by Bill Faw
July 2, 2023

INTRODUCTION

Happy Birthday, America. Happy 247^th Birthday. What kind of a nation are you? What kind of government do you have?

Let us begin to answer that by considering this distinction between “nation” and “government”.  The “nation” constitutes the land and the people, while the “government” is the network of administrative, legislative, and judicial forces which governs the nation.     

 Christian nationalists generally blur that distinction and suggest the double claim that we were founded as a Christian Nation with a Christian Government. Let us look at both parts of this claim.

First Claim: U.S. As a “Christian Nation”

In their claim of the U.S. being a Christian Nation, Christian Nationalists often state that the founders and the vast majority of people in the U.S. have been pious Christians from the beginning.      

They do not seem to realize – or they ignore — a fact that most of you know: that many of our founders, such as Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Franklin, were rational deists who were considered heretics by orthodox Christians, and who saw orthodox Christian beliefs as being dangerous superstitions; and that in 1776 as few as 4% to 30% of the people in the colonies were formal church members – the lowest level in American history, according to religious historian Martin Marty (1985).

There have been many cycles of growth and decline in Christian self-identification,      with a gradual growth up to the 1950s when about 90% of U.S.  adults self-identified as Christian – a level kept until the mid-1970s. But, since then, there has been a constant and sometimes rapid decline in Christian beliefs – the 90% has shrunk to 63%, with all signs of continual decline!      

Yet, despite all of these changes, even today’s 63% or so of Christians is a far higher percentage than that of any other religion (Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu – each 2% or less)      or of atheists plus agnostics (10% combined); and far more Christian self-identification than the 10% to 20% in most European countries. So, in a “majority rules” sense, we might be considered sort of a “Christian nation”.

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This poem. by Linda Dove, was part of the Tight Lines service by Richard Foust. It was read at the end of Richard’s talk.

How often nowadays do you look long at
that framed photo of your father on the dresser,
his young smile fixed on you and mother?
How often do you take time to imagine

his hand cradling you when you were born,
his hand tossing balls when you were ten,
his hand doing high-fives with you way back when,
his hand, as he aged, trembling, rough and worn?

Remember how he made you chop wood
for an hour when you skipped school or swore,
how he yelled Up to bed with you and don’t slam the door
when you fussed about your mother’s food.

Or maybe you recall the soft side of the man
the man who wept when the dog was lost,
the man who tossed and hugged your new born son
and told him his grandpa was his greatest fan.

And have you ever touched your father’s shoulder
and asked him what fatherhood has meant to him?
Have you ever sat down with him and told him
I love you and have loved you it seems for ever.

Linda Ankrah-Dove ©
June 2023

by Richard Foust
June 18, 2023

We have been fascinated with water and rivers since ancient times. D?gen Zenji, the Buddhist philosopher, made the following statement in the “Mountains and Waters Sutra” in 1240 A.D.

From ancient times wise people and sages have often lived near water. When they live near water, they catch fish, catch human beings, and catch the way. . . . Furthermore, there is catching the self, catching, catching, being caught by catching, and being caught by the way.

Most of us are familiar with the words of Norman Maclean, taken from the last paragraph of his novelette titled “A River Runs Through It.” Perhaps you have seen Robert Redford’s film of the same name.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a River runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters.

“A River Runs Through It” used flyfishing as a vehicle to tell a story about people. The stories focus on the events and the interactions between Norman Maclean, his brother Paul, and their father, a Presbyterian minister. Flyfishing for trout in the Big Blackfoot River was a passion with the Maclean men. The book begins with the following paragraph:

In our family, there was no clear line between religion and flyfishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ’s disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry fly fisherman.

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by Tom Hook
June 4, 2023
I am “delighted” to be with you again this beautiful Sunday morning! I’m always humbled by your gracious response to what this “seeker” has to say about our journey through this world. So, again, I say “Thank You”.

Let me begin with two questions:
How can we be joyful in a world, in a moment like this?
How can we NOT be joyful in a world, in a moment like this?

After all, we are alive today. We are taking each breath without the need to decide whether to do so or not. We awakened this morning to Mother Earth teeming with beauty and all forms of life. We live on what we, so far as we know, the only planet sustaining life through a series of evolutionary “perfect scenarios”! So many blessings, so many delights!

Much of what I have to say this morning is inspired from The New York Times Best Seller, “The Book of Delights” by Ross Gay. Ross Gay is an American poet, essayist, and professor who won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for his 2014 book, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, which was also a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry.

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by Sandy Greene
May 7, 2023

Opening – Martha Sider (Thomas Rhodes)      

“We come in a variety of colors, shapes, and sizes.
Some of us grow in bunches.
Some of us grow alone.
Some of us are cupped inward,
And some of us spread ourselves out wide.
Some of us are old and dried and tougher than we appear.
Some of us are still in bud.
Some of us grow low to the ground,
And some of us stretch toward the sun.
Some of us feel like weeds, sometimes.
Some of us carry seeds, sometimes.
Some of us are prickly, sometimes.
Some of us smell.
And all of us are beautiful.
What a bouquet of people we are!”

Welcome to all! Welcome to our spiritual garden where we are nourished by and find hope in our search for meaning, the support we offer to each other and our pursuit of justice.

Good morning from your rookie facilitator. I’m Sandy Greene, a new member here.

Thank you, Barbara, for helping to arrange all our beautiful flowers this morning for the 100^th Flower Communion.  And thank you Martha, for providing so many years of welcoming for this communion, and for helping me to bloom into a welcomer too.   Martha said, “Let the spirit guide you.”  Good advice for us all.

Chalice Lighting – Nancy Barbour

We light the chalice with the words of Jennifer McGlothin

“As the first hint of green begins to peek through the barren ground
As that little sprig grows into a healthy stem
As that stem grows into a stalk and forms a bud
As that bud slowly opens with each new day
To form a yellow daffodil
Let us be, like that first hint of green, renewed by the warm of the sun’s rays
And ready to emerge with a new energy, ready to face the day.
We light this chalice to bring a glimmer of that warmth into our space.”

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by Bill Faw
April 16, 2023

Part One: Theodore Parker, James Luther Adams and My Call to Ministry

As a Peace Studies major at Manchester College, I took my obligatory two religion courses and one psychology course, and yet, after we graduated in 1961, Martha and I moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, for me to attend Harvard Divinity School on a one-year financial scholarship, even though I had no plans of becoming a pastor.

But I enjoyed my first year so much that I went a second year, with no vocational focus until toward the end of that second year, during which time Martha and I were getting involved in the civil rights movement in Boston. Seeing pastors and churches becoming central to this exciting movement, I started to feel the call to inter-racial and inter-cultural pastoral ministry. That led me to take the third culminating year at Harvard Divinity, to receive what is now called a Master of Divinity – what a neat title!

This past December, I was looking through my files of sermons and sermon notes, which include a few college and seminary term papers which I thought might feed into sermons someday.  I discovered a 1964 (senior year) Harvard Divinity School term paper which I had forgotten I had written, titled “’Property’ in the thought of Theodore Parker” (one of the most influential Unitarian theologians of the 19^th century), for Ethics 177 (Christian Ethics) taught by James Luther Adams, who I recently discovered was one the most influential Unitarian theologians of the 20^th century.

I read a lot of Parker for that paper. I wrote that “I plowed through good portions of the 13 volumes by Parker in his Centenary Edition, American Unitarian Association, Boston, 1910.   (Pardon the uses of ‘men’ and ‘he’ in quotes by 1964 me and 1850 Parker.)

I ended my term paper with a 2-page epilogue that I titled “The Role of a Minister”. In it I wrote: “I am including this epilogue because in it I have a chance to talk about what will probably be found to be the most lasting effect of Parker on me. If he has inspired me in any way he has led me to a glimpse of how the Christian minister can talk to his people and the world.”

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By Bill Weech
April 2, 2023

What makes you happy?
What fulfills you?
What makes your life work living?

These are questions that are explored in the field of positive psychology, which is something I have been interested in for roughly two decades now. This morning I would like to share with you some of the things I have learned from this field, as well as some of the questions that I still have. (By the way, it is important right up front that I emphasize my utter lack of credentials or expertise in this area. Don’t confuse me with the other Bill, Bill Faw – he is the real psychologist! I am just an amateur wannabe.)

I’m guessing that the field of positive psychology is something that is familiar to many, if not most of you, but for any who might not be familiar with the term, let me offer a short introduction. Modern psychology – experimental psychology – is almost 200 years old. For much of its history, there have been two broad areas of focus. The first has been definition and measurement of key concepts: intelligence, cognition, perception, emotions, and personality, for example. The second focus of psychology has been mental illness – what is it, what causes it, how can we treat it, and so on. In 1980 the then-president of the American Psychological Association, Martin Seligman, proposed a new area of focus: the study of what makes life most worth living. Seligman coined the term “positive psychology,” and it stuck. Today we have more than 40 years of research in the field and that is what I want to talk about this morning.

Actually, I don’t want to do all the talking. I’d like to make this message at least a little bit interactive. So let me ask you a few questions. A central question in positive psychology is, what is happiness? Let me ask you: what is happiness, anyway? What is your definition of the term?

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