News – May 31, 2024
Dear Members and Friends,
This Sunday we celebrate our annual flower communion. If you’ve not been before, it is a beautiful service. In it, we honor unity in diversity through the splendor of flowers. Each person is unique, just as each flower is unique. In our religious community all come together to form a glorious bouquet of colors--deep reds, iridescent blues, royal purples, and dazzlingly sunflower yellows--that mirrors the variety in our theologically pluralistic and increasingly multiracial congregation.
In the past few years, flower communion has become our most well attended service and we anticipate more people to join us than come on either Christmas or Easter. The 11:30 a.m. service is especially likely to be popular. I encourage those of you who have mobility challenges to arrive early for it and those of you who can to park in the neighborhood rather than in the Mann Eye Center or Methodist lots.
The 11:30 a.m. service will be followed by our annual meeting. At it the members of the congregation will vote on a slate of candidates for both the Board and the Nominating Committee. People sometimes ask me about the benefits of being a member of a Unitarian Universalist congregation. One of them is certainly the ability to vote and participate in congregational meetings. Unitarian Universalist congregations are self-governing and by becoming a member people get the opportunity to practice democratic self-governance. There are few other institutions in our society that afford us the chance to develop the skills necessary for it. And our members frequently carry such skills into other parts of their lives. For us, democracy is truly a religious practice!
The rest of this month we will be finishing up our year long Lives of the Spirit series with a focus on the Unitarian Universalist theologian the Rev. Dr. Forrest Church. I’ll be preaching about his life and spirituality on June 9th. At the end of the month, the Rev. Dr. Rob Hardies, will be joining us to lead both a workshop on the 29th and a worship service on the 30th focused on what we can learn from Dr. Church. The Rev. Dr. Hardies is considered to be one of the finest living Unitarian Universalist preachers and I anticipate that his sermon to powerful.
The Rev. Dr. Hardies won’t be our only guest this month. On June 16th we will be welcoming back to our pulpit friend of the congregation the Rev. Duncan Teague. He’ll be helping us celebrate Pride, Juneteenth, and Father’s Day.
I will be starting my summer travels this month and be in-and-out of town. Sadé and I have been invited by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University to be part of a faculty workshop on New Directions in African American Religious History. We’ll be participating in that on June 10th and 11th and then taking a few days to enjoy New England before returning on the 15th. Then on the 20th I will be leaving for Oxford where I will be participating in the university’s Summer Research Institute from the 23rd to the 30th and then be in residence until the 11th of July. I plan to use the time finish editing the three book manuscripts I currently have under contract.
While I am gone, on those Sundays we don’t have guests, Rev. Scott and our minister emeritus the Rev. Dr. Dan King will be leading services: Rev. Scott on June 23rd and July 7th and Rev. Dr. King on July 14th. I will be back in the pulpit on July 21st for our annual Question Box service.
Before ending, I would be remiss not to invite you to our annual Spaghetti Dinner. It will be June 8th this year. As in the past, Rev. Scott and I will be making the pasta. This year we have special treat in that Dr. Rocke and Chelsea will be providing us musical entertainment. Invite your friends and family. It’s going to be a wonderful event!
love,
Colin
This Sunday we celebrate our annual flower communion. If you’ve not been before, it is a beautiful service. In it, we honor unity in diversity through the splendor of flowers. Each person is unique, just as each flower is unique. In our religious community all come together to form a glorious bouquet of colors--deep reds, iridescent blues, royal purples, and dazzlingly sunflower yellows--that mirrors the variety in our theologically pluralistic and increasingly multiracial congregation.
In the past few years, flower communion has become our most well attended service and we anticipate more people to join us than come on either Christmas or Easter. The 11:30 a.m. service is especially likely to be popular. I encourage those of you who have mobility challenges to arrive early for it and those of you who can to park in the neighborhood rather than in the Mann Eye Center or Methodist lots.
The 11:30 a.m. service will be followed by our annual meeting. At it the members of the congregation will vote on a slate of candidates for both the Board and the Nominating Committee. People sometimes ask me about the benefits of being a member of a Unitarian Universalist congregation. One of them is certainly the ability to vote and participate in congregational meetings. Unitarian Universalist congregations are self-governing and by becoming a member people get the opportunity to practice democratic self-governance. There are few other institutions in our society that afford us the chance to develop the skills necessary for it. And our members frequently carry such skills into other parts of their lives. For us, democracy is truly a religious practice!
The rest of this month we will be finishing up our year long Lives of the Spirit series with a focus on the Unitarian Universalist theologian the Rev. Dr. Forrest Church. I’ll be preaching about his life and spirituality on June 9th. At the end of the month, the Rev. Dr. Rob Hardies, will be joining us to lead both a workshop on the 29th and a worship service on the 30th focused on what we can learn from Dr. Church. The Rev. Dr. Hardies is considered to be one of the finest living Unitarian Universalist preachers and I anticipate that his sermon to powerful.
The Rev. Dr. Hardies won’t be our only guest this month. On June 16th we will be welcoming back to our pulpit friend of the congregation the Rev. Duncan Teague. He’ll be helping us celebrate Pride, Juneteenth, and Father’s Day.
I will be starting my summer travels this month and be in-and-out of town. Sadé and I have been invited by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University to be part of a faculty workshop on New Directions in African American Religious History. We’ll be participating in that on June 10th and 11th and then taking a few days to enjoy New England before returning on the 15th. Then on the 20th I will be leaving for Oxford where I will be participating in the university’s Summer Research Institute from the 23rd to the 30th and then be in residence until the 11th of July. I plan to use the time finish editing the three book manuscripts I currently have under contract.
While I am gone, on those Sundays we don’t have guests, Rev. Scott and our minister emeritus the Rev. Dr. Dan King will be leading services: Rev. Scott on June 23rd and July 7th and Rev. Dr. King on July 14th. I will be back in the pulpit on July 21st for our annual Question Box service.
Before ending, I would be remiss not to invite you to our annual Spaghetti Dinner. It will be June 8th this year. As in the past, Rev. Scott and I will be making the pasta. This year we have special treat in that Dr. Rocke and Chelsea will be providing us musical entertainment. Invite your friends and family. It’s going to be a wonderful event!
love,
Colin
Where Are Ministers
Dr. Bossen will be leading services on June 2nd and 9th. June 10th and 11th he will be at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University for a faculty workshop on New Directions in African American Religious History. He will then be in New England until June 15th. On June 20th he will be leaving again to participate in the Summer Research Institute at Oxford University and then be in residence at the university. He will be returning to the country on the 19th of July and back in the pulpit on the 21st.
Rev. Scott will be preaching the Pride Service on June 23. He will be welcoming Rev. Duncan Teague, from the Abundant LUUv congregation in Atlanta, to the pulpit on June 16. He will also welcome Rev. Rob Hardies, from First Parish in Cambridge, on June 30.
In other news, he will be cooking his popular Seafood Pasta Sauce for the Spaghetti Dinner on June 8!
Rev. Scott will welcome the new church year by preaching on July 7. He then begins his half-time schedule, splitting his time between Dallas and Houston.
Dr. Bossen will be leading services on June 2nd and 9th. June 10th and 11th he will be at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University for a faculty workshop on New Directions in African American Religious History. He will then be in New England until June 15th. On June 20th he will be leaving again to participate in the Summer Research Institute at Oxford University and then be in residence at the university. He will be returning to the country on the 19th of July and back in the pulpit on the 21st.
Rev. Scott will be preaching the Pride Service on June 23. He will be welcoming Rev. Duncan Teague, from the Abundant LUUv congregation in Atlanta, to the pulpit on June 16. He will also welcome Rev. Rob Hardies, from First Parish in Cambridge, on June 30.
In other news, he will be cooking his popular Seafood Pasta Sauce for the Spaghetti Dinner on June 8!
Rev. Scott will welcome the new church year by preaching on July 7. He then begins his half-time schedule, splitting his time between Dallas and Houston.
