Presented by Beryl Lawson
November 30, 2008

Uncle Murray was a hobo. Well that’s not really true. He was a hobo but he wasn’t really my uncle. He was my mother’s boyfriend and I called him that even after they married  and until he became Grandpa Murray when the kids were born.

But he was a hobo during the depression.  He rode the rails mostly in search of a spiritual home. He said he tried everything in his spiritual journey: Christian science, vegetarianism and who knows what else.  One evening he found himself at a lecture in San Francisco.

After the lecture a man came up to him and handed him a card. It said “United Lodge of Theosophists.” The man indicated that Uncle Murray might be interested. He asked:  will I see you there. No, replied the man, this is for you.  Well to make a long story short he went, found what he was looking for and took the first box car home.

Theosophy is a philosophy which offers ancient teachings about the universe and ourselves in terms that the western world can understand. Its three fundamental propositions state that there is One Life, one inclusive Cause of all that exists, its nature far surpassing any human concept. That there is law in the universe which is cyclic and which pertains to all within the universe both animate and inanimate. and that all life is on a progressive march to greater and greater perfection. That there are those great beings such as Buddha, Jesus and Krishna, who, through great effort, have come to see the true nature of things and are willing to devote their efforts to helping humanity in its evolution. To be part of this great effort to help is a goal to be striven for. [Read more…]

Rev. Robert T. Hughes, one of our regular guest ministers presented Beyond Capitalism on November 16th 2008

I appreciate all of our UU Principles. For many years now I’ve been particularly concerned with economic justice. I see our 2nd Principle – “We the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association covenant to affirm and promote: Justice, equity and compassion in human relations.” As I’ve mentioned before, I think one must have economic justice as well as legal justice in order for society to function well.

A question is, “how do we have a just society in regard to economics?” I think that our current economic challenges provide us an opportunity to reflect on that.

I’ve recently found helpful some of the work done by Rudolf Steiner and people who have drawn on his insights. I’d like to share some of that thinking and see if it might be helpful to you.

You can download Beyond Capitalism as a pdf document.

by Julie and Kevin Caran
November 9, 2009

Opening Reading:

From There is No Me Without You by Melissa Faye Greene

Our chalice-lighting reading today is from the book There is No Me Without You, by Melissa Faye Green.

Dr. Rick Hodes is a white, Jewish, American medical director who has lived in Ethiopia for more than twenty years, serving the Ethiopian Jews, the Beta Israel.  Hodes has five Ethiopian adopted sons and half a dozen foster sons.

Dr. Hodes recently had a family meeting.  The boys had flopped over sofas and chairs in the living room and looked at him.

“Are we a real family?” he began.

“Yeah, Hodes, we’re a real family,” said Addisu Hodes, fifteen.  Addisu wore his long hair in cornrows and favored satin soccer jerseys since he was a soccer star in high school.

“Are we a happy family?” asked Hodes.

“Yeah, yeah, we’re a happy family,” said Mohammed.

“Do we have any family problems?” asked Hodes.

“Well, all right, yeah, there are some problems,” the boys agreed.

“Okay,” said Hodes.  “What’s our worst problem?”

The boys conferred briefly among themselves, after which Dejene removed his music earphones and announced, “Farts.” (373)

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An Adoption Journey

Julie:

A couple of years ago when we were fairly early in our adoption journey, Bernie invited us to present a service on adoption.  I suggested that she get back to us the following year, after the adoption had gone through.  [Insert laughter.]  When we started the process in August 2006, we were told that people like us, who were open to children of any race or sex and comfortable with mild disabilities, would likely be matched with an infant in less than a year.  When Bernie mentioned the service topic again in early 2008, I suggested that we wait until November, since it is National Adoption Month – and because surely we would have a baby by then [insert laughter] and would have the perspective of people who had been through the adoption process from start to finish.  Although we have had quite a journey so far, we are a long way from the finish line.  Throughout the process, we have kept in mind the very UU notion to appreciate the journey, not just the destination. [Read more…]

Presented by Elizabeth Ihle
19 October 2008

Well, Halloween has just about rolled around again, and I’ve bought Hershey’s miniature chocolates to give to my Trick or Treaters; that way I’ll have something good to eat if I don’t have many callers. It’s an appropriate time to talk about witches, and I am going to focus on the Salem witch trials, which caught my interest about a year ago.  I’d like to use what little about what I’ve learned to underscore the need for toleration and compassion in our daily lives.   Barbara Moore was kind enough to suggest the title for this service.  Witchcraft is divided into good and evil kinds, making it both sacred and profane.

I began thinking about this topic when my friend Ann was working at a college north of Boston and asked if I’d like to come along and explore the area while she worked.  Among the places I visited that week was Salem, Massachusetts, a location that, of course, piqued my interest because of the witch trials of just over three hundred years ago.

Witchcraft is often defined as practices that influence another’s mind, body, or property usually against his or her will or as practices that are believed by the person doing the labeling to undermine the religious or social order.[1] That would be black, profane, or evil witchcraft. The good stuff, the sacred, would be witchcraft that seeks to heal.  In a number of cultures these strains coexist.

On a separate note, we have witnessed the growth of Wicca over our lifetimes, and it’s even one of the spiritual streams of the Unitarian Universalist Association.  Wicca is too complex for me to get into this morning, but it is often associated with sacred witchcraft, and that’s a topic for another service.

I really didn’t know what to expect in Salem, but I was unprepared for a city with such a widespread and pervasive witch motif.  The logo of the Salem News, the local newspaper, sports a witch flying on a broom through a full moon.  There were plenty of ghost tours, the Spellbound Museum, the Salem Wax Museum, the Salem Witch Village, and numerous stores like Wicked Goods for Cool Stuff and The Broom Closet to supply all of a witch’s needs.  Apparently, the witch business thrives year round but goes into a real frenzy in late September and all of October.  Now, I’m not the Grinch Who Would Like to Steal Halloween, but I was quite frankly appalled by the commercialization of the Salem Witch Trails. [Read more…]

by Elizabeth Ihle
September 7, 2008

When I volunteered to do this service, I didn’t realize what I was getting into.  Yes, the end of our mortgages and coming together as a congregation are wonderful things, but what a responsibility to say something memorable and useful to the congregation, especially when we’ve invited former members and friends to join with us this morning!!!  Welcome again to everyone!

Let me say at the outset that what I say is entirely mine.  I’ll be naming names a bit this morning, and if I’ve omitted someone important it’s pure oversight or ignorance on my part, and I’ll ask forgiveness ahead of time.  I’ll offer a couple ideas for our future too, and again it’s me talking.  I’m not someone else’s mouthpiece.

Today is our in-gathering, our homecoming, our celebration of being a congregation again as many of us scattered for summer vacations and other travels and as we start our new HUU year.     Waters ebb and flow, and I think this congregation does as well.  Some of us move away for a while and then come back.  We welcome all to our service this morning and hope for your return.

We are using the symbols of fire and water to illustrate the power of our communal lives.  During the service itself, we are going to do an ingathering ritual in which we’ll give everyone a chance to pour water from summer travels into a common bowl as a symbol of showing how individual lives unite after being apart for the summer and the power of uniting our individual offerings to accomplish what we couldn’t have singly. If you forgot to bring your own wter, we have a vase of generic travel water for you to use.  Our mortgage burning, outside as the service closes, will symbolize fire. [Read more…]

Let America Be America Again
Presented by Robin McNallie and Chris Edwards
July 6, 2008

Readings:

This reading is from the poem by Langston Hughes:

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed–
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above. . .

From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright © 1994 the Estate of Langston Hughes.

This is from the poem by Emma Lazarus, inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
— Emma Lazarus

…It never was America to me. [Read more…]

Letting Go
by Tom Endress
June 23, 2008

This talk is the second in a series of a talk I gave on December 2 of last year. That talk dealt with an intense experience I went through in May of 1958. That incident might be called many things, a spiritual awakening, a little satori, an epiphany, grace, or just a strong dose of feeling good. Last May 18 was the 50th anniversary of that event. The original intention of this talk was to compare that moment with similar events in the lives of other people, but with the unique difference that each of these events were preceded by immensely different circumstances than those I faced on that evening in 1958. There were many from which to choose but I finally narrowed it down to three divergent events- mine, which occurred during overwhelming stress, that of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor which occurred during a stroke, and, should I dare be so presumptive, with that of Siddhartha, which occurred after years of intense spiritual seeking.

I thought the preparation for my first talk was difficult. At that time I suffered through a minimum of 15 revisions with countless tweakings in-between. However, this second talk is the end product of having written11 entirely different talks. That is, I wrote 10 completely different presentations, not just versions of a particular talk, before arriving at this one. Soon it became obvious that there is an awful lot I wanted to share but just as obviously I knew I couldn’t share it all. And for the eleventh time I asked myself what on earth it was it that I wanted to try to present in 20 minutes or so. [Read more…]