First Existentialist Congregation
An independent member of the Unitarian Universalist Association
Brownie has been a long time member of the First Existentialist Congregation of Atlanta. She is honored to speak to you. Her talk is about children’s rights. She has been blessed to have many many children in her life. These children came into her life through teaching, social work and parenthood.
Libby will delve into her childhood in a book-filled house and how Florida politicians interfering in education isn’t new, leading into a look at the history of book banning and what is really behind the current rash of book banning. She is asking the congregation to bring copies of banned books to display on the stage.
Libby Ware is a life-long reader, a writer, a book collector, and a bookseller. She is the author of the award-winning “Lum,” and co-writer of “Murder at the Estate Sale,” and the upcoming “Murder at the Book Fair,” co-written with her wife, Charlene Ball. Libby owns Toadlily Books, an antiquarian book business. She is a member of Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, The Atlanta Writers Club, The Georgia Writers Association, and Sisters in Crime. Libby lives in Grant Park with her dog, Grover, a mile from Charlene.
Members will share how learning about existentialism through First E has influenced their lives.
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.
Michel will describe Emory’s efforts to increase the visibility, voice, and contributions of Native American people. She will highlight people, departments, and initiatives at Emory that continue to be instrumental in this effort. She will bring news describing progress of the new Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies launching this fall in Emory College. Michel also will summarize and highlight Emory’s active relationship with the Tribal communities on and off campus including plans for continuing and growing engagement.
An open mic service in which we share stories of our work experiences, the challenges we’ve faced, the lessons learned and thoughts about labor struggles in our country and the world. It’s a time to celebrate our work and the work of countless others whose labor has built our world — and to point out injustices that exist.
Several studies have shown that people who are more authentic are also happier. That’s great news, but Sara has a different story to tell. Through sharing her background, her first impressions of First E and Existentialism, and thinking about the future together – we’ll explore so much more of what authenticity has to offer.
Sara Drew serves as the Outreach Coordinator at First Existentialist Congregation of Atlanta. She is a fairly recent graduate of Candler School of Theology where she completed concentrations in Chaplaincy and Justice, Peace building, and Conflict Transformation. She is also a Unitarian Universalist ministerial aspirant and a resident hospital chaplain at Emory’s Midtown Hospital. Sara seeks to continue to develop her abilities in connecting people to their strengths and providing radical hospitality.
I was asked recently to speak as an elder of color for an activity at Atlanta Friends Meeting. I said I was not an elder. I interview elders so that I can hear their life stories, learn about their ways of living. I never thought of myself as one, although I am in my 60s and hold a Medicare card. How can I be a person others would like to learn from, possessing wisdom comparable to those whose lives I see as having spanned decades of fighting the good fight, of making changes through segregation, through the Depression and world war? I am the one with so much to learn. I stopped and listened to myself, to my excuses, then realized that I am the older generation of those who have lived for decades, lived through segregation, the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War and more. Let me tell you about my own awakening, my transition from that person sitting at the feet of those I honor, to becoming a person with stories of my own to tell a younger generation now ready to hear them.
Dr. Althea Sumpter is a researcher and scholar who uses her expertise as an ethnographer to document cultures and preserve the Southern story of the United States. With her native Gullah Geechee culture as a prototype collecting the oral histories of elders, she teaches ways to research the cultural history within a community, then how to use documentation technology to memorialize and preserve the stories of a community for future generations. She presents talks and workshops on documenting cultural history for others wanting to preserve stories in their own community or the cultural story of a family. Her research and work can be viewed at: altheasumpter.com.
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.
As we mark the anniversary of the destruction of Hiroshima by an atomic bomb, it bears reflecting on how fear and destruction exist side-by-side with heroism and compassion. Whether man-made or natural, a disaster provides an opportunity for us to react in fear and selfishness or in trust and mutual aid. In any disaster, human nature leads to a little bit of paradise in the midst of a communal hell.
Rev. Kim Palmer is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister serving as an affiliated community minister with the Unitarian Universalist Metro Atlanta North congregation. She is a board-certified chaplain and has served Emory University in the dual role of chaplain and spiritual health researcher until retiring with her wife Marty. She continues to train chaplains and support research projects at Emory and elsewhere as a contractor. When not working, she and her wife chip away at numerous house and yard projects and enjoy kayaking on local rivers and lakes.
Pastor Darci talks about the social justice transformation of a congregation alongside the transition of a pastor
Rev. Darci Jaret is a bi-vocational pastor, advocate, art minister, enthusiast and trans nonbinary human. They journey with the community of Park Avenue Baptist Church in creativity & non hierarchical community. This ministry centers the work of abolition, artistic spiritual expression, collaboration, anti-racism and recovering from religious and theological trauma. Moving beyond deconstructing harmful theology, Park Avenue seeks to build practices that align and direct us all toward our inner divinity and our one-ness in God. Darci also does case management for a women and children-centered mental health program in Atlanta. Journeying along side people in need, while acknowledging a person’s wholeness and dignity is paramount in Darci’s case management method. Focusing care on people who are experiencing homelessness, who have experienced financial trauma characterizes the other part of Darci’s vocation. Darci and their partner Amy are unschooling their son in East Point, GA. The whole family is committed to welcoming children in foster care to our home.