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Harrisonburg Unitarian Universalists - Announcements & Dialog

“IMAGINE THAT!” – accepting and embracing the radical imagination within.

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By Tom Hook
January 10, 2021

IMAGINE THAT! Can I? Can we?

When I chose this video for this morning, it was before the devastating attack on our Democracy this past Wednesday.

This video, titled “The Great Reversal” is based upon Isaiah 60. Isaiah wrote this for the Jewish exiles who are returning to Jerusalem after their captivity in Babylonia.

Cyrus of Persia, who had defeated the Babylonians, allowed the Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem and even provides funds to finance the rebuilding of the temple.

There must have been excitement and a glimmer (just a glimmer) of hope for the Jewish people. That they might imagine a brighter future given this new opportunity.

“Look up, Love, take your eyes off the ground, show your face!

Have the courage to see, not only the problems, but the one who remains with you holding the Light!

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RUBAIYAT FOR PLANET EARTH

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When young I travelled far abroad
around a globe not yet explored.
The Milky Way still pearled the sky
while bird-song piped the dawn and soared.

Now, years on, I seek to sanctify the tiny jewel of land I occupy.
In the years I’m graced here to stay this gift I seek to beautify.

I plant a blossom-tossed display,
tend my garden’s gems in May.
Young trees laced about the house for shade wave off heat and stormy spray.

My home is but a borrowed glint of jade. But will our human dollars soon degrade or save the brighter gem, our Planet,
a jewel we so heartlessly let fade?

Should we all hope forego, forget?
Or can we avert the dire threat
to all green life and loveliness,
grow bigger hearts with will and sweat?

Can we restore to shining liveliness Persephone, the banished goddess in hell’s jail, compelled to sacrifice her light through carelessnesss?

Will we myopic mortals only pay the price
when fires and floods from Hell spark our remorse? Will we then save Earth from dark demise,
restore the lovely Goddess to our paradise?

Linda Ankrah-Dove©.
From Borrowed Glint of Jade. Blackstone Press, 2019, p.67.
(Available from the author)

Reflections of an Apocaloptimist

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By Les Grady
December 27, 2020

As part of the service, Linda Dove read RUBAIYAT FOR PLANET EARTH.

So, what’s an apocaloptimist?  The urban dictionary definition is “someone who knows it’s all going to hell, but believes it’ll turn out OK,” with “it” being the country, the environment, humanity, or something else.  For me, it’s the climate.

I’m an engineer, and most engineers are, by nature, optimists.  We solve problems, which requires optimism.  If a problem is so large and complicated that it’s hard to be optimistic about its solution, we break it down into its component parts, for which solutions can be found, thereby retaining our optimism.

When I first became an advocate for solving the climate crisis, around 14 years ago, I was terribly naïve, because like Dr. Spock on Star Trek, I thought that logic and facts would rule the day.  That if I could explain the science in clear and logical terms, people would accept the fact that the developed world’s fossil-fuel driven economic system was causing the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere to increase, thereby causing Earth to warm.  Furthermore, that they would see the obvious solution – stop putting fossil CO2 into the atmosphere and deploy systems to take some of it back out.  Boy, was I deluded.

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What Does It Mean to be a People of Healing?

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By Tom Hook, November 8, 2020

Quote – bell hooks (author & social activist)

What Does It Mean to be a People of Healing? pdf format

Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.

Healing is an act of communion? Let’s ponder that a bit…. Here we are in the midst of a worldwide pandemic of Covid-19, racial and civil unrest, economic uncertainty, and just five days from one to the most vicious, divisive elections in history and we hear from bell hooks that healing is an act of communion?

I believe that for any of us to heal, or to aid in the healing of others, we must take a broad, holistic approach combining all the resources available to us.

Let’s face it….we are in time of great disruption, and without the inner work of contemplation (or mindfulness) and the outer work of action (in community) we stand the chance of seeing society, as we have known it, devolve into further chaos. We must heal in order to survive as a species and as a planet.

From the late Fr. Thomas Keating we hear these parting words: “The only path forward for the survival of our species and perhaps even our planet is a path of nonviolence, of contemplation and action prioritizing justice and solidarity, an affirmation of Oneness and the interconnectedness of all things, which science confirms, and spirituality has always known on its deepest level.”

So where might we begin to examine healing and being healed?

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Human Evolution – the future is now

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By Anna Karola
August 9, 2020

When I sat down yesterday to take one last look at this talk, I came across this quote from Hildegarde von Bingham. She was a poet, composer, mystic far ahead of her place and time. She was a Renaissance woman before the Renaissance, who led a monastery north of the Alps. In her holistic understanding of the universe, she expresses herself in one sentence and expresses my talk in this one sentence. Born in 1098, she predates me by over 1000 years and yet, I cannot improve upon what she said. In her understanding of the Universe, the inner shows itself in the outer, and the outer reflects the inner. The individual reflects the cosmos, and the cosmos reflects the individual. 

With this thought let us take a moment to be grateful for what connects us all, through the ages, our breath. Gently close your eyes and just breathe. What does this breath feel like? Is it smooth? Easily in, easily out? Does it have a bit of a catch, almost like a deeply hidden sob? Our breath holds our life. It holds our sorrows, our dreams, our life. It asks nothing of us, and it stays with us giving us life. It asks nothing of us, and it connects us to all life. The breath I breathe now passed through millions of other humans, animals, plants and rocks to get to me. Some call this breath God. It connects us to the Oneness of all life and reminds us that we are all interconnected.

My talk today is a summation of my own experiences leading to my philosophical view of Oneness. It is the belief that we are all expressions of a Source seeking to realize itself through our individual experiences. It is the belief that what we are seeing in the external world today is an expression of the Shadow side of each one of us. The Shadow contains significant power, it contains the creative potential within each of us for creation or de-creation or destruction. If this Shadow is not embraced with Love it becomes malevolent, seeking attention rather like a neglected and abused child. It is the result of all the hurts and traumas and experiences, we have had, which our ancestors have experienced and passed down to us, sometimes called karma.

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We’re abandoning Confederate symbols. Why support a Nazi one?

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By Chris Edwards
August, 2020

Recently in our congregation, I heard a speaker defending a symbol from a northern European Pagan tradition which, he regretted, had been co-opted by white supremacists. He meant the swastika.

A symbol means no more and no less than the way viewers see it. What if your delicious “talisman of good fortune” (as an online article identifies the swastika’s ancient meaning) was another’s poison — could you live side by side?

Several other UU’s that Sunday wanted to support the swastika as a symbol of Nature, and I grant that in ancient history, it meant something like that in some parts of the world. But those who revere the swastika for that meaning today, or have even heard it once had that meaning, form a minuscule number compared to the millions in Europe who, within living memory, were tortured and murdered under the banner of the swastika, a symbol that has been dubbed in a book and film, “The Twisted Cross.”

Germany now makes it a crime to publicly display the swastika. We Americans remain more free-for-all about our own ugly past — the Confederate battle flag and other memorabilia of that “lost cause,” the fight to maintain slavery.

Growing up in Virginia schools, I was mostly taught a warm, fuzzy view of the “Stars and Bars” flag of the Confederacy. We were taught the Civil War was not about slavery, and could be proudly approached like the way we cheered our home teams. Later, gradually, many, perhaps most, of us learned with shame what those flags and statues meant to the people of color who would avert their eyes while passing them in their hometowns – reminders of grandparents or other forebears having been raped, whipped or lynched with no redress.

UU’s would not expect Black people to “just get over” Confederate nostalgic symbolism (I hope) – but I’m a bit weirded out that a significant number of UU’s may have warm, fuzzy feelings about the swastika. How could believers in each person’s “inherent worth and dignity” justify telling Jews, and other victims of Nazism, to “just get over” disgust at that “sacred” swastika?

(Two personal disclosures: 1, I revere Nature, but cannot understand the linking of human-made, and in our lifetime deeply tainted, imagery to love of Nature. Why do we need such artifacts to feel spiritually moved by a sunrise or a bird’s song – or for that matter, to work for alleviating climate change?  2. A beloved member of my family has Jewish ancestors. Ultimately, all human beings are related, correct?)

The following informative article about the swastika concludes that its meaning has lost any worthwhile public use, but should be historically contextualized: https://theconversation.com/how-nazis-twisted-the-swastika-into-a-symbol-of-hate-83020. I agree with preserving such information in context, such as in a museum . . . and hope never to see either a swastika, or a Confederate flag, in Unitarian Universalist displays about our faith!

THE RELIGIOUS LEFT: Why Progressive Religion

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Bill Faw
June 14, 2020

On March 8, I was the last in-person speaker at this church. Sorry: I did not mean to shut you down!       

In the ‘lemonade out of lemons’ category: the shutdown has given me a chance to watch most of the HUU services on Zoom with Martha, and then watch my Bridgewater Church of the Brethren services later via YouTube.  This has allowed me to see some excellent sermons from both inspiring churches!

I ended my March 8 talk with the possibility that humans may have evolved the capacity of wonder and awe, meditation and worship, as the fittest way to communicate with God or some divine dimension of reality.        

Indeed, these last 3 months have tilted my balanced prayer & meditation sessions toward more earnest prayers – to a partially known and partially unknown God, seen through a glass dimly.

My talk today will be much more autobiographical and much less abstract than my last talk – or my two earlier talks.  

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