Does it feel like spring is never coming? This is the image that comes to my mind when I reflect on the feelings in my body around this particular winter (and perhaps it metaphorically relates to your feelings and experiences on levels even beyond this winter)! Yet we know spring is indeed just around the
Read More →This morning, as this winter newsletter is being released, I watched and listened to the last few moments of Renee Nicole Macklin Good’s life, as seen through the bodycam of the man who killed her. I had watched all the authentic analysis of news media sources demonstrating that the car was turned away and not
Read More →For our Blessing of the Animals service on the first Sunday in October, I preached on our evolutionary kinship with animals, particularly our fellow mammals, and the hope that this gives to me in these times. Cooperative moral behavior and empathy are natural to all mammals, as Frans de Waal discovered in his research–that is
Read More →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 values.
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
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