Sunday, 6 April 2025: With Feathers

April 2, 2025April 2, 2025Robert

Great Blue Heron striding along a drifting log in Reelfoot Lake State Park, Tennessee

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

— Emily Dickinson, “‘Hope’ Is The Thing With Feathers”

This Sunday we will consider “hope” and “things with feathers” as the reawakening we call Spring changes the world around us. Robert Helfer will lead the service.

Please Join us for Worship.

We currently conduct a full worship service on the first Sunday of each month, and discuss a different short reading each of the remaining Sundays.

**If you wish to join by ZOOM and do not already have the link, please email us at westforkuu@gmail.com**

Please Join us for Worship.

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.

Children are welcome. The building is wheelchair accessible, with an accessible restroom. You may park in the lot on the west side of the building. Please enter through the door at the back on the west side of the building.

Map

A half hour for coffee, discussion, and socializing, including those who attend through ZOOM, follows from the end of the service until 12:00 noon. More about us.

If you have been a regular attendee and we had an email address for you, we have added you to our Google Group. If you have not gotten a group email already, please email westforkuu@gmail.com so that we can add you to the group. We encourage members to continue discussions through the week using the WFUU email group. Public announcements will continue to be posted here on the website and on our Facebook page 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, 16 April 2023: Solitude

April 10, 2023April 10, 2023Robert

Not all people are called to be hermits, but all people need enough silence and solitude in their lives to enable the deep inner voice of their own true self to be heard at least occasionally.
— Thomas Merton (modified slightly)

Each of us needs to make space for the “still small voice” of our own true self. Robert Helfer will lead the service.

Please Join us for Worship.

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, 2 April, 2023: Our Universalist Roots

March 27, 2023LdeG

The early Universalist Hosea Ballou said “Man, being not only a religious, but also a social being, requires for the promotion of his rational happiness religious institutions, which, while they give a proper direction to devotion, at the same time make a wise, and profitable improvement of his social feelings.”

Universalism has a long history in north-central West Virginia. Lisa deGruyter will lead this week’s service on our Universalist history.

Please Join Us for Worship.

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

Sunday, 5 March 2023: We Are One

March 5, 2023May 14, 2024LdeG

Welcome before Prelude

Good morning and welcome to West Fork Unitarian Universalists. I’m Lisa and I feel blessed to serve this congregation as a lay leader. I’m glad to see all of you here today.
Thank you for joining us.
Let us use the prelude for centering. We are about to enter sacred time. We are about to make this time and this place sacred by our presence and intention.
Please silence your phones… and as you do so, I invite us also to turn down the volume on our fears; to remove our masks; and to loosen the armor around our hearts.
Breathe.
Let go of the expectations placed on you by others—and those they taught you to place on yourself.
Drop the guilt and the shame, not to shirk accountability, but in honest expectation of the possibility of forgiveness. Let go of the thing you said the other day. Let go of the thing you dread next week. Be here, in this moment. Breathe, here.

Prelude: The Story of Four Rivers

Welcome: Look To This Day by Kalidasa

Look to this day: For it is life, the very life of life. In its brief course Lie all the verities and realities of your existence. The bliss of growth, The glory of action, The splendor of beauty Are but experiences of time.

For yesterday is but a dream And tomorrow is only a vision; But today well-lived, makes Yesterday a dream of happiness And every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well therefore to this day.

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Sunday, 5 March 2023: We Are One

February 27, 2023LdeG

The seeming lack of animation and organization in earth, air, liquids, and metals is, as Leibniz guessed long ago, an illusion of our senses. Furthermore, the strict determinism of classical physics is now seriously challenged or rejected by many, perhaps most, physicists. For all we can know, when an atom of uranium turns into an atom of lead, it may be a spontaneous act of the atom. No law determines when it happens.
Charles Hartshorne, “A New World and a New World View,” in The Life of Choice, ed. Clark Kucheman, Beacon Press, (1978)

Lisa deGruyter will offer music, words, poetry, and talk relating to UU philosopher Charles Hartshorne and his process theology. As he says “Some call it “process philosophy.” It changes everything. For example, it gives a new answer to the old question, “Why does God not prevent suffering and evil?” and also to the question, “Why do animals all die?”

Please Join us for Worship.

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

Sunday, 26 February, 2023: On Love and Loving

February 21, 2023February 21, 2023Robert

Love is an action, Never simply a feeling. -- Bell Hooks

To begin by always thinking of love as an action rather than a feeling is one way in which anyone using the word in this manner automatically assumes accountability and responsibility. We are often taught we have no control over our “feelings.” Yet most of us accept that we choose our actions, that intention and will inform what we do. We also accept that our actions have consequences. … If we were constantly remembering that love is as love does, we would not use the word in a manner that devalues and degrades its meaning.

— Bell Hooks, All About Love (2000)

“On Love and Loving,” Phoebe Durst will lead this week’s service as an exploration of the work of love and how this work can be a building block of a spiritual practice.

Please Join Us for Worship.

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

Sunday, 19 February, 2023: Weighing Principles

February 13, 2023February 13, 2023Robert

The good thing about principles is that they make life easy. I have heard it said that when someone bases his life on principle, 99 percent of his decisions are already made.

— Dave Ramsey, Total Money Makeover

But will principles always lead us to good decisions? Are there never conflicts? If there are conflicts, how do we resolve them? Robert Helfer will lead the service.

Please Join Us for Worship.

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

Sunday, 12 February 2023: What is love and how might we practice it?

February 6, 2023LdeG

Without saying it in so many words, often the thread holding all our thoughts and activities together is: “What’s in it for me?” We wonder how we can survive, get ahead, win, succeed , overcome, take over, grab something, be recognized, appreciated, rewarded…you name it, the list is endless.

In lojong practice, the idea is to replace that unspoken intention based on fear and the need to prop up the ego with an intention of benevolence. Rather than making a few heroic or virtuous gestures or taking on some righteous cause, the idea is to have a quality of awareness, gentleness, and benefit to others color everything you do.

Such an intention should color even the way in which you do the simplest things, like picking up your teacup. Your gestures, speech, thoughts, and emotions should all be expressions of one intention: the powerful intention of benefiting sentient beings.
Train Your Mind: All activities should be done with one intention, Judy Lief in Tricycle, July 2010

Here I’ll simply note that what’s unusual about the liberal, free religious tradition to which I belong is that it’s not so much concerned to provide a person with a single, one size-fits-all, out-of-the-box answer to the question of the meaning of life but, instead — through meditation, music, song and thought — to offer a religious way of being in the world that can help a person live the questions they have so that, one long distant day, they will be able to live into an answer that dawns upon them.
A FREE RELIGION RADIANT WITH A HUMANISING LIGHT THAT THE DARKNESS WILL NEVER OVERCOME Andrew Brown, Caute, 22 Sept 2022

Lisa deGruyter will offer music, words, poetry and thoughts relating to what “love” might mean in “Love is the doctrine of this church” and “Love your neighbor as yourself”, as well as some practices of “love”.

Please Join us for Worship.

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

Sunday, 15 January 2023: Epicurean Practices

January 11, 2023January 14, 2023LdeG

Silver cup with skeletons of Greek poets and philosophers; Epicurean

Luxurious food and drinks, in no way protect you from harm. Wealth beyond what is natural, is no more use than an overflowing container. Real value is not generated by theaters, and baths, perfumes or ointments, but by philosophy.
Epicurus, from the esplanade wall at Oenoanda, now in Turkey, as recorded by Diogenes of Oenoanda

The Tetrapharmakos — the four-part cure — of Epicurus was “don’t fear god, don’t worry about death, what is good is easy to get, and what is terrible is easy to endure”, far from our modern meaning of epicureanism as “eat, drink, and be merry”. Lisa deGruyter will continue her series on spiritual practices of ancient Greek philosophies and how we might use them, this time on the Epicureans.

Please Join us for Worship.

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

Sunday, December 25, 2021: NO SERVICE

December 18, 2022December 12, 2022LdeG

We are taking Sunday, December 25, off. There will be no Zoom service and no in-person service, while we celebrate with family and friends. Please join us January 1, 2023, when we will have our traditional Sunday after Christmas brunch, also available on Zoom (minus the shared food, unfortunately.).

We have resumed in person services, which you can also join on Zoom. We share music, readings, and hymns on our usual presentation slides, have a story and a talk, and share joys and sorrows, as well as a virtual “coffee hour” discussion starting at 10:30, with the service at 11. 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.

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