In about a month, I will be heading off to the Universalist Convocation in North Oxford, Ma.
(still not too late to join us there - see http://nmuc.org/Convo/ ).
However, I will be there a few days before and after the Convocation and am looking for things to do in central Ma (or somewhere else reachable from the North Oxford area). Since I will be busy from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon, Sunday Church visiting wont be one of the things - except for an evening service.....
any suggestions? (and yes, i am thinking of some of the typical UU tourist sites - but feel free to suggest them anyway).
sr
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Easter Week
On Palm Sunday I gave a sermon about Easter week, stopping with the story of the arrest of Jesus- with emphasis on the redemption of Peter. Peter, as many of you recall, denied Jesus three times that evening. Our small congregation also had communion, service taken mainly from the old Red Hymnal.
I wanted to go to Church today, Easter Sunday, so we drove 100 miles up to Newberry leaving a big carbon footprint at Clayton Memorial, Lynch's Woods, and various business on the way home. We also talked religion on the long drive back. The sermon and service was excellent, very inspiring - well worth the trip to me. I just wish I could go every Sunday (hey, at least at 200 miles round trip, I have a perfectly reasonable excuse). There was communion there as well, it was Easter Sunday after all. The fellowship was also nice.
I went out and mowed the lawn on Saturday -
a perfect chore for a day between a day of sorrow and and a day of joy.
- and a good sermon point for some year in the future - what do we do on the Saturday in-between?
But today is the day of joy - the time to the do the Snoopy happy dance -
- I personally feel that the Easter story is part of the bookends to the important messages in between the covers; but never mind that today, because it's time for celebrating - I can see the dove carrying the twig in it's beak - the eternal hope, the greater hope, the knowledge that there will be a new and glorious day someday. Something to give us hope. That's part of the joy of Easter ......
Happy Easter everybody!
I wanted to go to Church today, Easter Sunday, so we drove 100 miles up to Newberry leaving a big carbon footprint at Clayton Memorial, Lynch's Woods, and various business on the way home. We also talked religion on the long drive back. The sermon and service was excellent, very inspiring - well worth the trip to me. I just wish I could go every Sunday (hey, at least at 200 miles round trip, I have a perfectly reasonable excuse). There was communion there as well, it was Easter Sunday after all. The fellowship was also nice.
I went out and mowed the lawn on Saturday -
a perfect chore for a day between a day of sorrow and and a day of joy.
- and a good sermon point for some year in the future - what do we do on the Saturday in-between?
But today is the day of joy - the time to the do the Snoopy happy dance -
- I personally feel that the Easter story is part of the bookends to the important messages in between the covers; but never mind that today, because it's time for celebrating - I can see the dove carrying the twig in it's beak - the eternal hope, the greater hope, the knowledge that there will be a new and glorious day someday. Something to give us hope. That's part of the joy of Easter ......
Happy Easter everybody!
Saturday, March 08, 2008
who am I?
as I try to bring life back to a smidgen of normalcy, its therefore time to blog!
and what better place to start than by asking:
who am I?
is probably the fundamental question that we ask ourselves, the deep soul searching question for meaning and truth. Thanks to the internet, we can save a lot of time and energy and just take a quiz to find out where we stand!
Ok, I'm half joking - because using the non-Fox Belief-o-Matic, I see that I believe in the belo.
In all the years Ive taken this test, I've never scored below 95% in the UU category - Liberal Quakers and Reform Judaism are always in the top 20 percentile. Usually Neo Pagan is way down the list (wonder what i said this time), and Reform Judaism and Mahayana is sometimes in and sometimes out. Mainline Christianity is sometimes in, but out this week.
http://www.selectsmart.com/religion/
Unitarian Universalism 100%
Liberal Quakers 88%
Reform Judaism 83%
Neo Pagan 81%
Mahayana Buddhism 80%
We end up with two questions from this.
If I am usually 98-100% pure Unitarian Universalist,
can we therefore use me to help define what UU actually is??
and what do these 5-6 religious views have in common? Because by looking at the commonality, then I have good grounding at discovering what I believe; which may tell me who I am....
the old joke that it's the young folks who search for meaning in their lives, because the old folks are too busy trying to survive their lives has some element of truth. My search has no desperation, no angst, no pain - part of that may be because that I managed to deal with the pain, angst, etc many years ago, or it maybe that my life has been blessed, etc. It may even be that I'm kidding myself and that I will be dealing with an existentialist crisis at any moment - indeed thinking about it, that might be quite possible ... If I do, that will just be another piece in the question of who am I?...
and what better place to start than by asking:
who am I?
is probably the fundamental question that we ask ourselves, the deep soul searching question for meaning and truth. Thanks to the internet, we can save a lot of time and energy and just take a quiz to find out where we stand!
Ok, I'm half joking - because using the non-Fox Belief-o-Matic, I see that I believe in the belo.
In all the years Ive taken this test, I've never scored below 95% in the UU category - Liberal Quakers and Reform Judaism are always in the top 20 percentile. Usually Neo Pagan is way down the list (wonder what i said this time), and Reform Judaism and Mahayana is sometimes in and sometimes out. Mainline Christianity is sometimes in, but out this week.
http://www.selectsmart.com/religion/
Unitarian Universalism 100%
Liberal Quakers 88%
Reform Judaism 83%
Neo Pagan 81%
Mahayana Buddhism 80%
We end up with two questions from this.
If I am usually 98-100% pure Unitarian Universalist,
can we therefore use me to help define what UU actually is??
and what do these 5-6 religious views have in common? Because by looking at the commonality, then I have good grounding at discovering what I believe; which may tell me who I am....
the old joke that it's the young folks who search for meaning in their lives, because the old folks are too busy trying to survive their lives has some element of truth. My search has no desperation, no angst, no pain - part of that may be because that I managed to deal with the pain, angst, etc many years ago, or it maybe that my life has been blessed, etc. It may even be that I'm kidding myself and that I will be dealing with an existentialist crisis at any moment - indeed thinking about it, that might be quite possible ... If I do, that will just be another piece in the question of who am I?...
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