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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October 4^th, 2015 by Joni Grady

Welcome to another step in my attempt to make sense out of an increasingly irrational world. When I picked the title, Reality Check, I had a rather different talk envisioned, one dealing only with the painful bifurcation of my life and the lives of everyone involved to any extent with that most dreadful task, saving the only livable planet we seem to have. In one part of my life, the dreaming world, we try to remember to vacuum the rugs and take out the trash, put money into Sophie’s college savings and reserve a beach house for Christmas. In this world, which seems so familiar, so pleasant, a bad problem is not finding the type of tea I like at Martin’s or getting stuck at too many red lights. A serious issue means the AC has gone out and the mattress needs replacing. And a tragedy would of course be sickness or death amongst family or friends. In this world, mainstream media news means killings, wars, politicians and celebrities. Sometimes on the front page or at the top of the hour but usually hidden on the inside or never heard or shown at all are floods, heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and storms. These, thank goodness, are simply “acts of God” that come and go randomly around the world but, happily, rarely in the Peaceful Valley. (Or at least that’s what I thought until Tuesday when the dreaming world intersected the waking world and an unusual (new normal?) storm dropped 4 inches of rain and a lot of it ended up in my basement.) Both worlds were interrupted by an actual Reality check!!

Normally, in the other, equally real, weirding-climate, waking world that I also live in 24/7, the minor day-to-day issues revolve around making sure there are enough materials for tabling at the Farmers Market, getting out the word for various events and keeping the CAAV facebook page up-to-date. (CAAV, for those new to the area, is the Climate Action Alliance of the Valley.) The more complicated ones involve designing a display to draw people in at the International Festival when they really just want to eat and have fun, not be bothered by inconvenient truth, and planning next month’s educational forum (which is, in case you’re interested, the inside story on fighting western forest fires, from training to living in camp to the actual hard and very dirty work of controlling a wildfire, brought to us by Sophie’s dad Alan Williams.) And the news I read is all climate, all the time: some good, some bad, some optimistic, some terrifying.

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September 27, 2015
by J. Barkley Rosser, Jr.

“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”

“Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.”

Holy Bible, King James Version, Exodus 20: 3-5 (First three of the Ten Commandments)

“God does not forgive idolatry, but He forgives lesser offenses for whomever He wills. Anyone who sets up idols beside God, has forged a horrendous offense.”

Sacred Qur’an, Surah 4, Verse 48

(List of objects identified as being possible idols in different parts of the Qur’an include 1. calf, statues 2. other gods 3. Jesus 4. Jinns 5. children 6. humans 7 intercessors 8. Satan 9. property 10. dead prophets, messengers, saints 11. God’s servants 12. ego 13. religious sources other than God’s words 14. religious leaders and scholars 15. creating sects 16. dividing believers)

“Verily the most grievously tormented people amongs the denizens of Hell on the Day of Resurrection would the painters of pictures.”

Sahih Muslim (Hadith, alleged quotations of Prophet Muhammed), vol. 3, no. 5271, (p. 1161), on authority of Abu Mu’awiya.

Note that nowhere in either the Qur’an or the Hadith is making an image of the Prophet Muhammed specifically forbidden, and in the Qur’an the Prophet never called for the punishment of painters.

So today we have headlines about radical Islamists engaging in attacks and destruction of objects based on the ban on idolatry. In January, 12 people were killed at the offices of the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo by people protesting alleged disrespectful cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed. Last month (August) saw the destruction of the nearly 2,000 year old Temple of Bel at Palmyra, Syria, by members of Da’esh, ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State. They also killed 83 former Director of Antiquities there, Khalid al-Assad, who refused to reveal to them locations of hidden objects on the site. In March 2000, the Taliban in Afghanistan destroyed the world’s two largest statues of the Buddha at Bamiyan, which had been made in the 6^th century.

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This talk was facilitated by Richard Wolf. Both Richard (on line) and Linda Dove (in person) participated as HUU delegates in the 2015 UUA General Assembly in Portland, Oregon and the service reflected their experience this year.

by Linda A. Dove
August 30, 2015

At the UUA General Assembly this summer I was struck with how many good causes UUs are promoting, from food and shelter to immigrant and human rights. The mood of the entire GA was jubilant because the Supreme Court pronounced on same-sex marriage and Obamacare while we were there. The latest UU World shows us celebrating because these are reforms that UUs have been campaigning for over many years. I think Richard as our GA on-line delegate was also caught up by the mood?

The theme of social justice was paramount this year and so that’s my theme today. I was encouraged by what congregations are doing and especially by the leadership of the many millennials at GA.

But I needed a framework to understand how we UUs are approaching social justice. So I dug around to explore its roots. Now, I would need a tenured professorship to dig down to all the roots for you. But don’t worry. I won’t take that long. I’ll just expose a few of the tap roots.

Give me one word or so that comes to mind for you when Social Justice is mentioned?

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On May 15, 2015, three members of the HUU Fellowship shared their own spiritual journey with us.

Eileen Dight

I apologize in advance to anyone who is offended by my comments and I regret that so many aspects of my Spiritual Journey have been negative and controversial.

Growing up in a Catholic family, the nuns at school told us we were lucky to have been born in the One True Faith, and I enjoyed this certainty, but in my teens I was already uncomfortable about rigid dogma. Papal Infallibility did not fit with the history of the Borgias, and the Inquisition. When I was 15, it was announced that St Mary had ascended bodily into Heaven. I thought it inappropriate to require every Catholic to accept this. Fortunately, frank discussion was encouraged at home by my Father who was raised a Wesleyan.

My Mother, third generation from Irish Catholic immigrants, was taught in school that “For ever and ever your soul will burn in hell if you don’t go to Mass on Sundays.” I didn’t believe this was a Mortal Sin. Neither did I believe in Original Sin. We have enough sins of our own without inheriting them.

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