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 →The earth is forever turning. And we know this time of the receding sun is taking with it the year 2024. It happens at this latitude every year. Winter Solstice. The Cherokee call this time “Us-gi-yi”. The Time of the Snow Moon. From the dark times of the snow moon, it was understood the sun
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 →All ancient religions were once new. Ancient innovators of those once-new religions borrowed ideas from even older religions, blending old ideas with new ideas to create a new religion. Scholarly sleuthing exposes this ancient borrowing. For instance, the ancient religion of the Jews, when that religion was new, borrowed ideas from even older religions in
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 →Over a dozen gathered in the chapel after the service on the second Sunday of September. We began our exploration by looking at the creation stories in the first chapters of Genesis. As we examine the Bible, we will discover a very complex document written over a thousand years by many people. However, as received
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 →The questions I’m asked most frequently when people discover that I’m in the ordination process are simply: How does that work? or How long does that take? And the answer is that this process has a lot of steps! Compared to most other denominations, our process is definitely on the more involved end of the
Read More →When I was young, say going on 7 years, I remember my grandparents would ask me to remember “our ancestors — who are dancing for you.” I was told they had persisted in the times of danger, that they had walked in the good way. Their lives were a blessing on us who lived now.
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