I write this report while attending my first UU General Assembly a few days shy of beginning my term as president of the TJMC Board of Trustees. It’s been an interesting week of inspiring services, making some new friends, and installing a new UUA president after a tumultuous three months...
Whether we’re thinking about our current national political and cultural realities, the mood of our Association, recent events in our city, or even the state of things within our own congregation, many of us are decrying what seems to be a deepening sense of division, of separation. The classic question,...
There has been a lot of discussion, and some confusion, about what is happening tomorrow to respond to the presence of the Klan in our city. There are lists of choices for you to consider. Some have seen this as a sign of disunity, a disturbing demonstration of our inability...
I carry a collection of photographs on this iPad. Some are of my kids. (141, actually … pictures, not kids!) Just edging them out – at 156 pictures – is a collection I call “icons.” These are images of people – real and imaginary – who in one way or...
Summer of 2017: This is the official statement of the Charlottesville Clergy Collective, outlining the response(s) planned by many of the faith communities in C’ville. (The list of signatories is at the end.) Over the next several days I will post more information, both practical and theological. The Charlottesville Clergy Collective is...
In perhaps one of her most well-known poems, Emily Dickenson wrote of hope: Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all … My mother had a friend named Pauli Murray. I’ve mentioned her before, and...
Yesterday morning I joined with a group of people in a park in downtown Charlottesville. The park has been getting a lot of attention lately, both locally and in the national media, because of an effort to remove the statue of Robert E. Lee which stands so prominently in its...
June Art Show-Sara Gondwe (Opening-June 4th after church) Born in 1949 in Beaver Dam, WI, Ms. Gondwe earned a B.A. degree in Philosophy and a Masters degree in Education. This earned her a career as a Reading Specialist for students in kindergarten through 12th grades. She spearheaded both the Gettysburg...
Yesterday I promised that I would return to one of the most frequent responses people who identify as white have to the use of the term “White Supremacy” as the way to describe the dominant culture in which we, to borrow a phrase, “live, and move, and have our being.’...
During the years I served the First Universalist Church of Yarmouth, Maine, I regularly had lunch with a colleague from the United Church of Christ congregation across the street. I don’t remember what prompted this particular exchange, but Peter once made the observation that Unitarian Universalists, as a whole, were...