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Did You Know... that the CLF offers an online congregation for UU young adults (18-35)? Check out www.uucyf.org.
Executive Director Sabbatical Lorraine Dennis, the CLF's executive director, will be on sabbatical from July 10th to September 5th. Iris Hardin, membership administrator and Quest publication manager, Donna Dudley, fiscal administrator, and Beth Murray, librarian, will work with the Rev. Jane Rzepka to assure that the office continues to meet your needs while Lorraine is away. If you have questions or concerns, please email the office at clf@clfuu.org or call 617-948-6166.
We look forward to having Lorraine back, rested and refreshed, when she returns in September.
BY JACK MENDELSOHN, MINISTER EMERITUS, FIRST PARISH UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST, BEDFORD, MASSACHUSETTS
Listen to this sermon to the Quest sermon podcast
Adapted from Being Liberal in an Illiberal Age by Jack Mendelsohn. Originally published in 1960 as Why I am a Unitarian, and reprinted in 1985 as Being Liberal in an Illiberal Age, a second edition of this classic Unitarian Universalist text has recently been issued by Skinner House.
Human life is a struggle—against frustration, ignorance, suffering, evil, the maddening inertia of things in general; but it is also a struggle for something which our experience tells us can be achieved in some measure. —Julian Huxley
The more we try to say precisely what is in our hearts, the more we find that we are speaking for multitudes of strangers the world over. The deeper we get down to our own fundamentals, the more deeply we represent those of other people. Like all human beings, I live on borrowed time. I never know when my time will run out, but I do know that it will run out. I have no way of knowing what tragedies will befall me at the next step, the next ring of the telephone, the next rising of the sun. My notion of spiritual fulfillment is learning how to accept this fate with a ringing affirmation of all that makes life worth living.
The liberal spirit is my inspiration to be a creative, cooperative human being, in spite of the fact that life may crush me at any moment and death may blot me out. As a skeptic about such matters, I cannot comfort myself with supernatural promises. I know that human existence contains irreducible elements of tragedy and incompleteness. I know that I can never really comprehend the totality of things. I am finite. For me the fundamental question of life is not why, but how. How shall I live while I live? This is the bedrock question. In answering it, what I believe matters very much. As we read in the apocryphal book called Ecclesiasticus:
Accept no person against thine own soul, And let no reverence for anyone cause thee to fall. But let the counsel of thine own heart stand: For there is none more faithful unto thee than it. For our minds are sometimes wont to bring us tidings, More than seven watchmen, that sit above in a high tower. It takes strong girders of conviction to keep the counsels of thine own liberal-spirited heart standing.
Heinrich Heine, the German poet, was gazing with a friend at the cathedral in Amiens.
Asked the friend: "Tell me, Heinrich, why can't people build piles like this any more?"
Answered Heine: "My dear friend, in those days people had convictions. We moderns have opinions. And it takes more than opinions to build a Gothic cathedral."
Modernity's ambiguity, confusion, and sheer madness are enough to send the dazed rushing pell-mell toward certainty and direction. The limitless reaches of science and reason collapse into uncertainty and anxiety. "Where, oh where, is our center?" is a bleat of our times. The open mind? Why, it turns out to be nothing but a sieve. Even the most respected scientists say so. Take Niels Bohr's "Every sentence that I utter should be regarded by you not as an assertion but as a question." And Jacob Bronowski's "There is no absolute knowledge…. All information is imperfect." Modernity's only certainty is everlasting uncertainty. All that was thought to be solid dissolves in the air, adding to the pollution.
A generation hungering for certainties is like a vacuum. It sucks in evangelists of reactionary nostrums bearing conservative labels. Thus we are well launched into an era of regressive politics and regressive religion, in which the liberal spirit is at the head of a line of perceived evils, followed in no particular order by abortion, welfare, food stamps, affirmative action, sex education, the United Nations, aid to the Third World, disarmament, and on and on.
What exactly is this satanic liberalism? To me, and by and large to history, it is a way of walking and acting in the world. It means celebrating and practicing the importance of persons: their inherent freedom to think, speak, associate, hear, read, see, and learn; not perfect freedom, but responsible freedom, become manifest in the particulars of our lives. It means warmly embracing political democracy and constitutional, compassionate government. Among its meanings are social justice, popular education, equal opportunity and access, peaceful resolution of conflict, broad tolerance of diversity, the scientific spirit of inquiry, a rational outlook, a relativistic philosophy, and ethicosocial religion.
In my life, the liberal spirit is wholistic. It informs my being in all of its dimensions—spiritual, political, social, private and public. I recognize, with appreciation and respect, that this is not a universal condition. There are numerous religious liberals who are conservative in their politics and religious conservatives who are liberal in their politics.
I claim no heavenly sanction for my all-embracing liberal way of walking in life's paths. We liberals look for strength and peace, and where do we find them? In being useful, being whole, being warm members of the human family, in adding our might to what is called for by the deep nature of life. That is what the liberal spirit is all about, has always been about.
BY JANE RZEPKA, SENIOR MINISTER, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP
Listen to this article to the "From Your Minister" podcast
A Hindu prayer begins, "Waters, you are the ones who bring us the life force."
There's something about water. A number of you mention the ocean when you talk about substantive religious experiences. Or sometimes you tell me about dreams you've had, where you float serenely down a warm river. A few of you mention that a hot bath at the end of the day is what calms you, saves you in fact, from the chaos of the day.
And so on this summer day, when our mood may be of "quiescence," I would stay with this drifting feeling, this floating, this sense of water.
Of course no minister can resist metaphor, so it's difficult to get more than a few words into a sermon without turning the river into symbols of this and that. I will use just one, the most predictable one: the river as a journey through life. You know, "life is like a river." And to do that I'll go to a book about trout fishing by Ted Leeson. The author reflects on an extended fishing trip he's taking:
You don't take a trip like this. It takes you. It is indeterminate, open-ended, almost a succession of tangents except that there is no main line of navigation and so nothing is really tangential.… What you sense most clearly are the currents outside yourself, shifting forces of uncertain direction. And in such moments, what's needed most is to throw up a sail, pull in the keelboard, and just see where the drift takes you.
Now, nobody's mother—and I am a mother—nobody's mother is going to say, "Honey, you're out of high school now, how's this for a life plan: why don't you just flow with the currents, go with the shifting forces of uncertain direction, and see where the drift takes you." No, my general program would include quite the opposite, with an eye to a livable wage, or an extended stint with the semester system.
I am a wife, too, and living the rest of life with the "uncertain drift" plan in a spouse also seems decidedly unappealing. Yet here we have it, dewy-eyed quotations and a homily waxing poetic about meandering rivers.
So I take it back. Drifting rivers may not serve very well as metaphors for life. But drifting rivers can be excellent metaphors for spiritual nurture.
Every one of us seems to need a break from earning that livable wage, or from the semester system, or from the same four walls, or from whatever routine dailyness is. To make that shift, to stop whatever it is we do, to interrupt the usual lives we lead in order to plumb the spiritual depths is not always easy. The Habit of Rivers continues:
Traveling like this with no destination and no steam of your own takes some getting used to. It is difficult not to look ahead, not to see yourself on the way to somewhere.… For the first few days, I reluctantly picked at the trip like a plate of existential vegetables. I missed my wife, worried about the weather, about work left undone, about where to go next.... I waited, bored by my own company, and considered turning back. There seemed to be no point, which was true, and was also precisely the point.
To be alone with our own souls is important, but not always easy, often not fun, and not dependably exciting. In fact, the title of this homily is "Quiescence," which came from a line I read in the old book by John P. Marquand called The Late George Apley, where the central character says of a soul-searching morning at church, "The hour and a half at Church was a period of complete quiescence and, must I say it frankly, an interval of such boredom as I have never known since."
I understand that people are different, and that for some the idea of drifting, alone, for days or weeks with nothing but trout for company sounds not at all like heaven on earth. You just want out of that boat and into the nearest jazz club or family gathering or golf game.
"But," says Ted Leeson, but unpatterned time and routineless days tug at you with a sly, seductive insistence; bit by bit, they persuade you to themselves and begin to win you over. The ordinary formulae of daily life give way to pleasantly odd private jags, eating when the mood strikes, sleeping when it suits you, fishing or not, abruptly deciding to move on or content to linger, keeping irregular hours.
And then the author concludes:
According to Jung, crossing a river represents a fundamental change of attitude. Pity he didn't fish; he would have recognized that rivers are far more powerful as agents of transformation than symbols for it.
Rivers are far more powerful as agents of transformation than symbols for it.
So much gets attached to our lives unbidden. I don't know what your agent of transformation is at this time of year, what calms your soul, what revives your life's spirit, what it is that makes you "stop." Maybe it's a rinse in the river, right down to the base of your being; or drifting on it, or trout fishing in it. Maybe you are renewed by a lingering gardening project with your children or a cooling afternoon in a city park. Maybe it is the quiet of this time with Quest, here and now—the "quiescence" of this moment, that is a calming presence. May the life spirit continually find ways to flow back in.
Author's note: Quotes in this sermon are taken from: The Habit of Rivers: Reflections on Trout Streams and Fly Fishing, by Ted Leeson. Jane says, "I requested this book from the library and, without thinking to mention the title, I asked my husband if he'd pick up the book they were holding for me. When he got to the circulation desk, Chuck said, 'My wife has a book in for her sermon.' The librarian asked, 'Your wife is preaching on trout fishing?' Chuck said, 'She probably is.' The librarian quickly replied, 'Oh, you're Unitarian Universalists?'"
Listen to this article to the Quest inspiration podcast
I say that it touches us that our blood is sea water and our tears are salt, that the seed of our bodies is scarcely different from the same cells in a seaweed, and that the stuff of our bones is like the coral. I say that the tide rolls in on us, whether we like it or no, and the sands of time keep running their intended course. I say we have to go down into the wave's trough to find ourselves, and then ride her swell until we can see beyond ourselves into our neighbor's eye.I say that we shall never leave the harbor if we do not hoist the sail. I say that we have got to walk the waves as well as solid ground. I say that anyone who goes without consciousness of this will remain chained to a rusty anchor. May the journey find us worthy. Amen.
by Marni Harmony, minister, First Unitarian Church of Orlando, Florida. This piece appears as "Thirty One" in the 1987 meditation manual Exaltation, available through the CLF library (www.clfuu.org/library or 617-948-6150)
At the margin of a newly cut field, where every blade still stands secure, where every bud is fearless now, a lily turns to the dawn and opens. Here, in the kingdom of the living, danger has passed, and clustered buds, moist and swollen, choose their day. We too grow at the margins, where our fear of cutting is faced, where we accept our lowly place, where we explode in the dawn, with the brilliance of a flower.
At the margin of a newly cut field, where every blade still stands secure, where every bud is fearless now, a lily turns to the dawn and opens.
Here, in the kingdom of the living, danger has passed, and clustered buds, moist and swollen, choose their day.
We too grow at the margins, where our fear of cutting is faced, where we accept our lowly place, where we explode in the dawn, with the brilliance of a flower.
by the Rev. Stephen M. Shick, from the meditation manual Consider the Lilies, published by Skinner House, 2004. Available through the CLF library (www.clfuu.org/library or 617-948-6150) or the UUA Bookstore (www.uua.org/bookstore or 800-215-9076).
BY MEG BARNHOUSE, MINISTER, UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST CHURCH OF SPARTANBURG, SOUTH CAROLINA
I know beauty and grace are all around me. Sometimes I know how to be there for it. Other times I get distracted by my bank balance dipping into the negative, by my child coughing, by my body aging, or by someone somewhere being disappointed in me.
Usually it is clear to me that I have the choice to stew about things or to be there for my life. In her book The Intuitive Body, Aikido Master Wendy Palmer writes that you get what you pay for when it comes to your attention. Whatever you pay attention to, that is what you get. If you pay attention to the things that are nuisances, your life feels like one big nuisance. If you pay attention to beauty and joy, then your life fills up with beauty and joy.
Last weekend I was paying attention to ninety-degree heat and shoving crowds, standing in line for the bumper car ride with my two boys. One of them kept changing his mind about the ride. What he really wanted to do was toss rubber chickens into a small pot, five tries for two dollars. My brain was a rubber chicken.
I had just dragged the children all over the fair, looking for the writers with whom I was supposed to sign books. I was also looking for the folks from my congregation who were selling beer. I couldn't find either group, and the whole time I was looking, both boys were pulling on me and asking, "Can we ride the rides now?" I didn't even have the energy to start the "do you know the difference between 'can' and 'may'?" discussion, since my nine year old last time said, "Yeah, mom. 'May' is a month and 'can' is a tin container." Sigh. So I said, "Let's go ride the rides," and here we were in line and into my head came this thought: "I am in hell."
Once I saw my older son dive into a car and start twirling the wheel, waiting for the ride to start, I moved into the shade with his brother to watch. There my brain cooled off enough to remember to enjoy my life, to be there for the beauty and grace in that situation. I saw my son's mouth open wide with joy, its inside stained red by a tiger's-blood-flavored shaved ice.
He was in bliss, being slammed from behind and from all sides by other bumper car drivers. He threw back his head and laughed, putting the pedal to the metal in reverse, snapping his head forward as he took aim and slammed into another car, looking sideways at the other driver, grinning, not quite able to believe this was actually allowed.
Jubilee. Bubbles of joy changed my breathing. I was having fun. Here was beauty and here was grace and here I was in the middle of it. Jubilee indeed.
by Meg Barnhouse, from The Rock of Ages at the Taj Mahal, published by Skinner House, 1999. Available through the CLF library (www.clfuu.org/library or 617-948-6150).
BY KATHY DUHON, MINISTER, UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST MEETING OF SOUTH BERKSHIRE, GREAT BARRINGTON, MASSACHUSETTS
If I ever lightly suggested change, growth, transformation to anyone at some point, I take it back! I fear I might have suggested some such life redirection as though it were as simple as turning left instead of right. I am working hard right now on a small bit of personal transformation. And it makes me realize the immensity of any change. I apologize for ever having bidden anyone toward anything this tough without adequate warning, support, and sympathy.
I am learning how to swim: a simple, carefree and healthy practice for many. Some have told me of experiencing awe and wonder during swimming; others have simply related that swimming has kept them sane; while a friend recently related that daily swimming provided the kind of regular quiet alone time that allowed her to do important soul work.
For me, it is hard, hard, really hard work. I am fearful. I have a lifetime of learning how to be scared around water to undo. If I make the tiniest amount of improvement, I am immediately thrilled. Then I am confronted with the terribly difficult aspect of practice, practice, practice.
My teacher is a goddess, and very kind, and the smartest person I know right now. I hate being a clod for her when she is trying so hard for me.
"Letting go" is one of those spiritual ideas that speaks to many aspects of our lives, and I would dearly love to be more able to just trust and let go into the water. I had to do some letting go—of my pride: I am totally undignified at the swimming pool. On my first lesson, two out of the three other people present that day knew me. It is no good being embarrassed or feeling stupid—I just have to keep finding the inner child who thinks that learning is a good thing, instead of the inner old dog who won't learn new tricks.
To anyone who has ever worked really hard to let go, to confront fear, to change, to do something they know is good but takes a huge amount of time and effort, I salute you. I am totally humbled by the many folks I know who have done much harder transformation work in their lives and come through it to glory. I'm just hoping to learn to tread water this week and that will be a huge step on the journey of transformation.
From the meditation manual A Memory of New Hunger: A Gathering of Writings, published by UU Meeting of South Berkshire. Available through the UUA bookstore (www.uua.org/bookstore or 800-215-9076).
The CLF is pleased to offer a variety of high-quality online courses at our Online Learning Center (www.clfuu.org/learn). Here are a couple that are coming up:
Taught by the Rev. Keith Kron, this eight week course starts July 20th. A story where nothing goes right and no one seems to notice. A mouse who collects memories. Frightened cats who help people overcome racial differences. A student who gets angry at her teacher and learns about forgiveness. The world of picture books has much to offer us: delightful stories, spectacular illustrations, moving messages. We will explore some wonderful children's picture books (3-5 per week) and their meanings and uses in our lives and in our Unitarian Universalist faith. The course will involve reading these books, responding to questions for further thought about each book, and examining themes and uses for these books in our lives and the lives our families. It is not possible to make the books needed for this course available on the Web, but many are likely to be available at your local library. Family participation is encouraged.
Taught by the Rev. Keith Kron, this eight week course starts July 20th.
A story where nothing goes right and no one seems to notice. A mouse who collects memories. Frightened cats who help people overcome racial differences. A student who gets angry at her teacher and learns about forgiveness. The world of picture books has much to offer us: delightful stories, spectacular illustrations, moving messages. We will explore some wonderful children's picture books (3-5 per week) and their meanings and uses in our lives and in our Unitarian Universalist faith.
The course will involve reading these books, responding to questions for further thought about each book, and examining themes and uses for these books in our lives and the lives our families. It is not possible to make the books needed for this course available on the Web, but many are likely to be available at your local library. Family participation is encouraged.
Taught by the Rev. Valerie Mapstone Ackerman, this course starts September 16th, 2006 and runs for eight weeks. UU history and principles call us to work as agents for social change. This course will look at successful movements for change. The history of UU involvement in social justice will serve as a background to helping participants develop practical skills as change agents, as well as helping them connect to the spiritual basis for social justice work.
Taught by the Rev. Valerie Mapstone Ackerman, this course starts September 16th, 2006 and runs for eight weeks.
UU history and principles call us to work as agents for social change. This course will look at successful movements for change. The history of UU involvement in social justice will serve as a background to helping participants develop practical skills as change agents, as well as helping them connect to the spiritual basis for social justice work.
Each of these classes costs $40. To register and pay online go to "Online Classes" under the Religious Education menu on the CLF website (www.clfuu.org).
If you have questions or comments about our online courses, feel free to contact our minister for lifespan learning, Lynn Ungar, at lungar@clfuu.org.
There's something new on our Online Learning Center. This site, which hosts our online courses, now hosts another kind of offering—our Community Forums. What are forums? Well, they're like discussion groups or bulletin boards or—coffee hour! The "Quest Forum" contains a question for discussion for each month of Quest. The "Discussion Forum" contains a number of different topics ranging from Unitarian Universalist History and Theology to Science, Politics, and Social Justice; it also includes a special topic proposed by our members called "Living the Journey," which provides a gentle space for sharing daily thoughts and ideas. You can sign up for either of these forums by going to the www.clfuu.org/learn page on our website and following the directions there.
The Quest Forum has already provided an opportunity for readers to interact directly with each other based on ideas presented in our sermons. For example, in response to a sermon on growing UUism in Texas, one member wrote: "I make a distinction between 'recruiting' and 'inviting.' And choose to not use 'proselytize' or 'evangelize,' primarily because these two words carry a lot of emotional baggage for people, especially for people who came to UU from some other faiths." Another responds: "It is true that 'proselytizing' for UUs is a different kind of thing than the 'quick fix' easy answers that many traditional Christians and fundamentalists give. On the other hand, it is also a pretty long process for them to try to explain to unbelievers why all of 20th century history and our immediate future is really predicted in Revelations. But with UUism we do offer a really great alternative, focusing on the responsible request for truth and meaning! Why can't we have bumper stickers saying 'Open Minds Can Be Religious Too' and 'Religion Evolves, Too?'"
In the Discussion Forum, one person who signed on to "Living the Journey" said, "I'm looking forward to sharing here with others who go very quiet on CLF-L [the CLF's large email list community] when the waters get choppy." Another started a new discussion by telling about something new she had learned and asking others, "What is something new that you have learned recently?" A discussion on "God, gods, Goddess, no god" raised the topic of similarities between gods from different cultures, such as Raven and Coyote, and then moved into trickster stories from various religious traditions. A lively discussion in "Politics and Religion" started with the question, "What do we owe the people of Iraq ?"
If you've ever taken one of our online courses, you're already registered and can use the same username and password you've used on other courses. If not, it's easy to get started. Just follow the instructions on the right side of the screen when you enter the Online Learning Center and are asked for your username and password. You'll need to respond to an email confirming that you've asked to join, and then you can go to either of these Discussion Forums.
If you want to learn more about how to use the Discussion Forums, take a look at the "FAQs for the Discussion Forum," which you will find in the top box after you click on Discussion Forums from the Online Learning Center. It's easy, it's fun, and it's a great way to share thoughts and ideas with UUs all over the world. So sign up and join this new online community we're growing!
BY LYNN UNGAR, MINISTER FOR LIFESPAN LEARNING, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP
Listen to this article to the "REsources for Living" podcast
In the US we often call it 4th of July—a time for picnics and fireworks and celebrating the birth of our nation. But the proper title of the holiday is Independence Day; it's the day when the USA became an independent nation, rather than a colony of Britain. Many other countries, of course, have their own Independence Day, and their own ways of celebrating when their countries became independent nations.
But that got me thinking—maybe people have Independence Days too. Certainly when young adults move away from home marks a kind of Independence Day. But there are lots of Independence Days before that. Learning to walk by yourself is a major Independence Day for very little kids, who no longer have to depend on an adult to get them everywhere they want to go. Learning to read a story to yourself—big time independence. Walking to school by yourself, or biking to a friend's house; being allowed to stay at home without an adult there; making a meal; tying your shoes. Life is full of exciting times when people find new ways that they are able to take care of themselves. Regardless of what country you live in, you could probably celebrate Independence Day several times a year.
RE Express Do you ever wish you had some easy way of providing Unitarian Universalist religious education classes for your family or small group? Do you think about UU Sunday School, but have no idea how to make it happen with children of different ages? Are you wondering what UUs have to teach, and what we might learn to be better educated about our free faith?
Maybe you need look no further than RE Express. Once a month RE Express will deliver a UU curriculum called "CLiF Notes: A Curriculum for Families and Small Groups" directly to your e-mailbox. CLiF Notes has a lesson for each Sunday, with a session each month covering UU History and Identity, World Religions, Principles in Practice and Worship. CLiF Notes is designed to be easy to use, and relies largely on resources that are available within the curriculum or free on the Web. Sessions contain activities designed to appeal to a variety of learning styles.
RE Express also includes links to the CLF KidTalk web page, which has a variety of resources for everything from celebrating holidays around the world to social action projects and spiritual practices. As an added bonus, RE Express also includes a link to the monthly REssources column in Quest. Just add art supplies and stir!
You can request RE Express at bmurray@clfuu.org. This subscription is free to CLF members, and available to non-members for a $99 annual fee.
Learning to be independent is an important part of life, as we discover ways in which we can take care of ourselves and take responsibility for our own needs and choices. But I also wonder if we might want to have another holiday to go along with our many Independence Days. Call it Interdependence Day. "Interdependence," you see, is a word for the countless ways that each of our lives depends on all of those around us. You might recognize the word from our seventh UU principle: "Respect for the interdependent web of all existence, of which we are a part."
"Dependence" means you need someone else to take care of you. " Independence " means you can take care of yourself. But "interdependence" refers to all the ways that we take care of each other. More than that, interdependence means that all of us are connected, that our choices affect everyone else on the planet, human and otherwise.
When humans and other animals breathe, we take in oxygen from the air and breathe out carbon dioxide. When plants breathe, they take carbon dioxide from the air, and put oxygen back into it. It's a cycle of interdependence. When farmers keep bees, providing them with hives and helping them stay healthy, it is because they know that they are interdependent with the bees, which will do the vital job of carrying pollen amongst the crops. When people in a neighborhood watch out for one another, taking in each other's mail during vacations or trading babysitting, that neighborhood becomes an interdependent community.
Of course, interdependence can work in a negative way as well. What we choose affects others, whether we want it to or not. If someone sneaks the last four cookies off the plate, there won't be cookies left for anyone else in the family. If we chop down whole forests of trees for lumber and paper, then there is no longer a home for the animals that used to live there. If we spread gossip, then it affects not only the people who are hurt to find out that stories are being told about them, but also the whole group of people who, by spreading stories, learn that they can't really trust one another.
Everything we do has an effect that goes beyond what we can see. Whoa. Interdependence is such a big idea that the more you think about it, the more you may feel like your brain is twisting into knots. After all, how can you keep making all the tiny everyday decisions of life if each choice has consequences that you can't imagine, let alone control?
Well, our seventh principle suggests starting with the word "respect." You can't know the perfect thing to do in every situation. But if you try to live with respect for the people and non-human beings around you, with awareness that other lives have value, then you should pretty much be on the right track.
If nothing else, you could always declare some day this summer Interdependence Day, and invite over a bunch of friends to celebrate all the ways you make a difference in each other's lives. That and some ice cream, and I think you'd have yourself a pretty decent holiday.
You know what summer tastes like—the pink flesh of a generous earth, this rounded life fully ripe, fully flavored. How could you be ashamed at the tug of desire? The world has opened itself to you, season after season. What is summer's sweetness but an invitation to respond? There is only one way to eat a watermelon. Bury your face in the wetness of that rosy slab and bite.
by Lynn Ungar, minister for lifespan learning, Church of the Larger Fellowship
Last updated June 30, 2006
Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF), 25 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02108-2823, U.S. or Phone: 617-948-6166; or for international callers, use 00-1-617-948-6166 Fax: 617-523-4123, or for international faxes, use 00-1-617-523-4123
E-mail: clf@clfuu.org
