Yes, for many of us, these are indeed more than challenging times. Some of you, I know, were already over an edge of one type or another in what you were handling in your personal lives when the larger national scene took on an ominous tone for policies that run counter to our Unitarian Universalist
Read More →November was an exceptional month for First Parish within the broader Canton community in giving public witness to our UU values and principles. As both Don Seaman and Diana Levy note in their reports elsewhere, we have consistently engaged with the broader town of Canton through our public speaker series as well as our ongoing
Read More →There’s a meme of unknown origins going around Facebook at this time, though attributed to first being seen by Andrieh Vitimus in a post by Winter Amanda. The graphic spoke to how we often prize some emotional states as ‘more spiritual’ and hence ‘correct’ than other emotional states. I’ll share the image here: On both
Read More →Today I consciously title my column “pastoral prophetic” rather than “prophetic pastoral.” We have moved through September with worship focused on how we keep our personal wells filled at 90% (our radical acts of pastoral self and communal care) before turning toward how we are called to serve our larger hugely troubled shared world (our
Read More →I was in a training for life coaches once upon a time many years ago when I first heard the metaphoric phrase “it’s a marathon, not a sprint – and runners train differently for marathons than they do for sprints.” The nature of these times in our larger world, and for some of us in
Read More →… And Where Do Our Ministers Go Over the Summer? Rev. Clyde and Rev. Michelle extend their thanks to each of you and to the Parish Committee for the work we have done together over this past year. We are grateful that the Parish Committee finds our ministry valuable and that we will be continuing
Read More →How closely do we pay attention to our bodies as energetic systems? I used to take my body very much for granted when I was younger – it seemed like my body was a perpetual reservoir of energy! I also lacked understanding of and/or sensitivity to others who didn’t seem to have the same reservoir
Read More →Rev. Clyde came to know and respect the work of the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute through my own engagement with them. For nearly 18 years, I led an urban youth ministry program known as Stand High/Stand United with the Unitarian Universalist Urban Ministry in Boston. I was a young white adult, only age 29,
Read More →A great many more than just one person has shared recently with me how disturbed they are by larger world events and how hard it is even to watch the news. Some of you tell me that the state of our larger shared world is making it difficult even to function at times, let alone
Read More →The holidays often can bring a range of mixed feelings for an equally broad range of reasons. This quote, attributed to a female author named Francis Ward Weller, floated through Facebook recently and struck a chord with me: “The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the
Read More →