“You Are Always in the Middle of Your Life”

Franklin Abbott has been a practicing psychotherapist in Atlanta for nearly forty years. He is also a poet, musician, community organizer and amateur oral historian. His connection to the Congregation and Old Stone Church goes back more than forty years to early urban radical faery gatherings held in the sanctuary before First E became its steward. He has spoken at First E many times, performed music and poetry there, coordinated events and memorials. He and First E founding minister Lanier Clance were close friends and co-hosted an eclectic existential radio program on WRFG for over five years in the mid-1980s. His most recent project is a double CD of 44 original poems and 14 original songs titled Don’t Go Back To Sleep. He lives near Decatur with two cats who assisted him with mental health and amusement during the bad times of Covid before vaccinations.

“Rest and Release as Acts of Revolution”

Rev. Marti Keller has served as a Unitarian Universalist minister for more than 23 years, most recently as the co-transition minister for the UU Church of Jacksonville Florida and prior to that in Auburn Alabama. She has been both a parish and social justice minister, and a guest speaker in many pulpits, including internationally in Edinburgh, Scotland, Ireland and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. She is spending more time researching, reflecting on and writing personal essays and immersion journalism piece, having spent the first 20 years of her professional life as a reporter and editor (graduate of the UC Berkeley School of Journalism).

“Getting Wiser with Age?”

Stell Simonton first stepped into the door of the First Existentialist Congregation after moving to Atlanta in the mid-1980s. She’s been a member for many years.

Since 2013, she’s worked as a freelance journalist in Atlanta, writing frequently about youth development and the various nonprofits that help young people thrive. Her work has appeared in Youth Today, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Christian Science Monitor, the Washington Post, Georgia Health News and other publications. She previously worked for 19 years at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Bill Moyers once wrote something to the effect that a journalist enjoys the license to be educated in public — that journalism is really a continuing education course. It’s a free pass to ask questions.

To Stell, the process of questioning can involve a delightful skepticism (sometimes an adolescent in-your-face approach) but it also encourages a reflectiveness that can come from walking in someone else’s shoes. Since she is turning 65 this year, she’s reflecting on old age, particularly what Carl Jung has to say about the second half of life. Hence the topic of the Sept. 5 presentation: “Getting Wiser with Age?”

Stell lives with her husband, Wade Marbaugh, in Atlanta. Their two daughters, Anna Simonton and Olivia Simonton, were raised in the First Existentialist Congregation.

“What do you do when the well runs dry?”

Our Fellowship Minister, Rev. Marsha Mitchiner, has served the Congregation for over two decades, since ordination by us, following her study with Lanier Clance.

She counsels, connects, and contacts members and friends, and for those who need it, performs the laying-on of hands in her role as a massage therapist.

Many of us can vouch for the quality of her work, and appreciate the wisdom, restraint, and compassion she brings to the job of caring for our Congregation. Marsha speaks once each quarter, and helps smooth the functioning of the Congregation innumerable times in between.

“The travels of Joseph Bedney: from freedom to slavery and back again.”

H. Robert Baker is Associate Professor of History at Georgia State University and is the author of Prigg v. Pennsylvania: Slavery, the Supreme Court, and the Ambivalent Constitution (2012) and The Rescue of Joshua Glover: A Fugitive Slave, the Constitution, and the Coming of the Civil War (2006). His scholarly articles have appeared in the Law and History Review, Common-Place, and the Journal of Supreme Court History. He holds a Ph.D. in History from UCLA, where he studied with Joyce Appleby. He also writes about food and wine for the blog Tropics of Meta.

“E Unum Pluribus”

E Pluribus Unum has served as an unofficial motto for the nation—Out of many, one. At the founding of the nation, founders were creating opportunities to emphasize their coming together—joining of many previously distinct parts. Now, over two centuries later, how can we respect our connections while also honoring our rich diversity. 

Rev. Kimberly Quinn Johnson serves as minister of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the South Fork, on Long Island in Bridgehampton, NY. Her ministry and her preaching encourage us to connect to our most deeply held values so that we can live our faith in the world.

Before ministry, Kimberly worked as a union organizer with the UAW. She also taught Women’s and Gender Studies at New Jersey City University.

The core of Kimberly’s ministry is faith formation—creating spaces and experiences for people to connect to the sacred, and to express that connection in the world.  In her teaching, Kimberly employs the theory and practice of popular education, facilitating the exchange and exploration of our knowledge and experiences to encourage deeper understanding and grounding for action.

Kimberly serves on the Organizing Collective Board for BLUU (Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism). Kimberly also serves as co-chair of the UUA Appointments Committee and is a member of the Steering Committee for UU Class Conversations, and the Board of Trustees of the UU Women’s Federation. She also serves as vice-president of the St. Lawrence Foundation for Theological Education. She gets to work at the nexus of faith formation, youth ministry, and racial justice as a Program Leader with the UU College of Social Justice. And she’s likely to be spending her summer working with youth through UU Summer Seminary or Thrive, leadership experiences for youth of color.

“Women and Islam: The Veil and Other Costumes and Customs”

Much controversy is stirring about the Muslim tradition of women’s wearing of a head scarf or veil. What is this about? How do we balance religious tolerance and women’s rights? What do we make of this as westerners and/or as liberals? How does this connect with other traditions and habits of dress?  Let’s explore this charged topic together. You’re invited to bring a scarf, hoodies, or hat to the service if You choose.

Rev. Dr. Mellen Kennedy is a Unitarian Universalist minister and also a Sufi minister (Cheraga).  She serves as minister for the Springfield UU Meetinghouse in Vermont. Mellen is also chair of the board of The Inayatiyya: A Sufi Path of Spiritual Liberty.  She is founder of Interfaith Bridge, an organization dedicated to cultivating friendship and understanding across faiths, particularly among Muslims and non-Muslims.  She is also co-founder of the UU Small Group Ministry Network, and teaches the art of sacred storytelling and extemporaneous speaking. 

“What You Pay Attention to Grows”

Reverend Janna Nelson was ordained by the First Existentialist Congregation of Atlanta in 1999, where she was an active member for decades before moving to Albuquerque, New Mexico six years ago to be closer to her large family. She is a retired elementary school teacher and preschool director who enjoys children and who learns as much from them as they do from her. She was doing singing with a sister in classrooms in a local school until the pandemic closed schools down in March. She and her husband Scott Hooker performed for decades in the Atlanta area and continue to play jazz in Albuquerque.

She is honored to be speaking to the congregation and is grateful to be invited to share reflections through an existential/feminist perspective, going back to source material and discovering new feminist writers. She had personal experiences as a young person that stirred ideas about life that she later found expressed by these writers and thinkers. These ideas and concepts continue to be a touchstone for a way to live life more fully, with all its complexity and grief and uncertainty, to participate in freedom from oppression and alienation of all kinds, a way to keep moving forward, to help build something good, to participate in healing.  A way to still live in the moment, to find lightness, to cultivate curiosity, to let in beauty, to grow and expand, to connect with others, while living in these challenging and sometimes frightening times.

Wade Marbaugh is an Ohio native who moved to Atlanta in 1986 to write for a local newspaper. He subsequently married the editor who hired him, Stell Simonton. Wade has been attending the First Existentialist Congregation with Stell since the early 1990s and currently serves on the Board of Trustees. In that capacity. he headed the committee that drafted the First E’s Land Acknowledgement Statement, which is the topic of Wade’s Celebration of Life presentation.

Professionally, he has served in many roles, but his passion is writing. As a newspaper reporter, he received several professional awards and he has placed in creative writing contests. He has written several plays for local stages, a novel, various TV series episodes, screenplays, and short stories. A writing project begun in 1976 required extensive research on little-known histories of Indigenous Peoples of the Americas as well as visits with Indigenous People and attendance in traditional ceremonies.  A theme of his Celebration of Life presentation will be “To control the future, understand the present; to understand the present, know the past.”

“Calling In For Human Rights”

Loretta Ross is a Visiting Associate Professor at Smith College teaching “White Supremacy in the Age of Trump.” She started her career in the women’s movement in the 1970s, working at the D.C. Rape Crisis Center, the National Organization for Women, the National Black Women’s Health Project, the Center for Democratic Renewal (National Anti-Klan Network), the National Center for Human Rights Education, and SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective. Her forthcoming book is Calling In the Calling Out Culture. Her most recent publications are Reproductive Justice: An Introduction and Radical Reproductive Justice.