November 2001

• Sermon: "The Begging Bowl," by Marta Morris Flanagan
• Sermon: "I Was the First Unitarian I Ever Knew," by Dr. Linden Summers, Jr.
• From Your Minister, by Rev. Jane Rzepka
• REsources for Living, by Betsy Hill Williams
• CLFers Celebrate Thanksgiving
• CLFer Writes GA Journal
• Negative Space
• Prison Pen Pal program

The Begging Bowl

by Marta Morris Flanagan, co-minister, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Portsmouth, NH

Imagine a bowl-a bowl the size of a small pot with a nearly rounded bottom, a bowl made of clay, glazed a deep, rich color.
Every morning as the streets fill with people going to market, a group of monks go out with bowls in hand. This is a familiar scene in Thailand and much of Southeast Asia. The Buddhist monks wear red?orange robes draped over their left shoulders; their heads are shaved. They walk beside stands of vegetables, fruits, and flowers. The monks mingle among people dressed in blue jeans and t-shirts. The soft smell of rice steaming and of fish fresh from the sea floats in the air.
The monks stop before a market stall and take off the tin lids of their ceramic bowls. These are begging bowls. Whatever is placed in each monk's bowl will be his nourishment for the day. Into each bowl may come a mango, a banana, a cucumber, a scoop of rice, or a flower.
Imagine the bowl. Imagine holding it in your hands. Your hands take the natural shape of begging, of waiting, of openness.
What would fill your bowl? What would give you nourishment for a day? A lifetime?
I look at my home, the kitchen cabinets filled with cereal, cans of soup, tomato sauce, and more exotic things like hoisin sauce, mango chutney, marinated artichoke hearts. Yet it is often bread that satisfies me-sliced, maybe toasted.
It is enough.
I look in my closet. There are preaching dresses, and lovely sweaters of brown and green, a silk scarf with roses, and a fine-woven shawl. Yet it is the denim jeans, now pale-blue from wear, that I pick most often.
I look at my calendar, at the to-do list, and I prepare for my day off. There is shopping and tending, rushing about to satisfy some strange obsession. Yet I find myself sneaking off to play the recorder or to simply sit in the armchair in the living room as the morning sun warms me. It is enough.
For many of us, our days are full, often too full. Is it that a simple bowl could hold all we need for the day?
In the early hours of the morning the monks leave the "wat" or temple with their bowls. The Japanese name for a begging bowl, "oryoki," means "just enough." It is a religious act to go forth empty handed.
The empty bowl. It is a peaceful image. It is the picture of openness, ready to receive, ready to take in what is offered.
There is much talk these days of spirituality. Spirituality is a sensibility not limited to Buddhism or Christianity or any particular religion. It is a sensibility available to all people. Spirituality is a way of being fully present, of paying attention, of being attentive to life itself. Truly spiritual people are not easily distracted. They have before them what is essential. There is room within them to receive whatever wisdom, beauty, or nourishment may be offered.
Have I just defined spirituality or happiness? You be the judge.

Quest November 2001 Contents

I Was the First Unitarian I Ever Knew
Dr. Linden Summers, Jr., Church of the Larger Fellowship member for 39 years, chair of the CLF Board from 1985 to 1987, and vice chair from 1988 to 1989; the former director of Counseling & Psychological Services at Colgate University in Hamilton N.Y., died this July, 2001 in Hamilton at the age of 75. In his memory, we reprint this piece from the December, 1986 issue of Quest. It is excerpted from a taped interview, edited by former Director of Member Services, Nancy Engels. Mr. Summers says:

No one who spends as many hours as I do listening to what other people say . . . Pondering . . . trying to make sense of the absurd human condition, could avoid wondering about all kinds of things. I do.
Early on, after I'd gone through the usual querulous period of trying to identify myself somewhere in the continuum of belief in some superhuman being, I found I was identifying myself as a "devout atheist," a phrase that still has some meaning. I've evolved a firmer and firmer sense that being human is enough. I've never felt the need for a belief in some God or organizing spirit beyond the existence of the world.
I was born into a family with such long Methodist traditions that I've jokingly accused them of predating the Wesleys . . . It was during the waning years of prohibition that I walked a mile or so every week to attend Sunday School at the small Violetville Methodist Church. I remember a specific event from those days. An evangelist gave us all temperance cards, and had us sign them, en masse, pledging never to touch liquor. One 13-year?old girl, quietly but adamantly, refused to sign. I recall admiring her stand but being unable to articulate why.
When I was in college, I was fascinated by William Ellery Channing and wrote a paper on him. Late in WW II, I took Earl Morse Wilbur's two?volume history of Unitarianism to sea with me. I was quietly and privately evolving into Unitarianism. Indeed I became the first Unitarian that I ever knew.
In 1949, Betty and I were married by Dr. Waldemer W. Argo at the Baltimore Unitarian Church. It was at this church that I experienced a "Unitarian Epiphany" -a sense of almost frightening courage and daring to think different-than-conventional thoughts.
After grad school, Betty and I went to Cooperstown, NY, where we helped organize a UU fellowship. On the occasion of our first Sunday evening "service," two protestant churches preached sermons condemning us as a kind of radical fringe group. One minister titled his sermon, "Is There No Longer a Hell?" Our application to join the local county Council of Churches was rejected because we didn't believe in the divinity of Christ. In the long range, these publicized actions brought us several new members who identified with our liberal beliefs.
Many magical moments occurred in our fellowship meetings. I remember sensations resonant with an Old Methodist Camp Meeting. Virtually all of us had young children, so I took on Sunday School teaching as an obligation, and with some degree of success; but I have grim and dire memories when I think about it. Individually and collectively I loved those children but I hated that teaching task. It cast a pall over the whole of an otherwise delightful Sunday.
In the late fifties, Betty and I went to Boston for May Meetings (prior to merger and our General Assemblies). We had a glorious time. We attended a Universalist service at the Charles Street Meeting House. Kenneth Patton was the minister. I recall with vivid imagery the auditorium: the center of the floor was taken up with a polar projection of the globe. Mobiles hung from the archway across the vaulted ceiling, illustrating phenomena from sparrow nebulae to electron microscope magnifications of either a molecule or atom.
That visit certainly ranks for both Betty and me as one of the most impressive religious experiences we've ever had. Its religious impact was comparable to the sensations that devout Christians must have in pilgrimages to Jerusalem and the Holy Land.
It was in the early sixties that I joined CLF. The materials were a welcome contact with the larger body of UUism and were helpful in my own development as a UU.
Whether what I am has informed and shaped the religion I embrace or whether that religion has determined who I am is a conundrum; my UU affiliation is as much an expression of what's central to my life as my marriage and my work are. I'm in the happy position of acting professionally quite consistently with whatever those values and convictions are that guide my own personal life. And that has been a source of strength and support.

Quest November 2001 Contents

Cantankerous Recalcitrants
This sermon was delivered by Jane Rzepka, minister, Church of the Larger Fellowship, at the CLF Worship Service at General Assembly

You never know. This time, here we are in Cleveland, Ohio. Maybe you've been here before-on business years ago, or you took the train through once, or you had to land at Cleveland Hopkins airport instead of Pittsburgh in the middle of a snowstorm. Or maybe you went to college here in Ohio and Cleveland was the closest big city. Of course some of you live here, on the East Side, or the West Side or even farther out, and lots of people used to live here before they went off to Florida, or Michigan, or Albuquerque. Some of us grew up in Cleveland-I did-and we used to take the Rapid Transit to the Terminal Tower, the tallest building anywhere, we thought, except maybe the Empire State Building, which nobody we knew had ever actually seen. At Christmas, when I was a child, the draw was Francis the Talking Mule.
At one of the large department stores downtown here, Francis was a large, fake mule, with a talking guy inside, and Francis wished us all a Merry Christmas and gave us little presents. We thought that was a standard and perfectly normal annual Christmas ritual the world over, never once pausing to ponder the tenuous connection between Jesus' birthday and Francis the Talking Mule. Here in Cleveland, if you got decent grades and you lived anywhere in Northeast Ohio, the "best location in the nation," as we used to say, you would receive 14 free tickets to professional baseball games in the old stadium-14 tickets per child, and I came from a family of five kids-that's 70 tickets per season-and these tickets you could not give away-nobody would take them. We thought that was perfectly normal too, to be awash in baseball tickets-you could paper the walls with all those tickets.
A popular outing here in the Cleveland area was going to see the fire tugs on the Cuyahoga River. We have some very nice family movies of all us kids watching these tug boats, hoping against hope that the Cuyahoga would catch fire again and the fire tugs would spring into action. We thought it was perfectly normal for rivers to catch fire, and even today it seems to me a little foolhardy to sit at any river's edge without a fire tug in sight. Another thing that seemed perfectly normal when I was a child was to have Unitarian churches sprinkled round. You could go to First Church, where the kids in my family were dedicated, or West Shore, that spin-off church that was such a success. Sometimes we went to Sunday School there, or 82nd Street, where my grandparents were married almost a hundred years ago, or East Shore, a start-up congregation where I grew up as a fellowship kid, and whose chalice we are honored to use this evening. There were Unitarian congregations everywhere, places where we felt a religious openness and eagerness, where, as we used to say, "The winds of the spirit moved from many directions." We thought that perfectly normal.
I also found that if I grew tired of Nancy Drew mysteries, there were old books around our house that had been there for quite a while. One was my great-grandfather's Unitarian hymnbook published in 1880. This hymnbook had traveled to Ohio all the way from the very seat of Unitarianism in our country. It represents one strand of our heritage and our roots and our theological tradition. It is incontrovertible evidence of where some of us have come from as religious people. My great-grandfather's Unitarian hymnbook, Unity Hymns and Chorales, was published, you see, in the city we knew to be the Vatican of Unitarianism: Chicago.
It's a great little hymnbook-one of the authors, Frederick Lucien Hosmer, was my great-grandfather's minister, and Hosmer published the old-fashioned kind of hymnbook where the words and the tunes aren't linked, where each page is literally cut in half like a child's flip book. The hymn we just sang, "Calm Soul of All Things," has been carried forward into our current hymnbook. And the same goes for "No Longer Forward nor Behind," which Unitarians have been singing straight on through as well. In fact our current hymnbook, Singing the Living Tradition, contains eight hymns that Hosmer wrote himself. We still believe in that Midwestern openness, where "The winds of the spirit move from many directions."
Another book up there on the family bookshelf is a Sunday school textbook about Jesus. Florence Buck wrote it, and Rev. Buck and her partner, Marian Murdock, would have been my family's co-ministers for six years in the late 1800's, during my grandmother's adolescence. So growing up a Unitarian in Cleveland kind of makes you understand that women serving as co-ministers has been perfectly normal for a very long time. The winds of the spirit move from many directions.
There's a lot of talk these days about how we UUs should understand our roots, in fact CLF's September issue of Quest contained a sermon by the Rev. Liz Lerner in which she said, "On both the individual level and the denominational level, we may weaken our belief system by attending only to the wings of our aspiration and not to the roots from which we spring."
If you grew up a Unitarian in Cleveland, as in many places, you have access to a specific theological history. Maybe you have a collection of Minot Simons's sermons on your shelf. He came to First Church in 1900, and was a great favorite of my grandmother's-the "ideal man of my young womanhood," she writes in the front of her sermon collection, and "I valued his friendship." She was 19 when he arrived. When Simons's collection of sermons, Vexed Questions, came out in 1913, my great-grandfather bought a copy, and later handed it down to her. My grandmother gave this book of sermons to my parents as a present in 1956, when they were helping to get the new fellowship, East Shore, going.
Now I have it, and when I read parts of it I know that I come by this Midwestern corner of Unitarian Universalism honestly. The Rev. Simons said, "It has been my aspiration in life to be a minister of vital religion. There have been no ministers in my family as far as I know, and so I have had no family traditions to influence me. My immediate family have been Unitarians . . . for two generations, and so I have had none of the historic Christian traditions and doctrines to influence me and to comprise religion to me. I entered the ministry because I felt the religiousness of life."
He went into the ministry well over 100 years ago, and in his experience of living in his own family and looking back a couple of generations, Unitarians are not Christians, they are religious people who, again in his words, "are privileged to believe what is believable." I know that many contemporary Unitarian Universalists feel otherwise, and that other historical figures were otherwise motivated, but Simons entered the ministry all those years ago not because he wanted to serve Jesus or God, but because he simply felt "the religiousness of life." During his Cleveland days, Rev. Simons was big on "truth in our minds and love in our hearts," and he understood that our religion must be made manifest in the world. He preached that we feel most at home in territory where the winds of the spirit move from many directions.
There's some great old stuff, and I do believe that a peek into the primary sources yields both a lot of knowledge about where our religion comes from and a lot of amusement. On the Universalist side in Ohio, for example, a history book, Elmo Robinson's The Universalist Church in Ohio, published in the 1920s, claims that in the old days, there were two kinds of people who weren't affiliated with conventional churches: The first type were "men of evil character," and the second were "thinkers of an advanced type, rebelling at the narrowness of conventional religion," and attracted "by the philosophy of the so-called atheism of the day." The book goes on to tell us that apparently, "a great proportion of these people became pronounced Infidels," that is to say, Universalists. One Methodist minister, upon hearing of a new Universalist group in town, said, "I have been fighting the devil for a great many years, but now he has settled right here in our midst!" These Universalists were folks who said right out loud that parts of the Bible "contradict reason and nature." You go back and read some of the old Universalist sermons and commentaries and you begin to understand that what the Universalist ministers were known for around here was their intellectualism. As one source put it, "Pastors came and went-all good and intellectual men."
I know you've probably heard that it was the Unitarians who were intellectual, and that the Universalists were known for their "hearts." But in Ohio at least, that just wasn't true. In fact, Universalists were proud to preach a "religious intellectualism," and not only that, they were known frankly to be "cold"-as one author put it in the 1920s, "The Universalists did not 'put much of their life in their religion.'" Our Universalists here in Ohio were known, at least in one part of the state, not for their loving character but for their arguing-church members even beat each other up once in a while.
The Unitarians and Universalists felt a great affinity for one another, consolidating here and there, going under, reviving. But throughout it all, as a minister said in a sermon in 1932, on the eve of one such consolidation in Cleveland, "The genius of Universalism and Unitarianism, the element which makes them distinct from other denominations, is their spirit of intellectual pioneering."
The way this intellectual pioneering worked was thought to be this: Religious liberals moved through stages. The first stage was a conventional kind of Christianity, then came an intermediate stage where Christian language-words like God, prayer, or salvation, would be used but with the meaning changed or expanded in an attempt to make those traditional words fit the new religion. Then, as the liberals progressed, they left that effort behind, they stopped trying to reclaim the language, and moved into a simple, theistic Unitarianism. Finally, as these historical Unitarians described the process, the newer Unitarians got to the point where they could accept a naturalistic humanism. That's how they saw the process. So you can understand why in 1890, when the American Unitarian Association demanded that the "Westerners" (the folks out here in the Midwest) adopt Christian theistic language, language they did not feel was part of their religion, the Midwesterners would not yield to the folks from Boston, and for maintaining their theological integrity they were called, "cantankerous recalcitrants." Because they would not adopt language that they had no experience of as Unitarians, they were called cantankerous recalcitrants! You can see how perplexing it is to hear contemporary Unitarian Universalists say that there are some among us who are "afraid of God language," or how some UUs are "uncomfortable" with the words "prayer" or "grace" and the like, when in parts of the Midwestern tradition, many UUs are just happily living their authentic Unitarian heritage. Over a hundred years ago the Unitarian minister at First Church preached about prayer and he said, "I have frankly and completely given it up. It is a good deal harder to keep it than to give it up, and I believe we must give it up. . . " That's one strand of Midwestern Unitarian Universalism for you.
Let me go back to the bookshelf of my childhood one last time. Up there were some smaller books; these were particularly beat up. My grandmother had two spiritual practices: she kept a diary, and she kept commonplace books. In an essay about commonplace books earlier this year in Harper's Magazine, Nicholson Baker talks about how when he reads and he comes across something he really likes, he puts a little dot in the margin. And then, at some later date, sometimes years later, he locates the dots and copies them out in a spiral-bound notebook. He says that that's about the only handwriting he does anymore, and that whenever he "takes up the studious pen and begins," it makes him a happier person, that his "own bristling brain-urchins of worry melt in the strong solvent of other people's grammar." That's what my grandmother did too-she wrote commonplace books. I picture her sitting there in her parents' home, first writing in her diary: "January 2, 1908-Made chiffon pies before breakfast, washed dishes & swept, prepared a fruit salad. Went to church. Rev. Simons spoke on "Conflict and Discontent" and I got just what I needed. Later, play rehearsal at church. Professor Dukes acted as my escort home."
And then she would take her commonplace book out of the drawer-I can remember that later in her life she kept them in a drawer-this early commonplace book she named, "Favorite Girlhood Poems," and she would copy out a passage from Ralph Waldo Emerson, or Wordsworth, or Harriet Beecher Stowe, or Longfellow, or Lowell.
Or from a minister, maybe. She might write: "Being 'spiritual' is a characteristic that humanism values and seeks to foster." Or "Worship, in the highest sense-namely, paying reverence to valuable qualities-is not dependent upon belief in the existence of God." And then back to the diary: On April 17, 1908, she wrote, "Got up at 7:15 to prepare a rice pudding. Good Friday service at church. Rev. Simons spoke on "The Meaning of the Cross" & it was a perfect tragedy." (I kid you not.) Went downtown Cleveland with Mr. Ranney, left him at the arcade to join the family for lunch."
And back to the commonplace book: "To know one's self as inherently worthful, actually to find fullest expression in the widest human service and consciously to become a co-worker with cosmic processes, is spiritual experience deep and abiding." Or, "Our ideal church-what is it then? Primarily it is this: . . . in the natural emotions of love, awe, and gratitude common to all people, emotions that rise with the contemplation of the great mysteries of nature and being." (The Rev. Celia Parker Wooley, May 16, 1889)
And so, day after day, she makes a chocolate cream cake before breakfast and writes a letter, and ice skates, and bakes cup custard and reads the paper, and makes mince pies and sets the table and bakes a soufflé. And between times, here in Cleveland, she writes in her commonplace book, "Our interpretation of religion has long been beyond Christianity and beyond any historic religion. We cut loose from no history that has contributed to our growth but we seek to make new history that will contribute to the growth of the future. We feel most at home in territory where the winds of the spirit move from many directions." And so she absorbs her religion, and lives it, and passes it from one generation to the next.
Last year, at our General Assembly in Nashville, we sang the songs of Tennessee, and read the poems and told the stories. This year it was Cleveland. Next year and in the years that follow, there will be other tales and different stories. I hope that one year the story will be yours. Because the winds of the spirit do move from many directions.

Jane Rzepka
Minister

Quest November 2001 Contents

REsources for Living
by By Betsy Hill Williams, Director of Religious Education, CLF

Every once in awhile something comes across my desk that helps me do the hard work of grounding my parenting and family life in religion and theology. The following column, which came to us by way of our newest board member, Denny Davidoff (the author's godmother), offers one of those opportunities.
Rachel Maxwell, a parent and newspaper columnist, wrote the article after participating in the protest of Chief Wahoo (the Cleveland Indian's mascot) at the UUA General Assembly this past summer. The questions Ms. Maxwell asked herself as she stood in the rain were such simple ones: "What am I doing? Why am I doing this?" In answering herself, she discovered what makes religious witness different from political protest; what makes religious education different from character education; and what makes religious community different from any other community. She discovered her theology and the power of her beliefs to compel her to work to end all forms of racism and disrespect.
Ms. Maxwell called this protest a parenting issue; I agree. Not only do we want to teach our children compassion and respect for different cultures, but we also want to show our children how our beliefs compel us to action; we want them to have a theological grounding that makes a difference in their lives. As you approach the holidays and all the unique traditions that go along with them, take a minute to ask yourself: Why are we doing this? What in my belief system attracts me to certain traditions and rituals, compels me to certain outreach or service? Then make the connection with theology for your family and friends. Bring your religious self to your daily life and it will make a difference.
I had an interesting wake-up call last week. I was in Cleveland attending a church conference. The church stood with local American Indians in protest of the name and mascot of the Cleveland "Indians" baseball team. At first, I didn't want to think about baseball team names. I thought, "I have bigger fish to fry; this is the kind of useless, unpopular struggle that gets good folk like me a bad name." I learned I was wrong.
My brother and his wife live in Cleveland. They questioned me about the objection to the name "Indians." They said, "There's nothing disrespectful about the name 'Indians.' What's wrong with Chief Wahoo? He's cute."
I felt uncomfortable. I didn't know what to say. I wasn't sure what to think. Then I saw Chief Wahoo, the logo and mascot for the Cleveland baseball team. He is a red caricature of an Indian with a stupid grin, enormous teeth, and a feathered headdress. He makes Little Black Sambo look respectable.
It's harder to understand why it's not OK to call yourself "the Indians" when you're not Indians. I can say that it's similar to an Israeli sports team calling itself "the Palestinians." It's not a good idea.
I found myself walking in the rain, in solidarity with the American Indians in the area, with the president of the United Church of Christ, the president of the Unitarian Universalist Association and five hundred others. I was yelled at by people using war whoops and chanting "Chief Wahoo! Chief Wahoo!"
I had to think as I walked in the rain. What am I doing? Why am I doing this? What could I possibly say to the people yelling at me? I love baseball. I spent many a happy hour in Boston's Fenway Park as a child. I'm proud of the Seattle Mariners.
This is what I figured out as I walked in the rain: I believe in respecting all people. I believe it is a moral imperative that we work to end all forms of racism. Using the name "Indians" and the symbol of Chief Wahoo does not come from a position of love and respect for Indians. I can honestly say that I walk in the rain in solidarity with the American Indians because my religion demands of me that I stand up for justice, equity and compassion in all human relations. Surely your religion or your humanity demands that of you too. Many do. Among the organizations that stand in support of ending racism in sports team names and mascots are:
° National Education Association
° National Conference of Christians and Jews
° United Church of Christ
° United Methodist Church
° Unitarian Universalist Association
° Presbyterian Church, USA
° Southern Christian Leadership Conference
° NAACP
° American Jewish Committee
° Seattle University changed its team name from "the Chieftains" to "the Redhawks."
° Meadowdale High School changed its name from "the Chiefs" to "the Mavericks."
This is a parenting issue. What do you think American Indians in Seattle tell their kids when they go to a Mariners-Cleveland game? Do you think the caricature Indian, Chief Wahoo, feels good to those kids? What are your children learning when they see the Chief Wahoo? Is this learning to be "One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all?" No. In April, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights called for an end to the use of Native American images and team names by non-Native schools. They noted that such images and team names are "particularly inappropriate and insensitive in light of the long history of forced assimilation that American Indian people have endured in this country." The report goes on to state that, "It is particularly disturbing that Native American references are still to be found in educational institutions, whether elementary, secondary or post-secondary. Schools are places where diverse groups of people come together to learn not only the 'Three Rs,' but also how to interact respectfully with people from different cultures."
That is what we need: for our children to learn "how to interact respectfully with people from different cultures." And the Cleveland baseball team is not helping.

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CLFers Celebrate Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has come again! Last year, members of the Church of the Larger Fellowship's e-mail list talked on-line and offered examples of how their feasts varied from the traditional. With their permission, we share with the rest of our CLF congregation, a few of the letters about how Thanksgiving feasts fare around the world of CLF members.

Alexia and I shared a tofurkey, complete with stuffing, gravy, sweet potatoes, and all. I found it in a predominantly vegetarian grocery store in a nearby predominantly Seventh Day Adventist community.
I thought of you all as we gave thanks for all our friends.

Toni Wing
Texas

I have taken a few minutes to pause from the cooking frenzy to wish all of you a wonderful Thanksgiving (and if you don't celebrate this holiday, a great day). The sun just came up over the mountains casting a beautiful range of pinks, oranges, and yellows. It is a beautiful day here, and one of the rare Thanksgiving holidays where there isn't a bunch of white stuff on the ground. Turkey is traditional fare here, as well as something made from Alaskan berries. This year's berry selection is cranberry chutney. (Low-bush cranberries are a traditional food and medicine for AK Natives/Indians here). Peace and love to you and your families.

Debby

My wife's family is Muslim and they don't eat turkey. However, they still get together and have chicken. So that is what is cooking now. Tomorrow I will have turkey with my parents.
Happy Turkey-Day!!!

Robert M. Zannelli

Feliz Dia de Accion de Gracias!
Thanksgiving is not a holiday in Spain, and a few of my Spanish friends have asked me about its customs. Can you eat anything or is there a traditional menu? Do you do anything other than eat? In the evening, do families go out to a cafe or is it true that Americans do all their entertaining at home? Is there a special wine for Thanksgiving?
At least one American chef here in Madrid prepared a "classica comida norteamericana." His restaurant was on the far side of Retiro Park from our apartment. My husband and I strolled over this afternoon, a pleasant mile walk on a sunny day-afternoon temperatures in the 50s. The leaves on the trees are turning yellow and brown and dropping off. The restaurant was elegant and the dinner was indeed classic, with New England clam chowder, rolls, roast turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, candied yams, succotash, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie-with Spanish wine and espresso coffee. The chef was pleased to have so many guests and chatted with every table, even though that morning, as he was about to cook 16 turkeys, his oven broke. The restaurant was filled with happy, noisy Americans and a few of their Spanish friends, and was decorated with cardboard-and-crepe-paper turkeys. The waiters did their best to speak English.

Sue Burke
Madrid, Spain

The girls in my yard, and their two Toms (about 15, altogether), surely are giving thanks today . . . as my husband got a turkey hunting license and announced to me one day that he was "goin' huntin', tomorrow!". . . at which time the flock disappeared, not to reappear until after hunting season was over! They're complacently picking through the snow here, this morning, looking for food-the sunflower seeds and bird food we've put out for them . . .
I'm having home-made pizza for dinner (with sausage, not turkey) in their honor.

Ann (Elizabeth Ann Woldt)
Mt. Morris, Wisconsin

For me it's Turkey-Turkey-Turkey!
I love this day! Turkey, cranberry sauce, my yams (made with pineapple, nuts, and marshmallows), bread dressing-no cornbread here! A real feast!
Why do I do this just once a year?

Ben Larson
Hereford, Texas

Here on the border of Mexico (but the USA side of the Rio) we generally have turkey for Thanksgiving but celebrate Christmas with tamales and other Mexican foods. The making of tamales is a major family ritual for many here at Christmas.

Deanna Bowling
Terlingua, Texas

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CLFer Writes GA Journal


This year, the daily journal posted on the UUA website's General Assembly pages was written by a member-and delegate-of the Church of the Larger Fellowship: Ann Woldt. If you go to http://www.uua.org/ga/ga01/journal.html, you'll be able to read Ann's journal entries for Thursday, June 21 and Friday, June 22. "I've only been involved in small fellowships," Ann wrote, "and now, for the last few years, I've been a member of the CLF-just me and my computer and telephone, and voices and correspondence from afar. Yet here are a thousand, two thousand, maybe as many as four thousand like-minded people, gathered together. Just seeing this many people, this many friends, is powerful. Already I'm running into people that I've talked with by phone, and by e-mail. It is always exciting to put face to voice, whether it be "real" voice or voice by the written word. "
Congratulations Ann!

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Negative Space

by Mary Blocksma

My eyes, cracking slightly to check the time, blink, bedazzled at moonlight on breakers stretching like bright white fringes on a black piñata. I've never seen a big surf roll straight in like this, angled neither north nor south. Long waves loop in. Stars prickle the sky.

I have to paint this, but when I turn on the light inside, the outside disappears. All I see in the window is a reflection of me shivering in my white nightshirt. Lamp off, I look, lamp on, I paint, fast, eidetically. No need to mix: I paint only the negative space. This as black and white as my life gets.

By morning, another gift: moonset at sunrise, pink cloud-babies, rare promise of a sunny day.

(From Lake Lover's Year: A Writer Learns to Paint, by CLF member Mary Blocksma, whose Zen-like record of a Great Lake's colors and moods includes 115 full-color watercolor reproductions and an intimate journal describing her creative process, her life as an artist over fifty, and how she learns to paint. $28.50 (paper) from http://half.com/. Signed copies $25 from the author at 989-894-5925).

Quest November 2001 Contents

Did you know. . .

that CLF has a Prison Pen Pal program?
For more information, email us at clf@uua.org or call us at 617-948-6150.

Quest November 2001 Contents

Last updated June 12, 2005