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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Since both Father’s Day and the UU General Assembly happen this month, it seems appropriate to honor Dana McLean Greeley, the first president of the Unitarian Universalist Association. He wasn’t the father of Unitarianism, or of Universalism, which both started long before he was born in 1908. But you could kind of call him the father of Unitarian Universalism, since he worked to bring together the American Unitarian Association (AUA) with the Universalist Church of America (UCA). He was the last president of the AUA, and then served two terms as the first president of the UUA. If you have a blended family, with one or both parents who were married before, then you have some idea of the challenges that went into the merger in 1961, bringing together the two families of the Unitarians and the Universalists. It wasn’t an easy job, but now most UUs are quite comfortable thinking of ourselves as Unitarian Universalists, rather than just Unitarians or Universalists, and the family gets along just fine, thank you!
Did you know that at General Assembly in June this year delegates will be electing the next president of the UUA? The reverend Bill Sinkford will be finishing his eight years as our president—the first African-American president of the UUA. But we’ll be making history again. The reverend Peter Morales is hoping to become the first Latino president of the UUA, and the reverend Laurel Hallman is hoping to become the first woman president of the UUA. So whichever of the two of them wins the election, we will be continuing to widen the diversity of the leadership of Unitarian Universalism. |
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Act!
The fourth Sunday of June is traditionally Gay Pride Day, a day to celebrate equal rights for women who love women and men who love men. In the last couple of months the states of Iowa, Maine and Vermont have made it legal for two men or two women to get married, and New Hampshire is probably not far behind. (It’s been legal in Massachusetts for a while now.) If you think it’s only fair that whoever wants to get married should be allowed to by law, and you live in the US, but not in one of the states where it’s already legal, you might want to write to your state’s governor and share your opinion. Or maybe just share your support for equal marriage rights in conversation with a friend. Sharing your beliefs can change a mind, and changing minds leads to changing laws!
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Nurturing Your Spirit
This is the time of year when many congregations hold flower communion, a uniquely UU ceremony in which every person brings a flower to church. Those flowers are gathered together into a community bouquet, and then each person takes home a different flower than the one they brought. But even if you don’t have a local congregation that celebrates flower communion, June is a great time to nurture your spirit with the beauty of flowers. Pick a flower, or sit down very close to a flowering plant. Look carefully at the flower: what is the shape, the color? Are there many little flowers clustered together, or one big bloom? What about this flower might attract bees or hummingbirds? Smell the flower—how does the scent make you feel? Does it bring back any memories? Gently touch the flower. How soft does your touch have to be to keep from damaging it? Let the flower remind you of all your favorite things about early summer. As you breathe in the scent of the flower, breathe deeply, filling your lungs and your whole body with the essence of summer.
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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.) In addition to voting every four years on who will be the president and the moderator, delegates vote each year on everything from business matters 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.
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. But you don’t have to go to General Assembly to practice the “right of conscience and the use of the democratic process.” Encouraging a group of friends to take a vote rather than arguing about what to play or what the rules of a game should be is using the democratic process. And any time you stand up for what you think is fair, you’re exercising your “right of conscience.” |
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