“A Flower Doesn’t Talk”–Zen Easter

Chris Glaser has enjoyed his silence since ending his blog, “Progressive Christian Meditations.” With so many voices, so much tumult, and such stress in the world today, silence refreshes us, offering mindfulness of what is truly vital, as in “life-giving.” Join Chris in this new life and rebirth meditation as we listen for what truly renews us.

It’s always a good time to be a Unitarian and to be a Universalist, as it helps us view everyone in the same light. But with the “existential threats” to our democracy, to our health, and to our planet, we need all the more to value the moment we have to live, to love, to participate in our community, and to preserve this beautiful earth and all who live on it.
After publishing a dozen books, serving a series of progressive parishes, and ten years writing a blog called ‘Progressive Christian Reflections,” Rev. Chris Glaser retired earlier this year to embrace a kind of spiritual silence. http://chrisglaser.com; http://chrisglaser.blogspot.com

• Facilitator: TBA
• Musician: Kathy McGuire

“Singing: An Act of Resistance”

Join us for a spirited Sunday Celebration of Life Service featuring songs, readings, poems celebrating singing for vitality and spirit renewal.

This will not be a “normal” Sunday Service (as if any of them are).

Instead of a featured Speaker, we will have readings, poetry, and songs lead by the e-band and SoBAD* Singers.  We will unveil and use our new songbook.

Singing is very important to our Congregation.  Indeed, singing is very important to the world!

*SoBAD …. Songbook Addendum Development committee:

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.

• Facilitator: Wade Marbaugh
• Musician: William Chelton

“Rule-breakers and Foremothers: African American Women Reformers Before the Civil Rights Era”

Libby Ware is an antiquarian bookseller and author of the award-winning LUM (SheWrites Press, 2015). She and her wife Charlene Ball (as Lily Charles) cowrote Murder at the Estate Sale (Black Opal Books, 2020) and the forthcoming
Murder at the Book Fair. Libby lives with her dog, Grover, about a mile from Charlene.

“Renaissance”

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 40 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- ’80s. His current project is a double CD of 44 original poems and 14 original songs titled Don’t Go Back to Sleep.

“From Shakespeare to Beauvoir: A Feminist Life in Books”

Charlene Ball is the author of Dark Lady: A Novel of Emilia Bassano Lanyer (SheWrites Press, 2017) and co-author, with Libby Ware, of Murder at the Estate Sale (Black Opal Books) and Murder at the Book Fair (in progress). Dark Lady tells the story of Emilia Bassano Lanyer, who published a book in 1611 that called for women’s equality and freedom. Emilia also may have been the “Dark Lady” of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Murder at the Estate Sale is the first in The Molly and Emma Booksellers series, about two
women booksellers who solve mysteries. Charlene and Libby write mysteries together under the pen name of Lily Charles.

Charlene has taught English and Women’s Studies, and now writes and sells antiquarian books with her partner and wife, Libby Ware. Charlene lives in Atlanta about a mile from Libby. She is a longtime member of First E.

“Women ( and persons) of Valor”

Live and In Person for the first time in two years!

Just in time for Queen Esther’s Purim  holiday honoring a woman of valor, from  the Hebrew Bible also comes a passage in Proverbs, a hymn that describes and honors what was thought of as a woman of valor, defined by one contemporary Jewish social  commentator as personal bravery.

What did  this quality  look like  when the phrase originated?  Not what you may have expected. What does it look like today? A mixed bag for both male and female identified persons.

Rev. Marti Keller has been a parish, community and social justice minister for more than 23 years. Her “Jewnitarian” involvements include co-editing “Jewish Voices in Unitarian Universalism,” and other UUA publications around the Jewish source of our living tradition. She has been the President of UUs for Jewish Awareness and is currently a member. She is part of a ministerial team launching an online Mussar Jewish values program in 2022. She is also past vice president of the Society for Humanistic Judaism and serves on the advisory team for the international Secular Synagogue.

“Finding James Baldwin”

James Baldwin was a powerful voice of a generation nurtured by the Harlem Renaissance, by segregation north and south, and a world war in the name of freedom and the elimination of fascism. Today we likely remember Baldwin most for his fiery writing in the service of the Civil Rights Movement, work that earned him international notoriety. He was a celebrity speaker and world traveler, but also tailed by the FBI at the request of Attorney General Bobby Kennedy. However great Baldwin’s contribution to the movement, it was never the whole Baldwin. James Baldwin resisted being straitjacketed into any one identity. He was Black and queer. He was an American and an expatriate. He was never comfortable in his own skin, but perhaps never more incisive than when he confronted his own insecurities. In our own age of identity politics and the heavy-footed reaction to it, James Baldwin is worth rediscovering.

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 has been a Fulbright Fellowship and been a fellow at the Institute for Constitutional Studies. He also writes about wine, law, and contemporary culture for the blog Tropics of Meta.

“I See Colored People!”

   …I want to speak about the multi-colors of division – class, lifestyle, culture/sub-culture,  gender, skin tone, hair texture, empathy meter, etc., etc. ……too many et cets…..and the grey areas of inclusion – can you guess what they are?

   Visceral reactions and easy categorizing are giving way to in-depth evaluations of our human intersectionality.

Get on board. Examine yourself and get back into the Upper Classroom.

(Upper Room, get it?)

PAULA LARKE / VOICES IN THE TREETOPS
I used to call myself a truth teller. Now I simply offer scenarios for reflection and possible
reparation.
No more a teacher, always an incorrigible pedagogue, I have preached, cajoled, exhorted peace and justice for over 40 years.
I banged drums, strummed lullabies, plunked bass and joked face-to-face with audiences all over the USA. Forty years of
social evolution and devolution.
I am an American traveler, a troubadour formerly self-named Truth Tellah. Now I am Awed Observer, from time to time
offering food for reflection and reparation.
Now I just observe the madness, occasionally bursting into song, dance, or tirade.
Folk generally prefer the song and dance.

Larke is a veteran of off Broadway theater in NYC, national touring companies of Broadway plays, artist residencies for North Carolina Arts Council, NC Public School Forum Teaching Fellows Program, Riverside Church of NYC, Berea College Promise Neighborhood, ran an arts program five years for refugee youth at Clarkston Community Center here in Georgia.

Activism: Leave no one out

Lisa is a psychotherapist in private practice, a poet, writer, and activist. She is a long time member of the First Existentialist Congregation. She has been a student of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh since 1999 and has studied with many other Buddhist teachers. Lisa incorporates feminism, existentialism, mindfulness, compassion and a social justice perspective in her therapy practice. She also trains therapists how to use mindfulness in their lives and professional practices. Lisa is a cofounder of the Avondale Alliance for Racial Justice and on the leadership team. For info, see AA-RJ.org. You can download her CD, Mindful Meditations for Well Being, for free at www.wellbeingpsychotherapy.net.