September 1, 2013
by J. Barkley Rosser, Jr.

1. For most people, Labor Day has become an end of summer holiday for having a barbecue and shopping (now rivaling Black Friday), or even a day for changing clothing rules, such as the end of wearing white during the summer (particularly womens’ shoes). Its origins and purpose are mostly forgotten or only vaguely thought of. We shall consider the question of the meaning of Labor Day and UU views of it from a historical perspective.

2. The celebration of the 50^th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom this past week should remind us of the link between labor concerns and broader civil rights concerns. The director of the March was A. Philip Randolph, who was also the founder and longtime president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the mostly African-American group who worked the Pullman sleeping cars. In 1941 he threatened such a march, which led FDR to end racial discrimination in hiring in federal jobs. Randolph had been an active supporter of the US Socialist Party and also close the Progressive movement from the 1920s on.

3. Labor Day was first celebrated in Toronto, ON, Canada, the only other nation besides the US that has a celebratory holiday on the first Monday of September honoring workers and the labor movement in 1872, with “labour festivals” celebrated annually after that. The first Labor Day in the US was celebrated in New York on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York, organized by the Central Labor Union, a part of the Knights of Labor, in support of the 8-hour working day, which would become the central demand of a rising international labor movement. It was marked by a parade, speeches, along with music and eating. In 1884 the date was shifted to the first Monday of September, and Labor Day parades have been held on that date in New York ever since, with the practice rapidly spreading to other cities in the US. Ministers and priests were also encouraged to preach about the labor movement on the day before Labor Day, “Labor Sunday,” which is today, and I am following in this tradition.

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August 25, 2013,
by Gabriela Luschei

This is the poem that Tom Endress read during the service Gabriela offered at HUU.

The Cool Web, by Robert Graves

Children are dumb to say how hot the day is,
How hot the scent is of the summer rose,
How dreadful the black wastes of evening sky,
How dreadful the tall soldiers drumming by.

But we have speech, to chill the angry day,
And speech, to dull the rose’s cruel scent.
We spell away the overhanging night,
We spell away the soldiers and the fright.

There’s a cool web of language winds us in,
Retreat from too much joy or too much fear:
We grow sea-green at last and coldly die
In brininess and volubility.

But if we let our tongues lose self-possession,
Throwing off language and its watery clasp
Before our death, instead of when death comes,
Facing the wide glare of the children’s day,
Facing the rose, the dark sky and the drums,
We shall go mad no doubt and die that way.

August 11, 2013
by Tom Endress

Jeremiah 13

The reading this morning is from the book of Jeremiah in the Bible. Jeremiah is known as the “weeping prophet” of the Old Testament. Travel back over 2,600 years with me to listen to a prophet much despised in his time, although now he is held by many as the second greatest prophet in the Old Testament. He prophesized accurately the downfall of Jerusalem and the captivity of the Jews by Babylonia. The reading is from the King James Version, chapter 13 of Jeremiah, verses 1 through 10.

Jeremiah is speaking:

13 Thus saith the Lord unto me, Go and get thee a linen girdle, and put it upon thy loins, and put it not in water.

² So I got a girdle according to the word of the Lord, and put it on my loins.

³ And the word of the Lord came unto me the second time, saying,

⁴ Take the girdle that thou hast got, which is upon thy loins, and arise, go to Euphrates, and hide it there in a hole of the rock.

⁵ So I went, and hid it by Euphrates, as the Lord commanded me.

⁶ And it came to pass after many days, that the Lord said unto me, Arise, go to Euphrates, and take the girdle from thence, which I commanded thee to hide there.

⁷ Then I went to Euphrates, and digged, and took the girdle from the place where I had hid it: and, behold, the girdle was marred, it was profitable for nothing.

⁸ Then the word of the Lord came unto me, saying,

⁹ Thus saith the Lord, After this manner will I mar the pride of Judah, and the great pride of Jerusalem.

¹⁰ This evil people, which refuse to hear my words, which walk in the imagination of their heart, and walk after other gods, to serve them, and to worship them, shall even be as this girdle, which is good for nothing.

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C. David Pruett
Professor Emeritus
Department of Mathematics & Statistics
James Madison University

Presented at Harrisonburg Unitarian Universalists
June 23, 2013

Introduction

The Catholic theologian Thomas Berry–who preferred to be called an eco-theologian, or better yet a geologian—observed, “We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story. We are between stories.”

I think what Father Thomas meant was that the scientific discoveries over the past five centuries since Copernicus have eroded our ancient myths of meaning without providing us with palatable alternatives. This has forced what Ilya Prigogine, Nobel laureate in chemistry, has deemed a “tragic choice” between “an alienating science” and “an unscientific philosophy.” And in that either/or choice can be found the seeds of much human dysfunction.

Recognizing how crucial a viable story is if the people are to thrive, or at least survive, Berry dedicated his life to understanding and articulating the “new story,” a cosmic creation myth that weaves together modern scientific insights and ancient wisdom, with fidelity to both. He joined with cosmologist Brian Swimme to write The Universe Story in 1992. Reason and Wonder is my attempt to tell essentially the same story in a different voice.

One of the first to begin weaving the new story was Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Berry, who died in 2009, was widely recognized as Teilhard’s heir apparent. This highly educated audience is well aware of the scientific cornerstones of the new story: the theory of evolution and Big Bang cosmology. However, there is an aspect of the new story that is only beginning to emerge. I believe that the second quotation from Teilhard read earlier sheds light on one of the great mysteries of the universe. Laying open that mystery is the subject of today’s talk, which I title “On Evolution, Entropy, and Love: Three Facets of the Cosmos.”

[Read more…]

from Richard Carl Wolf
June 16, 2013

Many years before I actually left the Catholic Church, I gradually left the belief in God as a “Trinity of Persons”. Thanks to the native elders who adopted me and the scholars of phenomenology who taught me, I moved around ideas of God as exclusively a “someone”; a someone who required or even appreciated anything like a worship of “Him.”

Yet I still wonder how to translate Trinitarian God paradigms into my post-Christian, quasi-atheistic theology. While naming persons of God just doesn’t work for me anymore — too much like making God in human image – I still want to be able to enter into an attitude of prayer (a raising of the mind and heart) with the Catholic priest who comes to visit my husband, with school officials who begin meetings with Christian prayer language, and when twelve step meetings close with the Lord’s Prayer.

So while I’m hearing the words of the “Sign of the Cross,” or listening to people address a “Heavenly Father”, or pray “in Jesus’ name” – my mind translates the “persons” of God into qualities that a “mystery” of God might hold. I’ve turned “three Persons in one God” around to a contemplation – a consideration of the worth – of three God’s in one person – and that one person being me, you, and each “one” who moves around here.

For me Father God, the creator, is the simple and apparent fact of being – I am – and apparently you are, too. The second Person, the Son, the redeeming One, is potential, the power to keep on becoming. And the third Person, always the least like a person of all, is the fact of our breathing – our capacity to move on to something more – personal and communal actualization.

If I do something like “worship,” it’s when I recollect at least these three aspects of life’s Great Mystery. My Holy Trinity is fact of being, potential in being, and actualization of being, together with you and all my relations.

Here’s a humanist, or maybe a UU, sign of the cross: Mind knows the worth of being; Heart holds the worth of potential; arms make goodness real, performing worthy deeds.

UU Children’s Religious Education: Passport to the World of Faith
Julie Caran
5/26/13

Good morning. I want to start by addressing the title of this service. “UU Children’s Religious Education: Passport to the World of Faith.” In a way, saying that UU RE provides a passport to the world of faith implies that we are not part of that world. Is Unitarian Universalism a faith? I had difficulty answering that question until I became immersed in UU religious education.
When I began attending a UU church as a young adult in 1999, I, like many of you, had the experience of discovering a faith and a community that echoed my personal theology – my ideas about God – as well as my principles – the behaviors I saw as right and true. As with any new discovery, this one was exciting! I shared my interest with a protestant coworker and friend. Brian had a strong Christian faith, was very smart and had strong convictions, and was willing to agree to disagree when necessary. I enjoyed engaging in conversations with him about theology, faith, and religious institutions, but he simply could not wrap his mind around Unitarian Universalism.

“How can it be a church,” he asked me, “if you’re not all worshipping God together? Isn’t that the definition of church? A place of worship?”

I was stumped at the time. With Methodist, Jewish, Catholic, and Episcopal institutions in my background, I had been immersed in many religious communities, and they all had one common quality – the people gathered together to worship with those who shared their faith in God.

What is a church? Isn’t it a gathering of people of faith? The refrain of a song I learned in Sunday School circled through my brain: “I am the church, you are the church, we are the church together. All who follow Jesus all around the world – yes, we’re the church together!” My definition of church no longer seemed to fit, since I knew Jesus was not the primary focal point of my new faith community. In fact, neither was God.

Yet I did see TJMC, my new UU church, as a faith community. I recognized this immediately, but without a background in UU religious education, I lacked the vocabulary to explain this. [Read more…]

May 19, 2013 Sunday service
By Chris Edwards

Last Fall, in the UU World’s cover story, the Rev. Thandeka explored President Obama’s childhood attendance at a Unitarian Universalist Sunday school in Honolulu. She concluded by expressing regret that many who, like him, had early exposure to UU’ism have not remained in the fold.

Interestingly, Thandeka gave the first report I’d seen about the opposition portraying UU’ism as the culprit for Obama’s alleged leftist worldview. His other spiritual paths, real and fictitious, became bigger targets.

But the article wasn’t “political,” and what I want to say isn’t. The question I raised in a letter, published in UU World, is different: How much does UU attrition really matter?

A poll by the Pew Foundation says 20 percent of Americans identify themselves as “nones” – n.o.n.e.’s — having no religious affiliation.

A “None’s” world view may be anything, but why, really, does any free-thinking person need organized religion?
• Want spirituality? – Get up and look at a sunrise.
• Like-minded friends? You might find them almost anywhere.
• Or a chance to do acts of kindness, support charities, work for a better world? Ditto.

In Ray Bradbury’s “Martian Chronicles,” missionary priests arrive on Mars expecting to preach to the other colonizers from Earth. The “Martians” seem to have died out. But one priest finds that the lovely blue fire balloons, floating over the landscape, are intelligent beings, who even step in to save human lives. So the priests build an altar on a mountain, to bring in these balloons and save their souls. Eventually the balloons respond and say, thank you, but we don’t need this. They’re a remnant of old Martians who attained immortality. They have no conflicts, no sins. They’ve found peace.

Not a UU story, you say? But can we be sure the world needs us? [Read more…]