Category: Celebrations of Life

“Becoming an Artist”

Kodac Harrison is a musician and a poet. He has 19 albums, and a book of poetry and lyrics called The Turtle and the Moon. He founded and ran Java Monkey Speaks, an open mic night in Decatur, GA that lasted for 18 years and out of which came five poetry anthologies. He served as the Visiting McEver Chair of Poetry at Georgia Tech in 2010 and 2016. He won an Atlanta Moth slam with his story about his dog, Rudy. Although Kodac grew up in Jackson, Georgia and graduated from Georgia Tech, he’s also done his fair share of wandering. He earned an MBA at Tulane University in New Orleans, served time in the Army on the West Coast, played gigs in New York, California, Georgia, the Carolinas, and the places in between, as well as in Germany, and other parts of Europe. He considers his heart to be a vagabond, and he follow it wherever it leads.

• Facilitator: D. Patton White
• Musician: Kristen Hampton

“Cultivating Gratitude in an age of Cynicism“

How do we actively practice thankfulness when it seems our world is on fire? How do we inspire and cultivate gratitude in our circles?

Bio: Bec’s passions revolve around writing, teaching, and speaking.

Her commitment to be a life-long learner and servant leader started early in her career with Americorps, where she led a family literacy project and helped coordinate a rural transportation program for the poor in Eastern Texas.

Bec has taught, guest lectured, and tutored over the years in various academic settings, including colleges and universities, as well as church, parachurch organizations and community outreaches.

She planted Church of the Misfits, the first dually affiliated Disciples of Christ and United Church of Christ LGBTQ-affirming church in West Georgia in 2011. She served as the lead pastor and founder from 2011-2015.

She served at Gateway Center, Atlanta’s largest homeless service agency, as a coordinator and then director of community engagement from 2011-2022. She was a coordinator and then director of community for Wildgoose Festival from 2017-2020.

Bec received her B.A. in Biblical Theology and Practical Theology in Missions at Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida. She received her M.Div. from the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary in May 2013.

She cares deeply about those that society has rejected, and those that religiosity and systems of power continue to alienate. Bec focuses on ecumenical unity, interfaith justice work, and humanitarian endeavors in her spare time, writing and speaking at many events and conferences. Bec has served with Candler School of Theology since 2015, with a break in 2022.

She currently serves as a community responder at Policing Alternatives and Diversion and in her spare time enjoys getting messy with acrylic with her six year old.

• Facilitator: Wade Marbaugh
• Musician: Craig Rafuse

“Black, Baptist, and Buddhist; My Life and Engagement with Nonviolence”

Using photos and personal life history I will discuss my lifelong engagement with nonviolence.

Jan Willis (BA and MA in Philosophy from Cornell University; PhD in Indic and Buddhist Studies from Columbia University) is Professor of Religion Emerita at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. She has studied with Tibetan Buddhists in India, Nepal, Switzerland and the U.S. for five decades, and has taught courses in Buddhism for over 45 years. She is the author of six books on Buddhism and numerous articles and essays, addressing Buddhist meditation, hagiography, women and Buddhism, and Buddhism and race. In 2001, her memoir “Dreaming Me: An African American Woman’s Spiritual Journey” was published, and in 2008 it was re-issued by Wisdom Publications as “Dreaming Me: Black, Baptist, and Buddhist.” 

In December 2000, TIME magazine named Willis one of six “spiritual innovators for the new millennium.” In 2003, she was a recipient of Wesleyan University’s Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching.

Newsweek magazine’s “Spirituality in America” issue in 2005 included a profile of Willis, and Ebony magazine in 2007 named Willis one of its “Power 150” most influential African Americans.

In 2013, she walked the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain. In April of 2020, her book “Dharma Matters: Women, Race, and Tantra– Collected Essays by Jan Willis” was published.

• Facilitator: Sara Drew
• Musician: William Chelton

“What’s Next?”

We live in a world of volatility and uncertainty. How do we cope? How do we continue to build community? How can we make a difference?

Franklin Abbott is a psychotherapist and poet living under feline supervision in Decatur. In the ’80’s, he co-hosted a radio show on WRFG with his friend, First E founder, Lanier Clance. He is recovering slowly from knee replacement surgery and avoiding competitive sports.

• Facilitator: Patton White
• Musician: Alan Brown

Alan Brown

Alan Brown was born in Atlanta in 1965. He is a compulsive collector of schools. Margaret Mitchell Elementary, Christ the King Elementary, Westminster (for junior high and HS), Cincinnati University College Conservatory of Music, Georgia State University (Bachelor of Music), Manhattan School of Music (Master of Music), National Center for Paralegal Training, Berklee College of Music, Boston (Dual Diploma in Film Scoring and Contemporary Writing and Production), City College of San Francisco, Chattahoochee Tech and finally Kennesaw State University (Bachelor of Nursing.) 

He has  been a registered nurse for more than a decade, first at Wellstar Kennestone Hospital in oncology and then Grady Memorial Hospital for the last 6 years. He currently serves as the team leader for the outpatient telephone advice nurse team.

He plays the horn professionally on a free-lance basis in the Atlanta area. He also played piano for the Atlanta Ballet for decades, as well as for many other ballet companies and schools. He is proud to be singing with the Atlanta Gay Men’s chorus this year. 

Alan has a house in Smyrna where he loves to garden. His 94-year-old mother, sister and brother live in the Marietta to Woodstock area.

“Stayed on Freedom”

Freedom University is a freedom school for undocumented students in Georgia. Based in Atlanta and connected to the 1960s Atlanta Student Movement and Civil Rights leaders, this institution can teach us a great deal about building collective power for liberation. Come hear about the proud work UUs have done in collaboration with Freedom U, and the results we are capable of when putting our faith in action!

• Facilitator: Cindy Lou Who
• Musician: Charli Vogt

“Day of the Dead”

We celebrate the Day of the Dead as a time to recall and honor those who have died. We bring photographs and flowers to remember them on this occasion. This Mexican
holiday is somewhat like a joyful family reunion – with dead ancestors the guests of honor.

Reverend Marsha Mitchiner was ordained by us, the First Existentialist Congregation, after several years of study with founding minister R. Lanier Clance. Today she is part of the connective tissue of our congregation, holding together disparate elements, reaching out to folks whom we haven’t heard from recently, and comforting those who need support. She plays in the dirt whenever she can, refreshes herself with her partner on trips to the Georgia mountains, and shares her thinking with us several times each year.

• Facilitator: Patton White
• Musician: Jean Heinrich

“How LGBTQ Rights Bring The Bible Belt Out of Bondage”

LGBTQ rights challenge gender-conforming norms, patriarchy and the prevailing power structure.  Learn to live with it!

From Oct 10, 2021: Born and growing up in seacoast New Hampshire, Dave Bryant Hayward became an activist while a student at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. from 1967 -1971.

Desperately coming out to the legendary Frank Kameny, president of the D.C. Mattachine Society, in a May 1969 phone call, Dave learned where the gay bars were in D.C.  In the Fall he joined the Mattachine Society at an outdoor reception, and co-founded the Washington, D.C. Gay Liberation Front in January 1970.  The GLF celebrated the first anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots at a D.C. intown park in 1970, and also picketed the gay bar The Lost and Found on Capitol Hill for its multiple carding policies of women and people of color.

Dave is thrilled to have campaigned for Dr. Kameny for the House of Representatives in 1971, as the first openly gay man to run for Congress.  Also he wrote for the GWU Hatchet newspaper all four years, often covering LGBTQ themes in the arts, and for the DC GLF Newsletter.

Since October 1971 Dave has aided and abetted every Atlanta Pride.  One of the core collective producing Atlanta Pride in 1972, the first Pride March in the streets, Dave is honored to be thrown out of two gay bars for promoting Pride.  

Initially “the city too busy to hate” spewed backlash for a gay march in the streets, which abated after a successful event, culminating in Georgia’s first openly gay political appointee: – Charlie St. John appointed by Mayor Sam Massell,  to Atlanta’s Community Relations Commission in January 1973.

From 1977 to1979 he and his former partner Greg James anchored “Gay Digest” on Radio Free Georgia WRFG FM 90.1, and he and Greg produced Atlanta and Georgia’s first two LGBTQ film festivals in 1979 under the auspices of the newly formed Atlanta Gay and Lesbian Center.

Primarily Dave’s mania for social justice expresses in his writing, and he has published in local, regional, national, and international media, including The Advocate, OUT Magazine, Canada’s LGBTQ magazine Frontiers, and most recently in Georgia Voice, where he reveals our LGBTQ roots,  and pens tributes to pathfinders and pioneers and trailblazers.

After founding Touching Up Our Roots in 2002, in 2016 Dave became one of Atlanta Pride’s Grand Marshals.  In 2015 he created Our Founding Valentines with Atlanta Pride to recognize community icons, and in 2016 he initiated the LGBTQ Story Tour with Pride and with the LGBT Institute at the Center for Civil and Human Rights.  Since 2017 he and Lesbian herstorian Maria Helena Dolan have co-hosted the Story Tour.

Currently with a grant from the Georgia Humanities Council, Emory University professor Eric Solomon and Dave are posting the LGBTQ Story Tour online, for an October launch in conjunction with October Pride and National Coming Out Day October 15th.

– from https://firstexistentialist.org: October 10, 2021

• Facilitator: Jan Lister
• Musician: Kristen Hampton

“13 Decades Deep: Tone Poem Reflections on the Rose Hill Community and Echoes of Displacement Today”

Last October, our congregation joined Antioch East Baptist Church, the BiRacial History Project, and Candler Park and Edgewood neighbors to raise awareness of the more intimate Black history in our post-Civil War neighborhood. We honored and celebrated the creativity, resilience, and brilliance of Antioch’s and other Black families’ presence on this land they nurtured with fortitude and faith.

Now, one year later, four local White creatives are coming together to reflect upon this revealed history, healing, and justice… each with their own personal probing into the deeper stories and truths that “echo beneath our feet.”

JANET METZGER lives in Decatur where she is an audiobook narrator recording literary fiction, history and political science. She recently retired from over 25 years as an adjunct professor at Emory University School of Law teaching courtroom persuasion. She finds peace tending her garden and spinning wool.

Jeff Crompton is a saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer from Atlanta, living in Candler Park. Since retiring from 30 years teaching music in Atlanta area public schools, Jeff has focused on composition and performing his off-center, jazz-based music around the Southeast.

Craig Rafuse is a singer/guitarist and a Candler Park neighbor. He has been performing songs with social significance since 1963, while also playing in dance bands. Craig currently appears with CJ Jones and the Spirit Bones, ExPand Band, Owls and Kahootz.

Edi/th Kelman is a Candler Park neighbor, 17-year Project Manager for the Early Edgewood-Candler Park BiRacial History Project anchored here at the Old Stone Church/First E, and language-channeler for “13 Decades Deep.”

• Facilitator: Libby Ware
• Musician: Craig Rafuse

“What Would Martin Buber Do? The I-Thou Principle and Moral Action”

Martin Buber, the German-Jewish existentialist philosopher and formulator of the ‘I-Thou Principle,’ certainly had his fingers in a lot of pieces of scholarly and intellectual pie. During his lengthy career, Buber wrote about Hasidic folklore, Asian thought, mysticism, pacifism, the Holocaust, Israeli politics, interfaith relations, and various other social and psychological applications of his dialogical philosophy. However, Buber’s ideas were controversial, and often misunderstood. So what did Buber really say? And is any of it relevant to today’s social and ethical problems?

• Facilitator: Wade Marbaugh
• Musician: Mick Kinney