People's Church Of Kalamazoo

The stories we tell shape our understanding of our lives, our institutions, and our country. Why do we tell the stories we tell and how might we harness the power of our stories to create a more promising future? Rev. Rachel is addressing this topic at the request of the winner bidder at last spring’s service auction.

In 1760, a New Jersey farmer named Thomas Potter built a small church on his property with a dream of someday gathering a Universalist congregation there. What happens next—heartbreak, a ship run aground, and unlikely coincidences—has been called a Unitarian Universalist miracle story. Rev. Rachel will tell this story and reflect on the wisdom it might hold for us today.

Immigration crises, systemic racism and police brutality, impending financial crisis—again, oh—don’t forget climate change…what else can happen? On the west coast of the USA, we’re now adding “The Big Earthquake” to our shortlist. How do we live in these times, without being in despair or in denial? Can our religious lives hold us steady?

The end of religion has been heralded across time and culture since the 1600s, and now, in the academic study of religion, it can be heard again. But, this declaration is different and the meanings it has for spiritual communities and traditions of spiritual expression are critical to understand in the 21st century.

All People’s Church members and friends are invited to submit questions to Rev. Rachel, who will answer as many as she can during the time in the service usually set aside for the sermon. Bring questions about theology and belief, ethical dilemmas, Unitarian Universalism, or anything else you want to hear her talk about.

On the morning when we hold a child dedication ritual and make promises to the children being raised in our congregation, Rev. Rachel will explore our obligations to the children within our church community and the children in the wider community and wider world.

Why do bad things happen to good people, particularly us? Why is the universe so profoundly unfair sometimes? How might we make sense of this? Rev. Rachel will delve into how the world's wisdom traditions answer these questions, offer her best answers, and explore how we might support one another in our questioning.

This week, our Muslim friends and neighbors celebrated Eid al-Adha, the feast of sacrifice. Years ago, Rev. Rachel was in Aleppo, Syria for this holiday. As a hungry traveler with very limited language skills she had a deeply moving experience of hospitality. She will tell this story and reflect on how we might engage the spiritual practice of hospitality in our lives and in our congregation.

In 1838, Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke to the graduating class of Harvard Divinity School, challenging the Unitarians of his day to ‘acquaint men at firsthand with Diety,’ to make experience their primary religious teacher. Now, 177 years later, Rev. Rachel will return to this Divinity School Address and explore what challenge it might hold for contemporary Unitarian Universalists.

We’ll kick-off the church year with our annual Homecoming service. We will gather from the four directions, return to the People’s Church community, and begin the year with our new settled minister. All are invited to bring water from a special place, whether a far off land or right here in Kalamazoo. We’ll join our waters together in a common bowl, as we all join together to form this church community.

All human actions (noted the English judge Lord John Fletcher Moulton) fall within three domains. One is the domain of laws, requiring compliance. At the other extreme is the domain of free choice. In between, Lord Moulton identified a domain which he called “obedience to the unenforceable.” This is the domain constituted by agreements, promises, understandings, civility, and respect. In short: Right Relations. This domain is sometimes problematical for Unitarian Universalists. However, our capacity to function within this middle domain is a key indicator of the agility, resilience, and adaptive capacity in every relationship and in every human system. We’ll explore some of the implications of Lord Moulton’s model for our opportunities and challenges in strengthening Right Relations in our church, and in all groups which matter to us.

Energy takes on many forms. Money is one form of potential energy wherein we transform our principles and values into meaningful actions. As we launch our stewardship campaign for the 2015-2016 church year, we have the opportunity to “pay forward” the values entrusted to us by our predecessors at People’s Church. Generous stewardship will strengthen the work of our Ministerial Search Committee as they seek the best ministerial candidate to serve our church in the years ahead.

This service will explore forgiveness within the context of our busy and varied lives. We’ll look at practices that help us find and cultivate the space where raw experience is welcomed and forgiveness takes root.

The Sufi poet Jelal-ad-din Rumi asked: “Are you fleeing from Love because of a single humiliation? What do you know of love except the name? Love has a hundred forms of pride and disdain, and is gained by a hundred means of persuasion. Since love is loyal, it purchases one who is loyal; it has no interest in a disloyal companion.” We’ll explore some of the enchanting and intriguing landscapes of love, and the “habits of the heart”.

Buckminster Fuller wrote: “I am not a thing—a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process, an integral function of the universe.” Fuller’s perspective contrasts with the “substantialist” (Newtonian) world-view consisting of solid objects in motion. Traditional religions have also attributed a “mis-placed concreteness” to their theological world-views. We will consider a “theology for our secular age” (Process / Relational theology) and its implications for us as Unitarian Universalists.

A recent study indicated that in 2012 a black person was killed every 28 hours by police, security guards, and self-appointed vigilantes. What is going on in this country? Join the Reverend Dr. Jo Ann Mundy, Co-Executive Director of ERACCE and Pastor of On Common Ground: a community church in Three Rivers, along with Dr. Jim Croteau, Professor of Counseling Psychology at WMU in considering why this is and what can be done.

Voltaire’s brilliant satire “Candide” emerged during the Age of Enlightenment, in the aftermath of a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami which destroyed Lisbon on the morning of November 1, 1755. The mass hysteria led to a re-instatement of the Inquisition, during which thousands were hanged or burned alive to find who had been spreading “earthquake germs”. “Candide” was Voltaire’s satirical response to the hysteria. His book was burned in Geneva, banned in Paris, and put on the Vatican index. It became the best-selling book of the 18th century. We’ll re-visit Voltaire’s story—and Leonard Bernstein’s musical adaptation—and consider its implications for today.

Our guest speaker Jay Maddock, Executive Director of the Kalamazoo Gay and Lesbian Resource Center (KGLRC), will explain the need for LGBT visibility within the larger community in order to secure equal rights and protections for LGBT citizens. He will emphasize the important roles that allies hold and talk about bullying and recent crimes and discrimination against LGBT persons including the very recently proposed amendment to the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act to exclude protections for Transgender persons.

“It is very hard to be who we are,” wrote Norman Lear, “because it doesn’t seem to be what anyone wants.” A sermon on the politics of self — and the obstacles, resentments, and sabotage that inevitably will arise whenever one defines oneself clearly and responsibly.

In this first of several sermons on Family Systems, we’ll consider anxiety — the price that we must pay for human freedom. Biologist Lewis Thomas observes that humanity has “always been a specifically anxious creature with an almost untapped capacity for worry; it a gift that distinguishes us from other forms of life.” Is there a way out — or at least a way to navigate wisely through the turbulence?