August 4 Work Day and Potluck
August 11 No Service
August 18 Rev. Dr. Elli Elliott Circle Service: Presence
At the Circle Service, we gather in a circle for an informal service of sharing around the topic of the month. Bring a reading or a song or a story or a joke or an artwork or even a dance to share related to the topic. We’ll include activities that invite children’s participation, too. We’ll light our chalice, sing some songs, listen to and appreciate one another’s contributions, light our candles to lift up joys and sorrows, pass the basket, extinguish the chalice, and sing our closing song.
These services intend to establish an enlivening and inclusive BUUF group life-deepening practice that:
* Nurtures our individual reflection on our life journeys and challenges
* Connects us more deeply with one another as a BUUF community, and
* Strengthens us for the challenges we face as we live out and advocate for our
UU values.
We need a word for “spiritual practice” that indicates deepening and expanding our selves and life and community while including the variety of beliefs and experiences among us related to the “divine” or not. The term “life-deepening” is provisional.
Come to share or just listen to others and reflect. I will offer leadership for the monthly services until December. If you have any questions, contact me at elli@startmail.com.
August 25 Dr. David Leuthold Social Security to Gay Marriage: Divisive Issue In My Lifetime
Holiday conversations are often difficult today because of divisions on social issues. Are the divisions greater now than in the past? David Leuthold reviews some of the divisive issues of his lifetime, and the compromises with which we tried to reach some consensus. These include racial relations, about which David spoke on Memorial Day in Lavina, Montana in 1954.