Celebrate!
Welcome to summer (at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere). June is certainly a time to celebrate – getting out school, for one thing! (Is there an official Vacation Day?) More than that, it seems that June is a time for being grateful: pagans celebrate gratitude for the generosity of the Earth at the Summer Solstice, and we all can celebrate gratitude for dads on Father’s Day!
Click on a link below to find out more about the holiday and how you might celebrate it in your family.
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We Honor… |
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| Father’s Day this month, so it seems appropriate to honor John Adams, who was a father of the nation of the United States of America, serving as the second president. He was also the father of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States, so he kind of also counts as a father of a father of the country!
However, John Adams’s “father of the country” contribution happened largely before there was any such thing as a president of the United States. He was the one who suggested in 1775 that what were then known as “The Colonies” should have a Declaration of Independence from England. And it was John Adams who suggested that his friend Thomas Jefferson should write it. But once the colonies had declared their independence from England, and won the Revolutionary War, they still needed to figure out how to be a country. They knew they didn’t want to have a monarchy with a king, the way it was in England. But it was a long, painful process to come up with the democratic system of government that the US has now. John Adams was one of the most important voices in the creation of the US Constitution, although he was not able to convince the framers of the Constitution to forbid slavery – and his wife Abigail was not able to convince him to promote the idea that women, as well as men, should be allowed to vote.
For all its faults, the US Constitution was an amazing, ground-breaking experiment in democracy, and John Adams is as closely connected with its creation as any person except his sometimes close friend and sometime enemy Thomas Jefferson. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died within hours of each other on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
John Adams and his wife Abigail were active members of First Parish Church in Quincy, Massachusetts, a Unitarian church. |
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Act!
Juneteenth celebrates the anniversary of June 19th, 1865, when slaves in Texas learned that they were free -- two and a half years after slavery officially ended. Although Juneteenth is celebrated as a joyous day of freedom, it is also a good time to remember the importance of access to information. After all, the slaves in Texas should have been told more than two years earlier that they were no longer considered the property of slave-owners! One of the actions you can take in honor of Juneteenth is simply to become more informed yourself. Learn about the history of slavery, and how people in Europe, Africa, North and South America participated in selling people as if they were property. Learn about how the inheritance of racism still affects people today. Then share that information with your friends. Studies have shown that kids who learn about the history of racial injustice are more accepting of differences and less likely to act in racist ways themselves. So make yourself part of the education team!
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Nurturing Your Spirit
In the Northern Hemisphere, June brings us the summer solstice, the time of year with the longest day and the shortest night. (In the Southern Hemisphere it is winter solstice, with the longest night and the shortest day.) Regardless of where in the world you live, the solstice is a good time to take a tip from ancient sun-worshippers and let the sun warm your soul as well as your body. Find a place outside or by a window. Close your eyes and imagine the light from the sun on its 93 million mile journey to get to you. The light and heat that touches you now left the sun just over eight minutes ago. So maybe you want to devote eight minutes to feeling the sun on your back if it’s a warm day. And even if it isn’t, you can spend eight minutes thinking about how the sun makes all life possible. We all need the sun for warmth and light, but also plants use sunlight for energy, and the rest of the food chain depends on plants. The earth circles the sun just far enough away so that we aren’t burnt to a crisp, and just close enough that we aren’t frozen to death. What a great place to live! You might want to finish your sun meditation with the traditional yoga poses of the “salute to the sun.”
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Principles in Practice
Although it’s not exactly a holiday, June is the month of the year in which the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly takes place. Each year delegates from UU churches across the US and participants from around the world gather together for several days of worship services and workshops and – most importantly – voting. General Assembly is where many important decisions about the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) are made, so that all the member congregations get a vote. The bigger the congregation (church), the more delegates it is allowed. (The CLF, the largest congregation in the UUA, gets 22.) Delegates vote on everything from business matters to who will be the president and moderator of the UUA to what social justice issues we think are most important for all of us to work on. It’s a pretty amazing thing to watch some 1000 UUs discuss and debate and vote on matters important to our free faith, while our moderator, Gini Courter, manages to keep the whole complicated process moving smoothly.
It’s a big undertaking, but it’s all part of our fifth UU principle: “The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.” In other words, UUs think that everyone has the right to speak their mind according to what they believe is right, and to have a vote about the things that affect them, both in our churches and in the wider world. General Assembly is one place that happens. Can you think of any others? |
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