Harrisonburg Unitarian Universalist Flower Communion
May 5, 2019
Facilitator: Martha Sider

The title of today’s service is taken from the song “ White Coral Bells” You’ll find it printed on the insert to the OOS. White coral bells upon a slender stalk, Lilies of the Valley deck my garden walk… I, like many children, was introduced to this song at summer camp, Kenbrook Bible Camp. And yes, at that camp we sang mainly specifically Christian songs around the campfire, but this song I learned with a group of girls in the cabin with our counselor at lights out time. We sang it as a round, our little girl voices joined together, and I loved being a part of that community. Many years later, the Lilies of the Valley in my garden today are a gift of this community shared from Cathy and Charlie’s garden.

Lilies of the Valley hold much significance around the world – they are said to bring luck, used in weddings to symbolize purity, in Christian lore (mentioned 15 times in the Bible) used to symbolize tears (Eve’s, the Virgin Mary’s, Mary Magdalene’s at the cross of Jesus) and in some folklore they are believed to protect from evil spirits, charm against witches spells and considered the flowers of the fairies, their tiny bells used as cups from which to drink. Some in European countries hold the belief that Lilies of the Valley prompt visions of heaven.

However, aside from folklore, I think these beautiful, sweetly scented flowers call us to an awareness of our HUU community.

• Lilies of the Valley form extensive colonies by spreading underground. New shoots are formed at the ends of stolons, but they stay connected to the other shoots underground.
• They are complex, holding together in one stalk the poisonous and the healing.
• They are strong, returning year after year, pushing through the darkness, the layers of earth and the mulch that may have been heaped upon them.
• They are also delicate, susceptible to the stress of high temperatures and in need of the sheltering shade of other garden plants.

We are the lilies of the Shenandoah Valley, white coral bells. “Oh, don’t you wish that you could hear them ring? That will happen only when the fairies sing.” In this religious community where as we often sing “we seek elusive answers to the questions of this life” and can claim that “even to question, truly is an answer,” that will happen only when we open ourselves to the experience of transcending wonder and mystery.

Today our four readers will offer words that hopefully inspire us to seek the “direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder” stated as one of the many sources from which we draw. [Read more…]

by Nancy Barbour
April 14, 2019

On Children (from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran)

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of
Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though
they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their
own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls
dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life
goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with
His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s
hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves
also the bow that is stable.

Introduction

These words from Kahlil Gibran will frame what I have to share with you today. They provide an image of the child as a powerful human being. Though I am not a parent, I have spent most of the last 35 years as an Early Childhood Education scholar studying how children grow and learn and how families in the US and abroad support and care for their children. As an early childhood teacher educator, I advocate for best practice so that all children can succeed in the world. I have long been a champion for children, but my concern for what is happening on our border with young children being separated from their families makes me feel angry, helpless, and unsettled. I am well aware of the lifelong impact on children when they are separated from their families. And I worry about what we are doing to children who have already been up-rooted from their homes and countries, not having a say in their fate. I will share with you information on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children (UNCRC), a document completed in 1989 (an abbreviated version is what you have in your hand). This convention clearly defines children’s rights that are guaranteed. I will use this document to examine how the separation and warehousing of children on our southern border challenges these rights. I have struggled in preparing this service because I don’t want it to be a class lecture, but more of an unburdening and sharing of my passion to protect children’s rights.  [Read more…]

J. Barkley Rosser, Jr.
February 24, 2019

Defining Reflexivity

• The word “reflexivity” comes from the Latin “reflectare,” which means “bending back,” as does light when it reflects off a mirror.
• In 1938 sociologist Robert K. Merton wrote about it arguing that an intellectual should reflect on their position in the world and how it affects their ideas and how their ideas affect it, with this mutual going back and forth key to reflexivity. He also discovered the idea of “self-fulfilling prophecies,” where if we all think something will happen we may all act to make it happen.
• Merton influenced philosopher Karl Popper who in the 1950s taught financier George Soros about reflexivity, which became the basis of his theory of investing, eventually becoming a billionaire. Drawing on ideas from economist John Maynard Keynes, Soros agrees with the self-fulfilling prophecy idea of Merton and argues that we act on the basis of what we think others are thinking, who also act on how we are thinking, all reflecting each other.
• The first figure above, “Drawing Hands,” by Maurits C. Escher (1948) shows the basic idea of reflexivity. We see a print of a drawing about drawing with the two hands mutually creating and reflecting each other wirth their drawing. It is popular with reflexivists.

Reflexivity in Velasquez’s “Las Meninas”

• The second slide above shows “Las Meninas” (“The Ladies in Waiting”) by Diego Velasquez da Silva (1656), which hangs in the Prado in Madrid and is considered by many to be the greatest painting in Spain. It shows the daughter of King Philip IV with her ladies to the right and other court figures. On the left is a self-portrait of Velasquez painting an unseen painting. On the back wall is a mirror with murky images of the king and queen.
• Economic philosopher John B. Davis sees three levels of reflexivity in this painting. One is immanent, the self-referencing that it is a painting about painting. Another is epistemic, that it shows the painter knowingly painting a painting about painting. Finally there is the transcendent, the entrance of those outside the painting, notably the king and queen in the mirror, presumably outside the painting looking in.
• It has long been argued that Velasquez is painting the king and queen, but in 1893, French novelist André Gide argued that he was painting the painting, which he called mise en abyme, “into the abyss,” which has become a post-modernist form of literary analysis focusing on images of self-referencing images in the deconstruction of art.

[Read more…]

By B. Don Franks,
February 10, 2019

[I thought that it might be interesting to talk about Arkansas and Georgia in the 50s and 60s when some of the legal basis for Jim Crow was being dismantled with the Brown vs Board of Education Supreme Court Decision and the Civil Rights Act being passed Given the recent revelations about our Governor and Attorney General in the 80s, it appears that someone growing up in Virginia 25-30 years later would also have some stories.]

1. Atmosphere
2. Personal experiences
3. Positive influences
4. Positive changes
5. Critique of 2019
6. Next steps

Atmosphere

I was born in 1938 and lived in several towns in Arkansas until the early 60s. In this “last” part of the Jim Crow era, Whites controlled all aspects of life, including politics, education, courts, and financial affairs. We were kept separate from Blacks (except for the servants). There was no mixing of the races in schools, cafes, parties, & churches. We did include Blacks in our lives, Little Black Sambo was read to children; Amos and Andy watched on TV; and when a decision had to be made, the following was used: “Ennie, minnie, mighty mo, catch a N(word) by the toe—if he hollers, make him pay $50 every day.”

“The “public” swimming pools, golf courses, and parks.were for Whites only. In some cases there would be a separate Black public facility such as a park, but it would be inferior to the White one. As you have heard, there were White and Colored water fountains, in addition to White men, White women, and Colored restrooms.

I remember three incidents that illustrate the separate, but unequal, aspects of this time. I was playing with a baseball team, when some Black kids came by and challenged us to a game. When we asked our coach if we could play them, he answered, “No if we let them play baseball with us, then the next thing they will want to go swimming in “our swimming pool.” My friends and I could watch ball games at the Black school and sit wherever we wanted. There was a small separate section for Blacks that wanted to watch our games, and of course, they could only sit in the baloney at the movies. The Assistant Superintendent of Schools spoke to my Civics class, asking us to be careful with our books, because when we got new ones, our old ones went to the Colored school. He also explained that a Black teacher with the exact education and years of experience would make hundreds of dollars less than our White teacher confirming the Supreme Court Decision that Separate was Unequal.  [Read more…]

By Chris Edwards
2.3.2019

Readings

“But February made me shiver
With every paper I’d deliver
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn’t take one more step”
Don McLean, from the song, “American Pie”

“I’d love to rise from the grave every ten years or so and go buy a few newspapers.”
Luis Buñuel, Spanish filmmaker (1900-1983)

“War reporting is still essentially the same – someone has to go there and see what is happening. You can’t get that information without going to places where people are being shot at, and others are shooting at you. The real difficulty is having enough faith in humanity to believe that enough people be they government, military, or the man on the street, will care when your file reaches the printed page, the website or the TV screen. We do have that faith because we believe we do make a difference.”
Marie Colvin (1956-2012), American foreign affairs correspondent for The Sunday Times, a British newspaper. Subject of biography, In Extremis, The Life and Death of the War Correspondent Marie Colvin, by Lindsey Hilsum (2018).

“Go where the silence is and say something.”
Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!

The first part of my strung-out title comes from a book, “An Honorable Estate: My time in the working press,” by the late Louis Rubin, my professor at Hollins. Louis called journalism, the Fourth Estate, “honorable.” Way earlier, he and our friend, the late Jim Geary, had worked together for the Associated Press. Writing about the hot lead typesetting of their time, Louis said the technology changed less in the first five centuries after Gutenberg than in the late 20th. The book came out a day before 9/11. He didn’t hope for many reviews – knowing a day’s monster news swallows all else. He was right.

As to “Enemies of the People,” here are some typical complaints, from a letter in The Daily News-Record: “Watching the news these days is so depressing. All the media seems to do is focus on the negativity in the world. Personally, I blame the media for blowing everything out of proportion.”  [Read more…]

by Jonathan McRay
Delivered on 7/22/18

-Moment of silence to honor the land, the indigenous people, and those who have been enslaved here

My mother’s father grew up in a farming family. Not one that farmed for much money, but one that raised hogs and grew gardens on rented land. After my grandfather grew up, his parents bought land and built their house with their hands. Just before I was born, my great-grandfather was crushed by his tractor on a steep hillside. Years later my great-grandmother sold the farm to divide the inheritance money between her two children. I don’t think my granddad ever fully recovered from losing his dream of farming that land. But a decade ago he and my grandmother bought land, where he grew a large garden in the late evenings after work and on the weekends. Earlier this summer, they finally moved out there.

My grandfather doesn’t speak much, mostly humming and rubbing his hands together, but when asked why he plants a garden every year despite limited time and old age, he replied, “I try to stop, but every spring the soil sings to me.”

I have several bookshelves devoted to an agricultural library and none of those books say why they do what they do with half of my grandfather’s eloquence. Few of these authors introduce their practical guides with an emotional invitation to see what they love about their land. A language of sustainable agriculture must be informed by emotion, a feeling in the body as much as, if not more than, philosophical or scientific thoughts. I want a vision of agriculture that, like my grandfather, trusts that the soil does indeed sing in the spring.

I want this because the most innovative techniques of “carbon farming” or “regenerative agriculture,” or for that matter restorative justice, won’t save us if we’re not cultivating reverence for the world. They won’t save us because they won’t last without reverent affection that supports them beyond burnout. I didn’t grow up farming, so I’ve needed handbooks and workshops about practices for sustaining our soil, but how about practices for sustaining these practices? What about ongoing steps for cultivating affection?

I suppose I’m trying to say that sustainable agriculture and culture can only be sustained by practices that might best be called spiritual. Now, in the past I’ve been pretty allergic to that word and the wispy ways I’ve seen it tossed around. But I’m not talking about otherworldly or unworldly beliefs. I’m describing a way of experiencing this world: the soils that grow our food, the water we drink, the harvests we eat, the relationships we depend on as gifts of life. We are called to care for these gifts. By spirit, I really mean what animates us, inspires us, keeps us going, like a deep breath or a cool wind. How do we sustain our spirit? I care about this spirit as a grower who plants trees and sows seeds, as a facilitator who tries to make the energy of conflict flow as easily as possible.  [Read more…]

Presented by: Rebecca Harris
Harrisonburg Unitarian Universalist
July 1^st, 2018

Unitarian Universalism has seven principles and six sources, which are listed
in Singing The Living Tradition just before the hymns. The Unitarians emerged
in Transylvania & Poland in the 2^nd ½ of 16^th century,
the Universalists in the United States in 1793. What did these Unitarians and Universalists
believe? Well, thanks to social media I was able to put out a call on FB asking
that very question, as I was searching for a concise phrase to explain their theology.
I got many thoughtful responses. Chris and Robin gave me exactly the phrase I was
looking for but was not able to recall. That is “Historically, Universalists believe
God is too good to send anyone to Hell, while Unitarians believe THEY are too good
to be sent there”. My friend Rufus gave me the historical citation for this: Thomas
Starr King is credited with describing the difference between Universalists and
Unitarians: Universalists believe that God is too good to damn men; Unitarians believe
that man is too good to be damned [1].

The Unitarians and the Universalists were separate denominations until 1961,
when they merged [2]. Today there are 1,035
UU churches, societies, fellowships and congregations in the United States. Some
have one, or more full time called ministers, some have part time ministers, and
some are 100% lay led, like us. There are 199,850 Unitarian Universalist members,
which is less than 1/10 of 1% of the US population[3].  [Read more…]