology tends to be linked with doctrine,   very specific doctrines.  Theology is viewed as a way of defending and preserving those doctrines and excluding beliefs which would weaken or destroy church teaching.

Yet, I find myself growing more and more connected to the Unitarian-Universalist way.   In some ways I thought I had invented Unitarian-Universalism.   Imagine my surprise when I found it was already there.  My study of Unitarian-Universalism has again and again affirmed the spiritual journey of my life, and has allowed a spiritual sigh of relief in discovering there exists a community of people who share my journey, my struggles, and my passion for social justice and a world view that makes sense to me. [Read more…]

Harvey Yoder has been a resident of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia since 1946 when his family moved from Kansas by train. Harvey is an ordained Mennonite minister and now have a seminary degree and a master’s degree in counseling and since 1988 have been a marriage and family counselor and pastor of a local house church. Harvey has spoken here at HUU on a number of occasions.

On Sunday, January 23rd, he presented a sermon Justice Gone Awry. The first part is presented below:

A judge I spoke with recently told me that without the use of plea bargaining, where a deal is reached in which a defendant receives  a lesser sentence in exchange for a guilty plea, the courts would be hopelessly backed up with more cases than they could handle.

When a defendant is actually guilty, I can see such an arrangement saving time and court costs and perhaps living up to its name as a “bargain.”  But when a defendant is not guilty, should he or she, while under oath to tell “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,”  feel coerced into giving up their right to due process that might exonerate them, simply because of the risk of receiving a dreadfully long prison sentence?

You can read Justice Gone Awry on Harvey’s blog.

Presented by Merle Wenger
Sunday January 2, 2011

Chalice Lighting:  “We Dreamers”

We dreamers–
architects of the soul
take a lifetime,
to meditate,
sketch,
create,
like Corbusier or I M Pei;
then choose
the bricks and stones,
to build a self
that suits us well
and makes others
cock their heads
and notice. [Read more…]

November 7, 2010

One of the services that everyone seems to enjoy is one we present a couple of times a year. We ask for two volunteer participants who are willing to share their own spiritual journey with the Fellowship. This morning Rich Sider and Laura Dent each shared their own spiritual journey.

Rich Sider

When Judith asked me to participate in this service, my first thought was, I haven’t had much of a spiritual journey.  A theological journey, yes, but a spiritual journey?  I wish I could say I’ve traveled further.

I’ll come back to my spiritual journey, or lack thereof, in a moment, but let me tell you a little about my theological journey first.

I was born in Zimbabwe, then Southern Rhodesia, to Brethren in Christ missionary parents.  The BIC denomination is not the same as the Church of the Brethren.  It is one of the Anabaptist related groups, though, with a Wesleyan holiness flavor.  In short, my parents were devout evangelical pacifist fundamentalists in the separatist mold of conservative Mennonites.  The world was basically evil and in need of salvation and the only important thing in life was to be “right with the Lord.”

Although I never accepted the separatist aspects of my parents faith, I tried to make the evangelical framework work up through college.  As some of you who share a similar background may have also experienced, it involved numerous attempts over the years to confess my sins and renew my faith in and commitment to the tenets of evangelical Christian faith.  The problem for me was that it never worked.  I could never experience the joy and freedom from my evil ways that a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ” was supposed to produce.

After college and marriage, Martha and I went off to southern Africa with the Mennonite Central Committee, the international service organization of the Mennonite Church.  Even though we weren’t into the missionary thing, the concept of responsibility to be of service had taken hold, and has affected my whole working career, all of which I have spent working for non-profits.

So, we entered the second phase of our theological journey – the liberal Mennonite pacifist phase.  I think I can use the pronoun “we” safely because Martha and I have been fortunate in that regard – our theological pilgrimages have coincided pretty well.  In this theological environment, service to others was the key to meaning and peace.  Unfortunately, while I believe deeply in the importance of service to others, I didn’t find the meaning and peace I was seeking in that path either.

During the 18 years I worked for MCC, including 4 in Guatemala in the early 1980s during the height of the civil war there, Martha and I came to reject the Christian faith claim to be the only truth.   We came to see we were certainly no better or more connected to the transcendent than the many who by happenstance had been born into a different religious framework and culture.  To think they were somehow condemned because of this just became too inconceivable to consider anymore.  And although many in the liberal Mennonite community share this view but have remained within it, we became increasingly uncomfortable with what is essentially a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to theology.  People who believe differently than Christian orthodoxy just don’t talk about what they believe.  We also became increasingly uncomfortable with the words spoken and sung in worship – words emphasizing dualism between the saved and unsaved, good and evil, material and spiritual, and anthropomorphizing the mystery many call God.  [Read more…]

July 25, 2010
GLBTIQQ PRIDE SUNDAY
by Rev. Emma Chattin

Proud of What? ~ Bringing The Other Home

How do we celebrate our differences?
Perhaps we begin by celebrating that we are different.

First Reading ~ Luke 19 : 1-9

Jesus entered Jericho and made his way through the town. There was a man there named Zacchaeus. He was the chief tax collector in the region, and he had become very rich. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but he was too short to see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree beside the road, for Jesus was going to pass that way.

When Jesus came by, he looked up at Zacchaeus and called him by name. “Zacchaeus!” he said. “Quick, come down! I must be a guest in your home today.” Zacchaeus quickly climbed down and welcomed Jesus with great delight. But the people were displeased. “He has gone to be the guest of a notorious sinner,” they grumbled. Zacchaeus stood his ground and said, “I will give half my wealth to the poor, and if I have cheated people on their taxes, I will give them back four times as much!” Jesus responded, “Today salvation has come to this home, for this is what it means to be a true descendant of Abraham and Sarah.”

Second Reading ~ from “Who Is Your Other”, by Eliacin Rosario-Cruz.

The children of the Enlightenment inherited the meticulous process of scientific classification. Following this process, everything was given its own place. But this process did not belong to the sciences alone—our communities of faith adopted this hard model of categorization as well. Categorization of this kind is no different from the behavior we frown upon in the Gospels when teachers of the law tried to manipulate and domesticate Jesus. While in Jesus we see the completion of the law, this truth was not accessible to the priests, Pharisees, and other religious professionals. They were neck deep into the myth of being the only ones who truly knew the right teachings, the accepted societal rules, and correct spiritual behavior. And then a callous craftsman with sawdust still in his hair, from a little town that nothing good was known to come out of, came to be the Other who would disturb the boring parade of sameness. [Read more…]

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.

=============

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. [Read more…]