Author: UUFJC1

9/7/2014 This Sunday was our annual Water Communion.  With the summer travel season wrapping up, we gathered our members and friends back to our Fellowship home bearing water from many moments and places, and we brought the water together on our altar to mark another year in our Fellowship’s journey together. This week, our Fellowship…

8/25/2014 Our members continued to watch events unfold in Ferguson, Missouri last week, and in our service Sunday we remembered that beyond looking at the events there and the wider patterns of racism and politics they represent, we must look to our own community.  Kevin Rome, President of Lincoln University, addressed the Fellowship and was…

8/10/2014 This morning, our own Don Love brought us a message about his experience in Unitarian Universalist Religious Education in the 1950s.  Some of the lessons have stayed with him to this day, like a lesson about the story of the Blind Men and the Elephant.  A story from another culture highlighted a universal truth:…

8/3/2014 Dear UUFJC Members and Friends, This morning, Rev. Nancy brought our attention to the “Verdant, Chaotic Green” of the Summer season and recalled the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who called us to be truly alive to the wonder of the world around us. Part of being alive to that wonder is being mindful…

8/31/2014 At our service this morning, Seth Bauman of the Missouri Juvenile Justice Association addressed the Fellowship on the ways our juvenile justice system disproportionately impacts youth of color.  People are doing good work, moving the system toward a focus on restoration and rehabilitation, but progress is needed at every stage of the process, from…

7/27/2014 Today, our own Betty Cooper traced for us the idea of justice, from Plato’s justice in ancient Greece to today’s movement toward Restorative Justice.  How can we acknowledge harms done and obligations owed while moving both victim and offender toward wholeness in a healed community? UUFJC News and Events this week: The August Newsletter…

7/20/2014 Today, Rev. Mike brought us a message about Jeremiah, who is remembered as a major Hebrew prophet despite being unpopular in his own day.  He told the people of Judea just what they didn’t want to hear — about how they failed the most vulnerable among them, about whether their political strategies were workable.…

7/14/2014 Yesterday, both our Forum led by Bob Boldt and our Sunday message by Don Love focused on the German philosopher Hannah Arendt.  Arendt is most famous for the idea of “The Banality of Evil,” developed in response to the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.  Eichmann argued (truly or not) that he was…

7/6/2014 Today, Rev. Nancy brought us a message for Independence Day weekend, when we celebrate America as a land of liberty and justice.  Nancy asked which comes first, the liberty or the justice, and concluded that they are always intertwined.  To truly follow them in their conjoined spiral dance, we must look beyond liberty and…

6/23/2014 Yesterday, our own Jim Davis brought us a message about the fascinating history of University City, Missouri (a suburb of St. Louis) and its founder, Edward Gardner Lewis (Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Gardner_Lewis).  Lewis published a magazine for women and founded the American Woman’s League, as well as an Art Academy, People’s University, and a mail-order People’s Bank.…