Sunday, September 3, 2023: Deegan and Hinkle Lakes, Bridgeport

August 30, 2023August 30, 2023Robert

: Little Blue Heron at Deegan & Hinkle Lakes Park

We have Spiritual Outings on the first Sunday of each month during the summer and into the winter. For this year’s September outing, we will return to Deegan & Hinkle Lakes Park in Bridgeport for a celebration of nature, fellowship, and the beginning of autumn on Sunday, September 3.

During this time of continuing covid-19 pandemic we are following current CDC guidelines (see https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/communication/guidance.html). We request that anyone who is not fully vaccinated practice appropriate social distancing and wear a mask except when eating. Although fully vaccinated people are safe without masks for themselves and for unvaccinated people, we recommend that fully vaccinated people also practice appropriate social distancing and wear a mask except when eating.

We will meet at 11 a.m. in the picnic area for a short service, followed by a modified potluck picnic, conversation, and walking. Bring food to share if you are able and wish to share; otherwise, just bring food for yourself and share our company.

We would love to have you come worship with us.

For a map, please click on this link: goo.gl/maps/v33mWw5k3Wm

Email westforkuu@gmail.com or use our contact form for more information or to carpool, or write to us at PO Box 523, Clarksburg WV 26302

There Will Come Soft Rains

August 4, 2023August 1, 2023Robert

Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains — August 4, 2026” from The Martian Chronicles reflects the day before the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. This version from BBC Radiophonic Workshop, 1977, titled “August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains”, was adapted for “Narrator, Vocoder and Synthesizer” by Malcolm Clarke.

Someone’s comment on the YouTube page for a different version provides some context:

This Ray Bradbury story is an anti-war message, as is the Sara Teasdale poem with the same title. However, the full title of the story in The Martian Chronicles is “There Will Come Soft Rains — August 4, 2026”. On August 5, 1945 (US time), the USA dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. August 4, 2026 marks the end of a full 80 years after the bombing. The destroyed house repeating “Today is August 5, 2026” endlessly is a warning of what happened when we forgot Hiroshima 81 years before. Bradbury wrote the story in 1950, just after the Soviet Union first successfully tested a nuclear bomb in 1949. The story was right for its time as it is today. It is about what a Cold War brings when it gets hot.

Sara Teasdale wrote her poem around 1918 during a time of total war and pandemic. Perhaps the poem still has something to say to us in our current condition.

(War Time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows calling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

—- Sara Teasdale, There Will Come Soft Rains

A Declaration

July 4, 2023July 2, 2023Robert

I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And by the way, in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.

— Abigail Adams, Letter to John Adams (31 March 1776)

Prayer

July 2, 2023June 19, 2023Robert

The most intelligent and decent prayers ever uttered by a famous American, addressed To Whom It May Concern, and following an enormous man-made calamity, were those of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, back when battlefields were small. They could be seen in their entirety by men on horseback atop a hill. Cause and effect were simple. Cause was gunpowder, a mixture of potassium nitrate, charcoal, and sulfur. Effect was flying metal. Or a bayonet. Or a rifle butt.

Abraham Lincoln said this about the silenced killing grounds at Gettysburg:

“We cannot dedicate — we cannot consecrate — we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.”

Poetry! It was still possible to make horror and grief in wartime seem almost beautiful. Americans could still have illusions of honor and dignity when they thought of war. The illusion of human you-know-what. That is what I call it: “The you-know-what.”

— Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country (2005)

The Battle of Gettysburg took place July 1-3, 1865, in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Gettysburg is considered to have been the deadliest battle of the US Civil War.

The battlefield became the Soldiers’ National Cemetery. Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous “Gettysburg Address“, which Vonnegut cites above, at the cemetery’s dedication on November 19, 1865.

World Humanist Day

June 21, 2023Robert

I believe in the existence of a universe of suns and planets, among which there is one sun belonging to our planetary system; and that other suns, being more remote, are called stars; but that they are indeed suns to other planetary systems. I believe that the whole universe is NATURE, and that the word NATURE embraces the whole universe, and that God and Nature, so far as we can attach any rational idea to either, are perfectly synonymous terms. Hence I am not an Atheist, but a Pantheist; that is, instead of believing there is no God, I believe that in the abstract, all is God; and that all power that is, is in God, and that there is no power except that which proceeds from God. I believe that there can be no will or intelligence where there is no sense; and no sense where there are no organs of sense; and hence sense, will, and intelligence, is the effect, and not the cause, of organization. I believe in all that logically results from these premises, whether good, bad, or indifferent. Hence, I believe, that God is all in all; and that it is in God we live, move, and have our being; and that the whole duty of man consists in living as long as he can, and in promoting as much happiness as he can while he lives.

— Abner Kneeland, “A Philosophical Creed,” written at Hebron, N.H., May 28, 1833, Boston Investigator, July 12, 1833

The biography of Abner Kneeland by Stephan Papa and Peter Hughes in the Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography reports:

Abner Kneeland (April 7, 1774-August 27, 1844), a pioneer evangelist and minister, was a powerful, if inconsistent, advocate of Universalism for a quarter of a century beginning with the Winchester Convention of 1803. His religious doubts and ever-changing theology posed challenges to his Universalist friends and colleagues. Ultimately he was led beyond Christianity. After he left the Universalist fellowship he became the last man to be convicted of blasphemy in the state of Massachusetts. Clinton Lee Scott wrote that Kneeland was “the most controversial character ever ordained to the Universalist ministry. He anticipated by a century opinions now held without opposition.”

World Humanist Day has been celebrated on 21 June every year since the 1980s. For more information about World Humanist Day, see https://humanists.international/what-is-humanism/world-humanist-day/

Midsummer

June 21, 2023Robert

Midsummer is when the Cosmos is holding and supporting us, when we’re allowed to release anything we’ve been keeping in. What creative venture is waiting to burst forth? What can you continue to nurture in the next season?

— Gabriela Herstik, The Inner Witch

Juneteenth

June 19, 2023Robert

The people are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property, between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them, become that between employer and hired labor. The freed are advised to remain at their present homes, and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts; and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.

— General Gordon Granger, “General Order No. 3“, June 19, 1865, Galveston, Texas

No Sunday Service Until September

June 12, 2023August 30, 2023Robert

We are taking a break in our services. There will be NO Sunday service, either in person or on ZOOM, until September 2023.

We are on hiatus for the summer. We will return to weekly meetings in September, beginning with a Spiritual Outing on Sunday September 3. We are planning a weekly service of meditation and sharing, and to offer Building Your Own Theology, a course in examining our own history of beliefs, the history of liberal religion, and clarifying our own beliefs today, beginning in September.

… the heretic, acquainted with loneliness, has nothing to offer but himself. He has no claim to present but that of his own soul, and its right to recognition. He is convinced that not through churches, or books, but men, does God speak His word and reveal His will. He does not deny that revelation has come to other men in earlier times, and that what they saw has become the precious tradition of a church, or the holy testimony of a Bible; but he insists that this

“Revelation is not sealed;
Answering unto man’s endeavor.
Truth and right are still revealed.”

– John Haynes Holmes,

Our services are Sundays at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time on ZOOM and in person at the Progressive Women’s Association Event Center, 305 Washington Ave. in downtown Clarksburg, behind the Courthouse. If you wish to join on ZOOM, please contact us for logon information. A coffee hour, a time for discussion and socializing (including ZOOM participants), follows from the end of the service until 12:00 noon. More about us. If you prefer not to be seen, video is optional. If you would like to participate, please email westforkuu@gmail.com for details and a link, or for help with using ZOOM.

If you are a regular attendee, we have added you to our Google Group if we had an email address. If you have not gotten a group email already, please email westforkuu@gmail.com so that we can add you to the group, which we will be using for staying in touch with each other during this time. Public announcements will continue to be posted here on the website and on our Facebook page and Twitter account, as usual.

Email westforkuu@gmail.com or use our contact form for more information or write to us at PO Box 523, Clarksburg WV 26302

Sunday, June 4, 2023: Valley Falls State Park

May 29, 2023May 24, 2023Robert

We have Spiritual Outings on the first Sunday of each month during the summer. For this year’s second outing, we will gather for a celebration of the beginning of summer, flowers, and the challenges of fellowship, June 4, at Valley Falls State Park — picnic and hiking on the banks of the Tygart Valley River.

We will meet at 11 a.m. in the picnic area for a short service followed by a potluck picnic, conversation, and walking. Bring food to share if you are able and wish to share; otherwise, just bring food for yourself and share our company.

We would love to have you come worship with us.

For a map, please use this link: https://goo.gl/maps/CiiqyDAXiw42

Email westforkuu@gmail.com or use our contact form for more information or to carpool, or write to us at PO Box 523, Clarksburg WV 26302

A Great Spangled Fritillary (*Speyeria cybele*) came for the picnic

Sunday, 28 May 2023: No Sunday Service This Week

May 24, 2023May 24, 2023Robert

I do believe in the priesthood of all believers, and I do believe in the worth and the valor of all artists, and we are all artists. There is clearly a hierarchy, and one does not confuse the brilliant child whose work hangs on the refrigerator with Picasso, but you praise the child and you allow the child to grow from that first effort. From every effort comes growth, and every effort is some form of worship. This I believe.

To be a good citizen is a form of art. To be a good friend is a form of art. There is artistry in doing well whatever it is you are needed or forced or delighted to do. In my worst forms of penury, I was a glorious artist at whatever I needed to do to have a little food and a room and some shoes. I was grateful to live and to work and to grow.

–Martha Graham, Interview with James Grissom, 1990, James Grissom, Follies of God (2015)

We are taking a break in our services. There will be NO Sunday service, either in person or on ZOOM, on Sunday 28 May.