Welcoming Belief and Unbelief (in ourselves and with others)
I will be sharing from my personal journey to elicit your counter stories of how we each evolve and encounter others on our spiritual pilgrimage.
BROWN BAG LUNCH / DISCUSSION AFTER THE SERVICE for those interested
I was born 13 months after the death of my parent’s first child, four months old, so I was conceived in grief. My parents bought a little four room mill house with money inherited from my mother’s father, which was stolen from them before I was five. My longing for justice runs deep. My father never learned to read, but worked hard at low wages and provided for his family until one day he crawled under the house and disappeared into mental illness. The intersection of mental illness and oppression engages me. My mother’s life was changed in a pandemic when she had polio as a teen. She had to learn to walk again and never stopped walking. She loved to laugh and tell stories, gifts that sustain me to this day.
I went to college and grad school in North Carolina, studied at a consortium of nine ecumenical seminaries in Berkeley, California, as well as among Baptists in North Carolina and Presbyterians in Georgia. I served as Parish Minster at First Baptist, Washington, DC for 7 years and pastor of Oakhurst, (oxymoron coming) a liberal baptist church in Decatur, Georgia, for 28 years. I love family systems and story swapping. I served as a part-time hospice until COVID and am returning to that calling in a few weeks.
My wife Karen retired 2 years ago after 30 years of teaching children to sing and love music at the Atlanta International School. We have two thirty-something sons who reside in Atlanta.
- Facilitator:
- Musician: William Chelton