Celebrate!
Have you finished the last Harry Potter book? If so, don't worry, there's lots more great authors and great books out there. And August seems like a good month to celebrate the joy of reading. Grab a hammock, or a spot under a tree, or an umbrella at the beach, or your favorite pillow at home…but first give a look at what's below!
August doesn't seem to be a big month for holidays, but if Lammas isn't enough for you, you can always make up your own. (Check out Byrd Baylor's lovely book I'm in Charge of Celebrations to get started. Or, learn more about Lammas/Lughnasad and find information, stories, recipes and more.
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We Honor… |
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| Louisa May Alcott, author of many famous books for children, including Little Women and Jo's Boys. Louisa's father Bronson Alcott was part of a group of friends who were thinkers and writers known as the Transcendentalists. This group included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker, both famous Unitarian ministers who changed the course of what Unitarianism would become. While many Unitarians remained liberal Christians after the Transcendentalists, many came to agree with the Transcendentalist beliefs that God is present in nature, and in other religions besides Christianity, and that Jesus was a great moral teacher, but not someone who did miracles.
Louisa never went to a regular school, but was taught by her father, who had radical ideas about how children should learn. Some of these ideas, like believing that children should learn through stories and exploring and using their bodies, were taken up by many educators much later on. Some of his ideas, however, like the notion that it was not a good idea to eat carrots, since they reached down into the ground, rather than up toward the sky, were just plain weird.
Bronson Alcott started a school where he could teach using his radical methods, and he gave lectures on his radical ideas. Unfortunately, he never made much money at either one, and he was laughed at more often than he was praised.
Louisa shared the idealism of her father and his Transcendentalist friends. She was very much opposed to slavery, and very much in favor of rights for women. However, she was also much more practical than her father. She was determined to earn a living to not only support herself, but also her impoverished family. She worked as a teacher and a governess and at the few other kinds of jobs that were available to women at the time of the US Civil War. During the war she spent six weeks as an Army nurse, but had to stop when she got very sick with typhoid. Unfortunately, the treatment they used at the time included doses of mercury, and the effects of that mercury killed her many years later. However, the Hospital Sketches she wrote about her time nursing soldiers brought her the first recognition she received as a writer. She wrote in a variety of different styles, including several thrillers. But she became famous—and able to support her family—from her children's books, starting with Little Women., which was loosely based on her own life. Unlike the character Jo, she never married, but she did raise her young niece after her sister died.
You can read more about Louisa May Alcott, but it might be even more fun to check out one of her books from your local library! |
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Nurturing Your Spirit
Usually we read to find out what is going to happen next, racing on to find out what is coming in the life of our favorite character. Sometimes, of course, we read to gather information, or watch how a character's personality develops. But there is still another way to read, which is to use reading as a kind of meditation or prayer. There is a long tradition of doing this with the Bible, but you can also use poetry and other writings. Here's how:
- Get quiet. Find a spot where you won't be interrupted, and take some deep breaths to help yourself get focused and centered.
- Read a short piece such as a poem. The back section of the UU hymnbook, Singing the Living Tradition has lots of readings that would work great for this. But here, for starters, is a well-known poem by Robert Frost:
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
- Sit quietly, letting the images and ideas in the poem roll around in your head. What do you see? What do you feel?
- Finally, think about whether the reading has anything special to say to you. It might give you an idea about how to handle something difficult going on in your life, or a clearer understanding of a complicated idea, or just some lovely words you might want to hold onto in your brain.
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Principles in Practice
Our fourth UU principle talks about a “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” One way of understanding what we mean by that “search for truth and meaning” is that we are all on a kind of religious quest. You've probably read lots of books where the characters are on a quest. Dorothy goes on a quest through Oz to find the wizard, and her way back home to Kansas. Frodo goes on a quest through Middle Earth to destroy the Ring of Power. Harry Potter completes a variety of quests, from finding the Sorcerer's Stone to locating horcruxes, in his ongoing quest to defeat Lord Voldemort. Those of us who don't live in fictional worlds may not have quests filled with talking scarecrows and elves and giants, but we are still on a life-long journey to discover what we most truly believe and how we can live lives that make a positive difference in the world. You don't have to face trolls and goblins to go on a hero's journey—you just have to keep following the clues about how to be your best and truest self.
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Act!
Have a bunch of books in your home that you don't read anymore? Maybe your family can make some room on your shelves at the same time that you put books into the hands of kids who might not have much to read at home. You can check with your local library to see if they take donations, or call a shelter near you that might be able to give books to homeless kids. Or find out how you can send your gently used books to an organization that will put them in the hands of kids that can use them.
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