Green Tip of the Month
There are so many ways you can help the earth with your food choices. Here’s one: buying locally-grown products keeps tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere because so much of
what you find in supermarkets is shipped in from all over the world. Here’s another: it takes ten times more fossil fuel to produce a calorie of meat than a calorie of plant food. Solutions: 1) Buy fresh local produce in season and freeze or preserve for later use. 2) Eat plant-based meals two or three times a week.
Find Connecticut farmers’ markets, farms, farm stands, CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture,) as well as restaurants and retailers that source from local farms at: www.buyctgrown.com. To find Connecticut’s organic food and farms go to www.ctnofa.org.
This is your chance to help us celebrate everyone’s contributions to making this world a better place, to help identify the issues we’ll focus on next year, and to help brainstorm about the best ways to tackle them. If you can, bring a dish of your choice to share, but don’t let getting a dish together stop you from coming.
Date: June 22, 2008
Location: UUS:E’s back yard (inside if it rains)
Time: Right after the 11 A.M. service
UUS:E PICNIC IN THE PARK is SUNDAY, JULY 6 from 1-4 p.m.
CELEBRATE Vicki's 30 years as Director of Religious Education and Josh's five years as our minister.
EAT, DRUM, CHAT, PLAY GAMES and have lots of fun.
Don't miss it! SIGN UP sheets are up at UUS:E. Let us know you plan to be there, and what you'll bring to add to the picnic. Feel free to bring friends. Help kick off summer fun together!
Sunday, August 24, 1:00 P.M.
The UUS:E community will hold a service of
memory and hope to mark the one-year anniversary
of the disappearance of Carol Shapiro
on Sunday, August 24th, 1:00 P.M. The service
will be followed by a picnic.
Dear Ones:
I suspect the
national hub-hub over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright will have subsided by the time
you read this. Racism will not have subsided, so I believe what I have to say
is still relevant. Here is some background: First, from 1972 until his retirement
last year, Rev. Wright was senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ
in Chicago. Trinity is the largest church (approximately 6,500 members) in
the United Church of Christ—a white, liberal denomination with the same
Puritan heritage as Unitarian Universalism. Trinity is one of a number of churches
established by the Congregationalists in the 1800s to serve people of African
descent. Trinity was in deep decline when Rev. Wright began his ministry there.
He says that when he began he understood the key to their revitalization would
be clarity of identity. He helped them grow into their current identity, captured
in their motto, “Unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian.”
Second, Rev. Wright is a liberation theologian. He believes God sides with the poor and oppressed. In his experience black people and people or color generally are overly represented among the poor and oppressed in the U.S. Like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he has continuously offered a searing critique of the U.S. based on this experience. In late February and into March people across the country became aware of selected statements from Rev. Wright that were highly critical of U.S. domestic and foreign policy—particularly its poor treatment of people of color. Finally, still other statements linked him to professed anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan and to a widely discredited theory that the U.S. government is spreading HIV among African Americans.
None of these statements would have registered on the national scene were it not also the case that presidential candidate, Barack Obama, is a member of Trinity Church and considers Rev. Wright his pastor. Suddenly, political and media pundits began calling Rev. Wright an unpatriotic hate monger and wondering aloud whether Barack Obama shares his views.
I have heard Rev. Wright speak twice and I have met him once. While I am certainly not familiar with the greater extent of his work, I find him to be one of the most principled, brilliant, wise and kind people I have ever encountered. He is also imperfect, and I remain deeply troubled by his connections to Louis Farrakhan and his statements about HIV. However, his statements on United States racism, in my view, are accurate, based not only on his personal experience and the collective experience of black people, but on rigorous academic study. As I listen to his sermons on U.S. racism, I hear not only a profound love and hope for the United States but a profound pain that our promise as a nation has not yet been fulfilled. Do his imperfections automatically discredit his impassioned call for an end to racism? I hope not. Good people make mistakes.
The fact that Rev. Wright’s statements about racism could be so blatantly taken out of context and used to discredit the first truly viable African American candidate for president of the United States is, in my view, a sign that racism is alive and well. I also take it as a call for UUs to be ever more vigilant in the struggle against racism.
My intent in writing this letter is not to endorse any political candidate, but simply to help shed some light on the complexities surrounding a great, though certainly imperfect, American pastor.
With love,
--Josh
For over a year now, we have been videotaping many of the Sunday services at
UUS:E. After their run on the three community access channels (Cox in Manchester, Community
Voice Channel in Bolton and Charter Communications in Windham), the tapes/DVDs are
brought to the UUS:E office and are in a box next to the copier. Just come in and sign out the
programs you were unable to see. These videos may be borrowed by any of our members and
friends.
Miss a service? Check it out. We may have a copy you can borrow.
Bob Hewey, Video Editor & Mal Barlow, Videographer
Nancy Lister Communications Committee Chairperson
The Social Justice Committee is sponsoring a film series at UUS:E the second Friday of every month at 7p.m. This month’s movie will be shown in our main room. This is your chance to catch up with movies related to social and economic justice issues that you may have heard mentioned on public radio, saw a review of in a magazine, or that flew by you in a university film forum.
Contact Jean Labutis to volunteer at the Washington School.
As our congregation grows, we recognize that there are many different ways to provide information to our members and potential members.
Updated:June 19, 2008
