SERMONS

What Is Prayer?

Rev. Amy Russell

2010-06-20 - What is Prayer?
Rev. Amy Russell
June 20, 2010

Sometimes there are moments of grace in your life that you don't forget. Moments when you interact with the universe in a way that you can't explain but that you feel like you received what you need in an inexplicable way.

One of these moments ...

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Covenanting Together

Rev. Amy Russell

2010-06-13 - We come from good stock. Our theological forebears are the Puritans who came to this country for religious freedom. Now when you think about our very flexible attitude toward worship and the five or six hours of sitting on hard benches wearing those funny hats and studying the Bible worship of th...

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Hearts and Flowers

Rev. Amy Russell

2010-06-06 - Hearts and flowers. These are typically thought of as indications of romantic love. Sixteen year olds who are falling into their first love draw fancy hearts and decorative flowers all over their notebooks. On Valentine’s Day, we might exchange cards with hearts and flowers drawn on them. But I ...

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Morality Without God

Rev. Amy Russell

2010-05-02 - A short video clip produced by the web site “The Thinking Atheist” that is very popular on You Tube starts with this question: “So, your an atheist? Answer this question, Where do your morals come from? If you don't believe in God. After all, morality comes from God, Right? It then asks if this...

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Passover: A Family Ritual

Rev. Amy Russell

2010-04-11 - Passover: A Family Ritual
April 11, 2010
Rev. Amy Russell

I remember attending my first Seder dinner during college, at a friend's family's house. I had known nothing about the tradition and the family enjoyed greatly filling me in on the various special foods and traditions that made a seder ...

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Finding Salvation - Easter Sunday

Rev. Amy Russell

2010-04-04 - The puzzling story about a Father God who gave his permission for his son to be executed on a cross as payment for the sins of humankind has troubled me all my life. This God that I was taught was loving and forgiving being the architect of a violent and cruel death for his son made no sense to me....

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Above Us Only Sky

Mike O'Brien

2010-03-14 - Several months ago I read an editorial by New York Times columnist Ross Douthat titled Heaven and Nature. Douthat had just seen the new blockbuster movie Avatar and he claimed that it has a deep religious meaning. He went on to explain that the religion that it espouses is pantheism and that Holly...

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Women and Violence

Rev. Amy Russell & Corrinne Woods

2010-03-07 - In reading and hearing about this issue as a woman, I found myself confronting some basic fears within myself. The issue about violence against women is so systemically endemic in some cultures and so seemingly opposed to our Western values that it makes me feel sick even thinking about it. I hes...

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How to Live, How to Die

Rev. Amy Russell

2010-02-21 - A letter to God from a six year old girl whose name is Jane, went like this:
Dear God,
Instead of letting people die and having to make new ones,
Why don't you just keep the ones you got now?
Jane

I happen to agree with her.

When I realized that the title of this sermon, How to Live, How ...

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Standing on the Side of Love

Rev. Amy Russell

2010-02-14 - My grandmother was not what you would call a liberal activist. In fact, if you had met her, you probably wouldn't have called her liberal at all. She considered herself a “lady” with all the connotations of that word from her time period. Being a lady meant that when she went out, she always wore...

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Soul, Spirit, Mind

Rev. Amy Russell

2010-01-31 - My husband, Bill, and I spent a wonderful Christmas with my family in Virginia, and then went to DC to spend another couple of nights with my parents. On our last night, we had the most wonderful dinner with them, talking and laughing about current events and remembering the highlights of our famil...

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The Despondent Winter

Rev. Amy Russell & Deb Miyake

2009-12-20 - Winter: a time of stillness, dark, and cold. The earth sleeps. No longer nourished by the sun’s warmth, the plants go dormant and quietly await the return of spring. Animals hibernate. Nature slows down and rests in preparation for a new cycle of life.

The long, cold, dark days invite us to join ...

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A New Humanism

Rev. Amy Russell

2009-12-13 - When I was first introduced to Humanism in this Fellowship many years ago, I was impressed by the idea that a movement coming out of religious ideas could be based around atheism. As I learned more, I learned that Humanism was not really about not believing in God, but about believing in humanity. ...

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God, Spirit or Something Else

Rev. Amy Russell

2009-12-06 - When I was growing up, I attended a little white steepled Episcopal church in Bethesda, MD. I remember holding my older sister’s hand and coming into that church wearing my blue starchy church dress and my white gloves, feeling as my family sat together in the wooden pews that this was a safe place...

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Why It Matters

Rev. Amy Russell

2009-11-08 - I wonder how many of you remember the first time you had an experience with seeing people who did not live like you. An eye opening, awakening experience when you saw that not everyone had a nice place to live, a meal on the table at dinner time, or a person that they could trust to take care of th...

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Life After Death?

Rev. Amy Russell

2009-11-01 - “When I reach my journey's end, who will sing one song for me?”

This line from an old folk song was sung by the UU minister at the memorial service for my brother-in-law that I attended two weekends ago in Philadelphia.

When you attend the memorial service of someone you love, you are grievi...

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Celebration of Sukkot

Rev. Amy Russell

2009-10-04 - Try to imagine yourself as a Jew at the time of Moses. You grew up a slave in Egypt, you worked for Egyptians day and night, cooking their food, cleaning their villas. And then one day, there is a messenger from the Jewish underground, you are told that you are going to escape, to prepare to leave...

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The Spiritual Economic Crisis

Rev. Amy Russell

2009-09-06 - Over the past year, our country has been experiencing an economic recession characterized as the worst since the Great Depression. We all know people who have lost jobs, who are fearful of losing their jobs, who have lost their houses, or who fear they just can’t make their bills this month and may ...

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Faith of Inclusion

Rev. Amy Russell

2009-08-16 - Feeling left out. Isn’t that about the most painful feeling we have as human beings? And we’ve all felt it in our lives at various times. How many of us have painful memories of school yards and corridors where in overhearing whispered conversations about parties or outings, you knew that you wer...

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Rev. Amy Russell

Life Support for Dayton?

2009-08-02 - Coming back to Dayton after a few weeks elsewhere, I realized something that’s been sort of brewing inside of me for the past two years since I returned to Dayton. I realized that Dayton is home for me. You know that feeling you get when you’re driving back here after a time away and you see the e...

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For the Story

Elizabeth Nguyen

2009-07-12 - When I heard Rich Robinson speak a couple weeks ago he talked about preaching a sermon that the writer needs to hear. This is definitely one of those.

Get up and shake the glitter off your clothes now/That's what you get for waking up in Vegas. This is actually a pretty crappy song in my opinion...

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Secularism: What's Missing

Rev. Amy Russell

2009-06-14 - Secularism: What’s Missing
Rev. Amy Russell
June 13, 2009

Some would say we in the West live in a secular age. This would be described as a time when people’s assumptions about life are based on rational, scientific observations rather than on religious dogma. Now that is despite the fact tha...

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Honoring Our Grief

Rev. Amy Russell

2009-05-31 - They came that same day. The tree trimmers. I’d been trying to get a hold of a tree company to trim some dead branches high up in one of our elms. No one had returned the call. So, when this man with his baseball cap and green polo shirt came to our door asking gruffly if we had any trees to be ...

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Inherent Worth & Shadow Side

Rev. Amy Russell

2009-05-17 - Inherent Worth and Shadow Side
Rev. Amy Russell
May 17, 2009
Have you ever felt that you didn’t recognize yourself when certain dark aspects of your personality reared their ugly heads? A time when you became particularly aggressive, hostile, or controlling? And then in seeing yourself this way...

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Radical Hospitality

Rev. Amy Russell

2009-05-03 - Radical Hospitality
May 3, 2009
Rev. Amy Russell

The monks of the St. Benedict order live by a spiritual ethos that teaches them to listen and be open to the spiritual wisdom that the world offers them. This means that they practice a hospitality toward strangers that might seem odd to us. Th...

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Do UUs Practice Secular Dogma?

Jack Fenic

2009-04-26 - Do UU’s Practice Secular Dogma?

John (Jack) Fenic




Over thirty years ago, my wife announced one weekday evening that, come the following Sunday, we were going to attend the Sunday Service at First Unitarian Church on Salem Avenue. We had been talking about this for several months, but she...

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Eating Ethically

Rev. Amy Russell

2009-04-19 - Eating Ethically
Rev. Amy Russell
April 19, 2009
When I was growing up, every summer my parents would pack up the five of us kids into the Ford station wagon and drive from wherever we lived at the time to my grandfather’s farm in Dayton. His farm was right here in Centerville, off of Lebanon Pi...

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Jesus: A Universalist?

Rev. Amy Russell

2009-04-12 - Jesus: A Universalist?
Rev. Amy Russell
April 12, 2009

The image that I was taught about Jesus in Sunday school was a young man with blond hair, blue eyes, flowing robes. A man who was compassionate but bold, a man who was sure of himself and sure that he knew what was right and what was wrong...

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Tikkun Olam: Repairing the World

Rev. Amy Russell

2009-04-05 - In the sixteenth century, Issac Luria, a mystical Jewish Kabbahlist, imagined the world as a pottery vessel that God had made to hold his divine light and energy. As he poured this holy light into the vessel of the world, the vessel being too fragile broke and the myriad divine sparks of God’s incr...

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Gifts of the Spirit

Rev. Amy Russell

2009-03-22 - Several years ago, I went through that onerous process of helping my son apply to colleges. After he had sent in all his applications, then began the waiting. You’re all familiar with that horrible time between January and April in that Senior year of high school, where everyday when your child ge...

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Living Alive!

Rev. Amy Russell

2009-02-08 - Living Alive!
February 8, 2009
Rev. Amy Russell
When I was about twelve years old, I had two close friends who were both bookish and shy, like me. We enjoyed talking about books and ideas and things we were discovering about life. Being twelve is a time when you are becoming who you are going t...

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Gandhi's Life As His Message

Rev. Amy Russell

2009-02-01 - “My Life is My Message”
February 1, 2009
Rev. Amy Russell
Mohandas Gandhi, who was given the honorary title “Mohatma” or “Great Soul” was a reformer and activist who based his actions on a deep understanding of the teachings of both Christianity and Hinduism. He studied both the Christian bible ...

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The Beloved Community

Rev. Amy Russell

2009-01-18 - The Beloved Community
Rev. Amy Russell
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. understood the phrase from the Bible, “Love thy enemies” better than most humans can. He exemplified this love by teaching non-violent resistance to oppression. Now, most of us don’t have “enemies” or people that hate us. But Ma...

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Finding Your Ministry

Rev. Amy Russell

2009-01-11 - Finding Your Ministry
January 11, 2009
Rev. Amy Russell
Many of you have memories like I do of times in our youth when we felt so passionately about the difficulties in the world, that we felt like we had to do something about it. When I was in college, it was the Vietnam War that disrupted our ...

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Being Intentional

Rev. Amy Russell

2009-01-04 - Being Intentional
January 4, 2009
Rev. Amy Russell
All right, I might as well admit it. I know that some of you have been suspecting me all along, but I’m going to come out and tell you. I watch Oprah from time to time. Not only that. I actually enjoy it and believe some of that New Age stuff...

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Welcoming the Stranger

Rev. Amy Russell

2008-12-24 - The Christmas story is a story about welcoming a stranger. The Inn was full and Mary and Joseph were exhausted from their journey. Mary was pregnant and was ready to give birth. They had to find a place to rest. They found the stable behind the inn and huddled together there with the animals as ...

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Finding Light Within the Darkness

Rev. Amy Russell

2008-12-21 -
The light at this time of the winter is so dim, so weak, it’s hard to get out of bed in the morning when it’s still dark. The lack of light can often pull some of us into a kind of down time. Some even suffer from seasonal affective disorder with the darker days. But I think we all feel the les...

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Laughing At Ourselves

Rev. Amy Russell

2008-11-30 - Laughing at Ourselves
Rev. Amy Russell
November 30, 2008
Have you ever gone on a business trip, opened your suitcase at the hotel, only to find that you brought one black shoe and one brown shoe?
I have.
Have you ever shown up at a friend’s house for dinner right at 6:30 when you were invited a...

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Building Spiritual Relationships

Rev. Amy Russell

2008-11-09 - Have you ever had a friend or family member who has said to you something like, “You know your eyes are sparkling and your feet are bouncing. What’s going on with you?”

Or they might say this, “Your voice sounds flat. Are you feeling down? What are you doing to take care of yourself?”

Or do...

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Moral Imperatives for Today's World

Rev. Amy Russell

2008-11-02 - In this exciting and historic election, we hear echoes in the campaign rhetoric about issues that some would define as moral imperatives. The question I would ask, to us as religious liberals, is “What are our moral imperatives?” How do we examine our faith and decide what values affect our politic...

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For I Was Hungry and You Fed Me

Rev. Amy Russell

2008-10-26 - I read in the paper yesterday about a minister who happened to be driving his car down a street in a neighborhood where he used to live but where he didn’t usually find occasion to visit. He noticed a couple of young teenagers huddled together and staring down at something in the street. He immedi...

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Re-Covenanting with Ourselves: A Rosh Hashanah Tradition

Rev. Amy Russell

2008-10-05 - The Hebrew word “tshoovah” means repentence but it also means, returning home or reuniting with God. The Jewish High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are about returning to ourselves, going back to the source of what made us and re-becoming who we want to be.

Rosh Hashanah was celebra...

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Exploring Our Anger

Rev. Amy Russell

2008-09-14 - Anger is an emotion that we don’t like to talk about. Polite people don’t show their anger and so when we are angry a typical response is to deny it, suppress it, swallow it, turn it into something else, like tears or laughter. Or some express it in ways that hurt others and themselves - in destruct...

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In Her Image, In His Image

Rev. Amy Russell

2008-08-24 - Emily was eight years old when she started Sunday school at the Presbyterian church at the corner of her street. She liked to dress up in her pretty blue party dress with the white starched collar that her mother let her wear to church. She felt pretty and special going to church. But she also fe...

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Eco-Justice: What is it and What can We do about it?

Rev. Amy Russell

2008-08-17 - A few years ago, I had the pleasure of performing a wedding for a family member at her grandfather’s estate in Lexington, KY. The beautiful estate had been in their family since the 1780’s. This woman, Garrett, my cousin’s daughter, is a very unusual young lady who at the time had just finished a m...

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A Look at Transcendentalism

Rev. Amy Russell

2008-08-10 - “Our Faith comes in moments…” So said Emerson, speaking of moments of direct unmediated experience in which the human soul feels its place inextricably in the universe. Emerson, as one of the founders of the “transcendentalist” school of thought believed that one’s religious nature was an inherent...

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What is Our Ministry?

Rev. Amy Russell

2008-08-03 - We come together here every Sunday morning looking into each faces and seeing something that looks like love, something that looks like support, something that reminds us of the deep values we share. That something brings us back here every Sunday. During the week, we also gather. We work together...

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Flower Communion: Unique Gifts

Rev. Amy Russell

2008-05-11 - When I was a little girl growing up outside of Washington DC, I lived in a wonderful neighborhood where there were always plenty of kids near my age running around. We gathered in the street for games of Kick the Can or Mother May I where we commandeered the street and cast nasty glances at the cars...

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Humanism

Rev. Amy Russell

2008-05-04 - This spring, a group of us participated in an Adult RE discussion called “The Four Faiths”. It’s a curriculum based on a book by a UU minister, Fred Campbell, Religious Integrity. The book describes all faith as falling into four basic categories, Humanism, Theism, Mysticism, and Naturalism. ...

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Loving Yourself

Rev. Amy Russell

2008-04-29 - Loving Yourself

April 6th, 2008

Rev. Amy Russell

From the first day we’re born, we are interacting with the world around us, taking in and observing how the people around us treat us. We notice when someone smiles at us. We observe how it feels when someone ignores us. As children, we hear...

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The Wisdom of Generosity

Rev. Amy Russell

2008-04-27 - Every religious tradition has stories of people who had little but gave it away to someone else who needed it more. The story about the widow’s mite in the New Testament tells of a poor widow who gives the only money she has which is two mites, the equivalent of two pennies, to help others who have ...

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Self-Love

Deb Miyake

2008-04-06 - In her book, Reflections of Love, Marianne Williamson writes:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulo...

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Born Again in Every Moment

Rev. Amy Russell

2008-03-23 - The story of Easter is a story of re-birth, of beginning again. This man called Jesus had the courage to speak about the love of God as a loving, forgiving God. This was a new kind of God for the Jews to hear about. Jesus taught that God expected humans to love each other as they would like to be lo...

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Religious Tolerance vs. Religious Respect

Rev. Amy Russell

2008-02-03 - When I was in my early twenties and newly married, my husband and I were practicing Buddhists. We were living in Boston in Jamaica Plain, a working class neighborhood at the end of the Green Line subway. We were renting the first floor of a house from a nice Italian woman who lived upstairs. We were...

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When Life Is Messy

Rev. Amy Russell

2008-01-13 - (Title taken from Richard Gilbert’s poem by the same name)

My Christmas this year wasn’t so great. I think I warned you all that Christmas often isn’t what we expect. Not that any of you needed to be told that. Even when families like mine are viewed by others as sort of like the Waltons—...

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Letting Go and Moving On

Rev. Amy Russell

2008-01-06 - Having moved between cities about eight times in my life, I am very familiar with the ritual of cleaning out your stuff before you move all your wordly goods across the country. Now when I was young and my dad was working for a major corporation, whenever we moved, there was a paid moving company wh...

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Christmas Blues, Christmas Bliss

Rev. Amy Russell

2007-12-23 - Christmas, Hanukah, Solstice. These are the holidays that are celebrated at this darkest time of the year. The ancient cultures that created these times of celebration saw a need in the darkest time to bring light into their darkness by creating festivals of light. Those of us who live in cold clima...

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Meditation for Everyday Life

Rev. Amy Russell

2007-12-16 - Knock upon yourself as upon a door, and walk upon yourself as on a straight road. For if you walk on that path, you cannot go astray; and when you knock on that door, what you open for yourself shall open.

Teaching of Silvanus

If we think about a typical day in our lives, it tells us a l...

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Rethinking the Holidays

Mike O'Brien

2007-12-09 - I am a Unitarian Universalist. Like many UUs, I am charmed, ambivalent, and angry at Christmas time. As we all know, Unitarian Universalism grew out of Christianity. Indeed, a significant number of us UUs embrace the symbolism and trappings of Christianity. So, why do so many of us have a chip on ou...

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Forgiveness: Is it Possible or Necessary?

Rev. Amy Russell

2007-11-11 - For many of us, forgiveness is a Christian concept. In the New Testament, there are several mentions of the need for forgiveness. Jesus mentions that before one places one’s gift upon the altar, one should reconcile with any one for whom one feels anger. He also tells us that we should forgive other...

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God is in the Process

Rev. Amy Russell

2007-11-04 - What if you were an alien just arriving on Earth and you had not received any special training in advance about the culture on Earth. Therefore, you had never heard of the concept of “God” that this planet Earth was so obsessed with. So, when these Earth creatures started talking about this God thin...

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Is There Freedom in Faith?

Rev. Amy Russell

2007-10-07 - My favorite walk lately is walking around this small reservoir near my house. The other day as I was walking my big furry dog, Sam, we saw some geese gliding by on the lake. Well, we didn’t see them at first, we heard them. They saw us or smelled us, and particularly they noticed Sam, I think, for t...

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Freedom vs. Responsibility

Rev. Amy Russell

2007-09-23 - When you talk to people with different political and economic theories about the definition of freedom, you get different answers. Some people think that freedom from government interference in the marketplace is going to provide people with the most freedom. Others think that providing citizens wit...

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Is Unitarian Universalism Enough?

Rev. Amy Russell

2007-08-26 - I am often asked by people who subscribe to other faith traditions, what is Unitarian Universalism about? And when I describe our tradition as creedless, as a faith where each person is on their own spiritual quest but where we also share our spiritual questions with each other, people often ask, “I...

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Roots and Branches

Rev. Amy Russell

2007-08-19 - Opening Words:

Like the trees, we are created to be firmly planted in the ground of our being,

The source of all, Life,

And like the branches, we are created to extend towards all the gifts of life- each other.

- adapted from Rev. Douglas Fisher

Moving across country three times while gro...

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Father's Day Remarks

Martha Hodges

2007-06-17 - I was a child of the fifties and sixties – the days of “Father Knows Best” and “Ozzie and Harriet” – the television families in which the father came home from the office, hung up his hat – remember hats? – and called out, “Honey, I’m home.” The fictional homes where mom came out of the kitchen, ...

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Engaging Our Seventh Principle: The Tangled Web

Martha Hodges

2007-06-10 - To feel lonely – as we all feel lonely from time to time, no matter how many people may surround us – this is not necessarily a bad thing. Our culture teaches us that, to be happy, we must be in constant communication with other people, constantly occupied, constantly distracted from this experience...

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Embracing the Sixth Principle: Circling the Wagons

Martha Hodges

2007-06-03 - Those of you who are my age or older remember the heyday of the TV Western. In those less politically sensitive times, it was the good guys vs. the bad guys. Shows like Wagon Train depicted the valiant white settlers struggling westward in their Conestoga wagons, looking over their shoulders for hos...

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Embracing Our Fifth Principle: The Good Fight

Martha Hodges

2007-05-27 - “We affirm and promote the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large”. How did this one make it into our Principles? First of all, it seems like kind of a no-brainer. Who doesn’t affirm following one’s conscience – acting morally and e...

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Minister's Reflection on Mother's Day

Martha Hodges

2007-05-13 - Mother’s Day isn’t an easy holiday for me, but not for the reasons you might think. It’s not because I don’t have children of my own, and not because I had a difficult relationship with my mother. (My mother was an unusual and complicated person – someone who was often hard to get along with – but I...

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Peaks and Vales

Brad Kochunas

2007-03-11 - Good Morning!

I take as my title for this occasion “Peaks and Vales” after an essay by archetypal theorist, James Hillman, in which he distinguishes the shadings between spirit and soul. He makes the argument that Spirit has quick, rising, detached, upward imagery associated with it while soul is ...

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Engaging our Fourth Principle: The Free and Responsible Search for Truth and Meaning

Martha Hodges

2007-02-04 - We covenant to affirm and promote a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.

If there is one sentence that explains what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist, this one, our fourth principle, may be it. Our commitment as UUs is not to a creed, a set of beliefs, but rather, to a proces...

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Turning the Other Cheek

Martha Hodges

2007-01-14 - Reading: Sermon on the Plain in the Gospel of Luke 6:27-31

“But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do...

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Epiphanies and the Eleven O'Clock Number

Martha Hodges

2007-01-07 - When I was a little girl, our biggest treat was for the whole family to take the five-hour drive south from Ithaca to the big city, to Manhattan. I remember lying awake in the hotel room, with the yellowish light from the street filtering through the curtains, listening to the muffled sounds of taxi...

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Season of Grace

Martha Hodges

2006-12-17 - Once upon a time, somewhere in Appalachia, children used to gather near the railroad tracks and wait for the coal cars to roll by. As the train passed, the kids would wave and the engineer and the conductor would wave back. As the train disappeared down the track, the children would load their sacks...

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Engaging Our 3rd Principle: The Limits of Acceptance

Martha Hodges

2006-12-03 - This is the third is our series of sermons on our seven principles. Our third principle – acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations – in my opinion, raises more questions of interpretation and more possibilities than any of the others. And perhaps none is m...

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Gifts of Children

Martha Hodges

2006-11-29 - (Preceded by reading: “The Summer You Learned to Swim” by Michael Simms, for Lea)

“And I learned to stand and wait for you to swim to me.”

If you are a parent – or a teacher – you understand that this is a difficult kind of love. You are the only kind of lover who, if you do your job right – if...

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Engaging Our 2nd Principle: Let Justice Roll

Martha Hodges

2006-11-05 - Yahweh, the god of the Israelites, spoke to his people through the voice of the prophet Amos, saying, “I despise your festivals and your sacrifices. Rather, let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Worship, the expression of awe and love for god, was meaning...

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A Crowd of Sorrows

Martha Hodges

2006-10-01 - “Forgiving is giving up all hopes for a different yesterday,” wrote some unknown sage. I love that. It’s funny, but it is also completely true and is worth remembering. Anguishing over the past will not change it. We can and should learn from the past, but the only thing we can change is the present...

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Engaging Our Principles: What Are We Worth?

Martha Hodges

2006-09-24 - "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and movement, how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?”

The...

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A Clash of Fundamentalisms

Judith G. Martin, SSJ, PhD

2006-09-17 - While vacationing in his homeland earlier this month (September 12th), Pope Benedict XVI gave a lecture on the relationship of faith and reason at the University of Regensburg where he had previously taught. The academic talk was intended to spark a dialogue; instead, it triggered a firestorm of pro...

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Olly Olly Oxen Free: Coming Home

Martha Hodges

2006-09-03 - “Olly Olly Oxen Free: Coming Home”

Sept. 3, 2006

Martha Hodges

You’re pounding round the bases, your shoes driving up clouds of dust, your heart beating wildly, the shrill cries of your teammates in your ears. The coach signals you to keep going. You slide into home plate. Safe! Home free.<...

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Burning Answers

Martha Hodges

2006-08-27 - Today I’m taking on the challenge of trying to answer questions about whatever’s on your minds. It’s good to know what’s on your mind. I only received seven questions, but, boy, are they juicy ones. Each one, including Mary Kathryn’s question about God, deserves at least a sermon of its own. But I’l...

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Equal Rites: Why All the Fuss?

Martha Hodges

2006-07-30 - Ten years ago, delegates from Unitarian Universalist congregations around the country came together at their General Assembly and voted to pass the following Action of Immediate Witness that I will read in part:

Because Unitarian Universalists affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every perso...

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The Learning Congregation

Martha Hodges

2006-07-16 - Here is a story from my life as a seven-year old. Our art teacher, Mrs. Thomas, visited our class every Tuesday. One week, she told us that the project for the morning was to draw portraits of our mothers. Now, we immediately have a problem. The crayon whose color, in my day, was called “flesh” ...

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Speaking Theologically: What about God? Minister's Reflections

Martha Hodges

2006-07-09 - If you are a practicing Baptist, or a Catholic, or a Jew, chances are you know, more or less, what the person sitting next to you in your service of worship holds to be true about God or Ultimate Reality, about our human nature and our purpose in the world, how the universe came to be, why we suffer...

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A Fine Romance

Martha Hodges

2006-07-02 - Our friends Yolanda Crooms and David Cobb, high bidders on the “Name the Sermon Topic of Your Choice” item in our service auction, have asked me to share my wisdom on the subject of love and romance. I feel a bit like the preacher in a story told about the nineteenth-century Scottish author Thomas ...

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Honoring Our Fathers: William Ellery Channing and Unitarian Christianity

Martha Hodges

2006-06-18 -

If you have attended other Unitarian Universalist churches, you may have seen rooms labeled the Channing Room. There are churches in our denomination that carry his name. A lot of modern UUs know that Channing was a Boston preacher of the early nineteenth century and have a vague sense that we ou...

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Is Nothing Sacred

Martha Hodges

2006-06-11 - All things are either sacred or profane.
The former to ecclesiasts bring gain;
The latter to the devil appertain.

Ambrose Bierce, journalist and satirist, crony of Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken, wrote these words in 1911. In his Devil’s Dictionary, he went on to define the word “sacred” this wa...

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Radical Acceptance

Martha Hodges

2006-05-21 - Let me request your indulgence this morning. This is not going to be a sermon so much as an experiment in participatory imagination. Now, don’t worry. I’m not going to ask you to do anything embarrassing. I won’t even ask you to say anything. Close your eyes, if you will, and follow along with m...

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A Person Will Worship Something REVISED 8-6-06

Martha Hodges

2006-03-26 - "A person will worship something – have no doubt about that.

We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts – but it will out.

That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and character.

Therefore, it behooves us to ...

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Standing for Something

Martha Hodges

2006-03-05 - Whether all is really lost or not depends entirely on whether or not I am lost....

These are the words of Vaclav Havel, the leader of Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution. He ought to know. The world cannot be saved unless we find ourselves first, find our direction and purpose. But the conve...

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Blue Crowns and Cherry Heads

Martha Hodges

2006-02-26 -

In the Telegraph Hill neighborhood of San Francisco there lives a flock of wild parrots. No one knows for sure how they got there. There is a similar miracle to be seen in the Hyde Park area of Chicago where I went to seminary. Every once in a while, glancing out my window or trudging home fro...

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Religion, Spirituality, and Unitarian Universalism

Persephone (Lori Anne Agricola)

2006-02-19 - It often seems that religion and spirituality don’t have much to do with one another. Most of the people I talk to, particularly the generation in their twenties and thirties, tell me they’re interested in being spiritual, but have no interest in organized religion. They are searching for truth and ...

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You, Me, Them and Us

Martha Hodges

2006-01-15 - What a day in the history of this congregation! Today, you will elect the people you want to represent you in the search for your new minister. Today you will also be asked for your vote of confidence in a new model of self-governance. Together, these two votes will take you that much closer to t...

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Abracadabra, Presto, Change-o

Martha Hodges

2006-01-01 - Sermon: "Abracadabra, Presto, Change-o"
Jan 1, 2006

Anybody here make any New Year's Resolutions last night? I had some resolution-type thoughts, but I've learned to keep them sufficiently vague so that I can’t hold myself to them – success or failure is too hard to measure. I'v...

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Guiding Stars and Miraculous Lamps

Martha Hodges

2005-12-25 - Guiding Stars and Miraculous Lamps
December 25, 2005

Ours is a religion whose principle symbol -- indeed, our only widely shared symbol -- is light, in the form of the flaming chalice. In our use of light as a symbol of truth, hope and inspiration, we resemble the Zoarastrians of ancient Per...

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Christmas Eve Reflection: Holy Night

Martha Hodges

2005-12-24 - Christmas Eve Reflection: Holy Night

As Unitarian Universalists, some may wonder why we celebrate this night of Jesus’s birth. Most of us do not believe that Jesus was the son of God, born of a virgin, the word made flesh -- that he suffered, died and was resurrected in order to redeem our sin...

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Blessed Darkness

Martha Hodges

2005-12-18 - "Blessed Darkness"
December 18 2005

I don’t need to tell you about darkness. You know darkness. We live in dark times, we hear it said. Has there ever been a time that was not a dark time, I wonder? Heaven knows, there is plenty of reason to look back over the past year and ...

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Facing Into The Wind

Martha Hodges

2005-11-27 - Facing Into the Wind
Nov. 27, 2005

‘Tis the season of goodwill and family togetherness. As we all know, these are sometimes mutually exclusive phenomena. Family togetherness, in excess, especially when combined with alcohol, tends to stir up a lot of long-held grudges and mutual disappoint...

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We Gather Together

Martha Hodges

2005-11-20 - Homily: "We Gather Together"

Nov. 20, 2005

In a world at war, where each day brings fresh evidence of the human capacity for cruelty, deception and greed, how can we be thankful? How can we celebrate our abundance when children starve, or rejoice in friendship and family when s...

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Gifts and Graces

Martha Hodges

2005-11-13 - Gifts and Graces
Nov. 13, 2005

"A pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real." And so does a congregation such as this one. We long for work that is real. For a deep and abiding sense of purpose. To be of use.

But how are we to discover this purpose,...

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Living with the Dead

Martha Hodges (Interim Minister)

2005-10-30 - We, the living, are unwilling to let them go, the dead. Whether seriously or in jest, we invite the dead back into our lives in traditions such as the Day of the Dead. It is difficult to conceive of a world that is no longer home to those we knew and loved. But whether we believe in an afterlife o...

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Imagination’s Grace

Martha Hodges (Interim Minister)

2005-10-23 - It is truly autumn. As the days cool and the light diminishes, we look back at summer -- its landscapes that seem to embrace us, the long nights, lulled by the song of cicadas -- the ease of everything. As the shimmering heat saps our energy, we keep our summer reading light and our drinks well-ic...

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Endings Are Beginnings

Rev. Richard Venus (MVUUF Minister 1991-2005)

2005-08-21 - This being my last, I want to share with you something new, something old, something borrowed, something blue. The old and borrowed are two stories reflecting ideas central to my understanding of Unitarian Universalism and the nature of the ministry. The first story is from no other than my favorite...

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The Science of God or Why I, as a scientist, acknowledge Something Divine

Al Boudreau (MVUUF Member)

2005-06-26 - I view myself as a pilgrim, coming out of a Catholic Christian background. I’m on a quest to discover spiritual truth and that spiritual entity some call “God.” I am not here to “evangelize anyone.” I don’t want to suggest that any of you adopt my personal view of God. I am here, as most of you are,...

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We Have This Covenant

Richard Venus (MVUUF Minister 1991-2005)

2005-05-29 - “…The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep.” Thus Robert Frost wrote in his famous poem, Stopping By The Woods On A Snowy Evening. And so it is with us. We too have promises to keep.

“Human beings become huma...

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Why Religion Matters

Richard Venus (MVUUF Minister 1991-2005)

2005-05-22 - The painter, philosopher and writer John Ruskin lived in the middle 1800's, with a mind that would not stop. An intellectual whose last years were troubled with madness, he struggled throughout his life with the ultimate questions of life. "The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this worl...

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The Mind of God

Richard Venus (MVUUF Minister 1991-2005)

2005-05-01 - As I age, I am more and more confounded by my insignificance and the question of what does my life mean anyway. How am I more than a tiny speck in a universe or even a world or nation? At the same time, I am compelled by the notion that I am the final authority over my life. There is no one else to ...

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Standing Up For Earth

Richard Venus (MVUUF Minister 1991-2005)

2005-04-24 - The 1930's were crisis years for many in this country, mostly from economic woes and social grief. There were the soup lines, the Hoover camps, the migrant Okies. But as Archibald MacLeish and other observers noted, American culture was in trouble, particularly on the Great Plains where plows, dry a...

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Goodness Grace

Richard Venus (MVUUF Minister 1991-2005)

2005-04-10 - In sub-Sahara Africa as many as 340 million children live a marginal life. Children panning for diamonds may earn a bowl of rice a day. So reads the caption under a New York Times report from last December in which the accompanying article with the date line Dakar Senegal notes: "They stand at ...

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On Generosity

Richard Venus (MVUUF Minister 1991-2005)

2005-03-20 - One thing I have learned as I have tried to understand the concept of grace is that as soon as I have a handle on it a new definition or way of seeing takes me in another direction.

Grace is the first name of the wife of the recently deceased Prince of Monaco. Grace can be viewed as a pleasing qu...

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The Good that Christmas Is

Richard Venus - (MVUUF Minister 1991-2005)

2004-12-12 -

Save the Children; More Than a Fund-Drive

Richard Venus (MVUUF Minister 1991-2005)

2004-12-05 - Dorina was born in a small village in the Republic of Moldova, formerly of the Soviet Union and now the poorest nation in Europe. Abandoned by both her parents at a young age, she grew up poor in her grandparent’s house. At 16 she graduated from secondary school and went to the capital, Chisinau, to...

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All The Questions You Ever Wanted to Ask the Minister--2004

Richard Venus (MVUUF Minister 1991-2005)

2004-11-28 - Where do we draw the line between church and state as we promote our liberal philosophy? Do we endanger our tax exempt status?

I suspect this question grows out of this congregation’s recent decision to support Issue One and November’s general election. It is an important question that the...

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They Might Be a UU If...

Scott Leonard (MVUUF Member)

2004-10-24 - Millions of Americans have diabetes or high blood pressure and don’t even know it. Never mind that it is cheap and easy to detect these things, people never ask “do I have diabetes?”, so they don’t find out.

Fortunately, there are lots of folks out there who are helping people to find out if th...

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From the Apple to Mac

Richard Venus (MVUUF Minister 1991-2005)

2004-09-26 - David Davidson was a technician. He worked in Dr. Robert Furchgott's medical laboratory at the State University of New York, and most likely would have remained among the hard-working but unknown scientists who help us live better through chemistry, except for his now famous mistake.

Dr. Furchgot...

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My Faith

Elizabeth Nguyen (MVUUF Member)

2004-08-29 - This church service has been a while in the making. About a year ago I attended a rather life altering institution: Seeds of Peace International Camp in Otisfield, Maine. There I participated in a revolutionary peace process. It wasn't about prime ministers and Camp David retreats or diplomats and ...

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On the Outside Looking In

Becky Harding (Guest Speaker)

2004-08-15 - "Atticus stood up and walked to the end of the porch. When he completed his examination of the wisteria vine, he strolled back to me.

First of all, he said, if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person u...

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We Too Rise Up - What We Give Our Life For

Richard Venus (MVUUF Minister 1991-2005)

2004-04-11 - It is reported that The Passion of the Christ, is likely to be the largest money-maker in movie history, bringing in at least $500 million for creator Mel Gibson. And if you like the sight of a healthy male body being demolished, beyond the farthest reach of plausible endurance, then this is the mov...

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Hidden in Plain Sight: 21st Century Slavery

Bonnie Bazill-Davis (MVUUF Member)

2004-03-14 - Dr. Kevin Bales, a social researcher and the world’s foremost authority on modern slavery, had an opportunity to meet a newly freed slave while visiting a small village outside of Paris. Dr. Bales writes, “I have come here to meet Seba, a handsome and animated young woman of twenty-two, but as she ...

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The Fifth Principle

Richard Robinson (MVUUF Member)

2004-02-29 - Today is a special day. Every four years, we get the chance to marvel at the natural world, and at the scientists that have “decoded” it. We know exactly how long it takes our tiny blue marble to travel around the sun, and we know that to keep the vernal equinox in March, we need to add a day ever...

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The Three Pauls; Robeson, Dunbar and of Tarsus

Richard Venus (MVUUF Minister 1991-2005)

2004-02-08 - "I know why the caged bird sings!" wrote Paul Laurence Dunbar in Sympathy, a poem that sought to describe his experience as an African-American living in Dayton and later in Toledo and Washington D.C., where he worked for awhile in the Library of Congress to support himself and his wife Al...

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We The People...

Connie Buchenroth, Rich Robinson, Ralf Grisard, Darren Parker, David Bringhurst (MVUUF Members)

2003-04-27 - “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...or the right of the people peaceably to assemble....”

In the First Amendment, Congress chose not to prohibit the free exercise of religion because, according to William Bennett, the fou...

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