by Joni Grady
October 16, 2016

By now I hope old members have had their hearts filled with memories of past challenges and accomplishments and newer ones have had their interest piqued by these same glimpses into the distant and recent past. While I was here that May day in 2011 when the 20^th anniversary was celebrated, I don’t remember much about it so it’s been VERY interesting to dig back into HUU history. I thought to look at our wonderful webpage and it was like finding a buried treasure. How many of you have actually read everything there? How many of you have read at least the section “About Us?” I think (hope) maybe it wasn’t there when we were exploring the idea of moving here because it would have been enormously helpful. I do heartily recommend its study for anyone thinking of joining HUU because it explains a lot about the beautiful tree we call HUU and why we are the way we are at this moment in time. Think about this: probably one of the youngest charter members, or planters, was Barkley Rosser, who joined particularly because he wanted a liberal religious education for his daughter. Barkley was about 43 years old at that time and there were several others in their forties, the Stricklers and Elizabeth Ihle, for instance, who are still here, and some who have moved on to other places. What an adventurous experiment they embarked on! A new variety of UUism, even if they couldn’t decide whether the seed they had planted would turn out to be a mighty oak or a sturdy apple tree. A clean slate, with only the preconceived ideas about church and religion they each brought with them from their own past lives—plus the UU principles. They could and did do anything, try anything that would grow the congregation and the voice of UUism in the Upper Valley. They could and did build a whole RE building, hire ministers, fire ministers, and become a de facto and then official UU Welcoming Congregation. We’ve told you a bit about the roots of HUU and you can read more online

Now, at the risk of extending a metaphor WAY past its natural lifespan, I want to change perspective just a little. Linda Dove has just told us what she found when she walked in through those very real front doors and her experience mirrors mine. But if HUU itself is a virtual tree, a tree of life, a tree of spirit and love, planted all those years ago, how do our visitors and new members, fit in now, what do we find when we fly in on our virtual wings? At first they only see this very real old schoolhouse, and maybe the real but younger RE building, embedded solidly in the sturdy trunk. If they’ve been UUs before, they’re probably not surprised by what they see inside but do they all understand the symbols? Certainly the coffee pots under the “Community Café” might express hospitality and a warm welcome even before our visitor hosts and we ourselves make that explicit—and that’s good. The flowers and then the music immediately let us know our souls are fed by more than cold logic and reason, and the flaming chalice is soon revealed to be the light our lives are guided by. In fact, at their very best, our services as a whole feed the entire person, body and soul, (especially if there’s a potluck afterwards.)

What don’t visitors and even new members see? They can’t see that the virtual HUU tree is filled with nests, each with a different design and purpose, but each sheltered by the outstretched branches that grow around them and make room as more room is needed. Who built them? Who inhabits them? Why are they here? These nests are built by us. Each one of us, old and new, young and old, has the freedom and responsibility in this free UU church to try out an old nest, refurbish it as needed, or create a new one. And we are all needed to inhabit them at different times during the days, the weeks, the months, the years of the church life. They exist to make this beloved community possible and able to fulfill our mission in the world, and they are each microcosms of the larger community, bound by the same covenant that holds us together as a whole. There’s the board-nest, up in the highest branch, charged with oversight and planning, the communications nerve-nest that is scattered but held together electronically, the caring nest that is lined with soft downy feathers from each of us and moves wherever it is needed most, and the worship nest that perches precariously at times, always hoping to produce golden eggs for the pulpit nest but needing the creative energy of the whole congregation to maintain the balance between heart, mind, and hands, between care-giving, sense-making, and justice- seeking. 

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September 18, 2016
By Linda A. Dove

Today we are going to think about our collective purpose as humans and as UUs in the tough circumstances of our shared life in the 21st. century. Most of the time we focus on our own life-paths. I certainly do. And I am grateful for my life. But every few years, I feel restless. This is my intuition nagging me to refresh my sense of purpose towards a meaning that expands beyond myself.

I am not talking about fate here. Fate is when things are out of our control—or in the hands of the gods. Destiny is when we choose to make our lives meaningful. Emerson put it in a nutshell: The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.

In my experience, there are three stages in life when we feel the need to radically redirect our paths. You could describe them as youth, middle-age and elderhood. But, really, the stages vary in timing for each person. Some young people are old souls wise beyond their years. Some mid-life people behave like goofy kids. Some old folk, sadly, wonder whether their lives have had any meaning at all.

So, in life’s first stage, we begin to forge our destinies as persons. Let me share a little of my experience here. As a child I felt alone. But now I see this helped me think for myself and set my own goals early on. I made my first conscious decision to forge a purpose for myself when I was 12 years old in high school. I decided to focus on being a nerd—the pinnacle of ambition in my world at the time.

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August 28, 2016
Valerie Luna Serrels

INTRODUCTION

Perhaps like many of you this week, I’ve been riveted by stories of the alliance of various indigenous tribes coming together to oppose the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, a $3.7 billion project which will run through sacred ancestral land in the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. Seeing photos and video of 60 different native American tribes standing together in solidarity on the banks of the Cannonball River gives me hope, but it also brings me back to another time in the not-so-distant past when white colonial powers first expropriated land and destroyed an entire civilization for our own use and profit. Not much has changed in our imperialistic mindsets, pointing to the hard truth that we seem to have a knack for not learning from our past sins and failures. The greed and subjugation that defined our nation’s founding remains unchanged generation after generation, showing up in different scenarios and contexts, but repeating the same pattern of disconnection.

Of course, this knack for not learning from our history is not limited to the United States, but seems to be a universal theme. Throughout human history, underneath this unchanging orientation toward imperialism and domination is a system of economics, based on a philosophy of mind that values profit and advancement for the few over relationship and the common good for all. And at the heart of this system are human beings who have become so disconnected within, from one another, and from the Earth, that we now face cataclysmic unintended consequences.

CALL TO JOURNEY:

This morning I’d like to talk about this connection between the state of our world right now, the greed that drives the injustice of our dominant systems, and our unexamined, unintegrated psyches. Perhaps we’ll get a glimpse into why our patterns of greed and domination seem to be stuck on repeat. And maybe we’ll see a way to liberate ourselves from the demands of these old patterns. Looking at these connections requires us to take a journey. Not to a foreign land, not with a passport, but with courage and a roadmap to our own psyche, to integrate what Depth Psychology founder, Carl Jung described as our Shadow. This path is not linear, but has many windy turns, ups and downs. It’s actually more of a descent, to the underneath of the soul. It is a journey at the core of our faith and at the core of being fully human, fully alive, fully connected with God and all things. It is the path of individuation – this quest for wholeness.

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Church and State HUU service 7.17.’16 –

Robin McNallie: Intro of Ben Fordney

When Ben Fordney was alive, he on a number of occasions would introduce me as a guest speaker in the history classes he was teaching at Blue Ridge Community College and JMU’s Lifelong Learning Institute. So I now, with some real sadness, get briefly to do the same for him. Before his first retirement, Ben had a distinguished career in the foreign service, including a posting to South Vietnam in the ‘60s during the war there. No career could have suited him better, for he was, I can sincerely say, one of the most gracious, reasonable, and civilized men I have known in my long life. After that, Ben came to Harrisonburg and earned a master’s degree in American history from JMU. He was a leader in the local Democratic Party, serving at once time as chair of the city Dems. Besides himself running for political office, he helped campaign for other candidates. He unflaggingly promoted liberal causes, most especially tighter gun legislation. This morning’s presentation, “Church and State,” includes an abridged version of a talk that Ben gave to the local interfaith association some years ago which Chris and I attended. We thought then that it would be good to have him do a Sunday service here addressing the same issue, and Ben sent us a copy of his lecture. Somehow that service never quite materialized. Although Ben is not here to read his words, I believe the wit and reasonableness of the living man are still present.

Reading of Ben Fordney’s paper:

RELIGION OF THE FOUNDING FATHERS
Ben F. Fordney
Two questions come to mind: What were the religious beliefs of the Founders, and perhaps more importantly, what kind of nation did they want to create: a Christian America or a secular nation? One common thesis that some historians advance is that they were Deists who wanted a secular state. They embraced a radical Enlightenment philosophy that considered religion only in terms of religious freedom Others believe the Founders were evangelical biblical literalists Christians who created a Christian nation. Out of this comes the belief of American exceptionalism – the idea that America has a divine mission- a City Upon a Hill, as governor John Winthrop said at the time of the Puritans.
When you delve into this question and read the extensive historical treatment of the faiths of the Founders, you begin to understand that there are no simple answers to these questions. Most of the Founders were complicated men and it is impossible, in the case of most of them, to put them into definite categories.
Most historians but certainly not all, do not believe that most of the Founders accepted all the tenets of Christianity, in fact some scorned and mocked it. Few, however, were outright deists, in other words, believing in a clockmaker God who allowed the world to run by natural forces. [Read more…]

On July 3, 2016 Ray Hertzler, Beryl Lawson, Linda Dove, and Amy Thompson presented “Perspectives on Evolution.”

Linda A. Dove

In 2006, in his last book, Evening Thoughts, Wendell Berry, cultural historian and eco-theologian, was concerned about our human devastation of Planet Earth through our aggressive commercial industrial Western culture. As a Catholic monk, he argued that this destructive behavior was sanctioned and encouraged by Christianity. (As you know, most UUs were Christian for many centuries until recently, and some still are).

Berry made these points:

• The Christian Church rejected the earlier feminine Earth-dwelling deities and made God into a patriarchal deity above and separate from the natural world. The result was that we humans withdrew our previous reverence for the sacred in nature and, having created God in our own image, we saw ourselves as spiritual and separate from nature which we viewed as merely material.
• Secondly, the Christian story of redemption encouraged us to see ourselves as saved and so separate from and transcendent over nature. Thus we could treat the natural world as a resource to be exploited for selfish human benefit.
• Third, since the Cartesian division of the world into mind and matter, we have claimed mind for ourselves and we have “de-souled” nature, adopting a metaphor of the world as mechanistic, and mere machinery for human use.
• This in turn has led us to use technology to overwhelm and dominate nature—to undermine natural population limits, to preserve our lives and delay death, to extinguish other life-forms, and to subvert the entire chemical composition of the Planet in a way that it cannot easily remedy.
• Finally, Berry argued, the Christian theology that gave us the vision of a transcendent destiny in some heavenly other world served also to diminish our concern for other, “inferior” life-forms and our living Earth.

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By Leah Rampy, Ph.D
March 6, 2016

I’m very grateful for the opportunity to be with you today. Thank you, Joni, and to all of you for inviting me.

How was your week? Did you find yourself calm, centered, and peaceful; breathing deeply; living joyfully and fully in the present?

If you’re like many people, there were a number of times when you were distracted, worried, fearful, or anxious, times when your mind wouldn’t stop racing. Perhaps sleep was illusive and you found yourself tired and out of sorts.

There are indeed a multitude of seemingly valid reasons why we are stressed and anxious. The political scene, climate change, money, the weather, our families, our jobs, relationships – all are fodder for our busy minds. We know that stress isn’t good for our health – and we feel stressed about that!

Our conversation today invites us to imagine finding healing in nature. I’d like to explore with you what we know and what we surmise about nature as a source of healing and wholeness.

Fortunately this isn’t a new topic and we have some research to guide us. For example, a study in the 80’s showed that patients recovering from surgery healed faster, needed less medication, and had fewer post-surgery complications if they were able to look out the window at leafy trees instead of a brick wall. [i]

Last year, researchers from the U of Chicago surveyed over 30,000 people in Toronto and found that residents reported feeling better and having fewer health problems when there were more trees on their street. [ii]

The gardeners among us were no doubt happy to hear that a strain of bacterium in the soil has been found to trigger the release of serotonin, which in turn elevates mood and decreases anxiety in lung cancer patients – and in mice. Isn’t it great to have another excuse to spend time in our gardens?[iii]

In March of 2011 a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that children who grow up on traditional farms are 30-50% less likely than other children to develop asthma.[iv]

The very soil beneath our feet makes wonderful contributions to our health! In a teaspoon of that soil, there are more microbes than there are people on earth. This amazing underground community cycles nutrients and water to plants, connects plants allowing them to strengthen their natural defenses against pests and ultimately contribute to our health through the food we eat.[v] And I might add, soils are the largest terrestrial carbon sink on the planet.[vi]

So we’ve noted ways that nature may help us to heal from surgery, to elevate our mood, help to prevent certain illnesses, and contribute to our overall health. I find this fascinating and wonderful. And yet I wonder: Is there more?

I was sad one day and went for a walk;
I sat in a field.
A rabbit noticed my condition and came near.
It often does not take more than that to help at times —
to just be close to creatures who are so full of knowing,
so full of love that they don’t — chat,
they just gaze with their marvelous understanding.[vii]
–St. John of the Cross – Spanish mystic lived in 1500’s

I’ve worked for and led programs and pilgrimages with Shalem Institute for many years. Shalem is an ecumenical organization started over 40 years to reclaim the Christian contemplative tradition, enriched by insights from Eastern religions. Living contemplatively: more fully present and alive to each sacred moment. Being fully awake requires that both the mind and the heart are open and available to what is in this moment. The ancient mystics sometimes referred to this as “mind in heart.”

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December 13, 2015
by Rev. Kirk Ballin

READINGS

RESPONSIVE READING # 651 “The Body Is Humankind (7 Billion)” Norman Cousins

TO A COMMON PROSTITUTE Walt Whitman

Be composed–be at ease with me–I am Walt Whitman, liberal and
lusty as Nature,
Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you,
Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to
rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you.
My girl I appoint with you an appointment, and I charge you that you
make preparation to be worthy to meet me,
And I charge you that you be patient and perfect till I come.
Till then I salute you with a significant look that you do not forget me

BETTER TO LIGHT CANDLES Merle Shain

It is better to light candles
than to curse the darkness.
It is better to plant seeds
than to accuse the earth.
The world needs all of our power
and love and energy,
and each of us has something that we can give.
The trick is to find it and use it,
to find it and give it away.
So there will always be more.
We can be lights for each other,
and through each other’s illumination
we will see the way.
Each of us is a seed,
a silent promise,
and it is always spring.

SERMON: POWER AND CONSCIENCE

The Inherent Worth and Dignity of Every Person…. 7 Billion People…. A World Community with Peace Liberty and Justice for All….. That is our Challenge… Our Means is The Right of Conscience and the Use of the Democratic Process….

The human species is the ONLY, the ONLY species that has the power to destroy EVERY form of life on this planet. Maybe not each of us individually could pull this off, but the means exist for someone or someones to destroy everything from the smallest microbe to every animal, plant, and human on the planet. What an absolutely remarkable Power we have as a species! There is no such threat of such power against us as a species from any other species – except, perhaps, from ourselves.

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