“I Sat with Elders to Learn from Them — Now I Have Become One”

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.

• Facilitator: Libby Ware
• Musicians: Craig Rafuse & Jean Heinrich

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

“Hell & Paradise: Human Nature in a Disaster”

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.

• Facilitator: D. Patton White
• Musician: Elise Witt

“Creative Transformations”

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.

• Facilitator: Wade Marbaugh
• Musician: Charli Vogt

“​​Responding to Anti-trans Legislation as Spiritual People and Communities”

Rev. Kimble Sorrells is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, with a ministry in contemplative practices focused on equipping us with the peace and resolve to be justice makers in the world. They are also a Registered Yoga Teacher and draw on this and other spiritual traditions to inform their ministry. As a Bi-vocational minister, Kimble also works with Lifeline Animal Project as the Community Programs Manager, guiding caseworkers as they assist pet owners in times of challenge.

Kimble has experience in variety of ministry settings. They have worked in LGBTQ advocacy for many years including as staff for Reconciling Ministries Network and the Atlanta Pride Committee. They currently serve on the Mayor’s LGBTQ Advisory Board and work primarily in advocacy with the Transgender community.

• Facilitator: Cindy Lou Who
• Musician: Jean Heinrich

The Reading Life

At this beach-reading and otherwise leisure-reading time of year, I’ll take a look at  reading as a practice and as an act of human liberation and justice.

Rev. Marti Keller describes her Big Life Goal as beholding life and bearing prophetic witness to what she discovers. She has done this through her short verse poetry, her creative nonfiction essays and blogs, her critical and immersion journalism, her justice advocacy for women and girls, and her 25 years of parish and community Unitarian Universalist ministry.

• Facilitator: Jan Lister
• Musician: Craig Rafuse

Reclaiming Patriotism

The term “patriotism” has been usurped by extremists obsessed with American exceptionalism, predatory Capitalism, exclusionary policies and other ideas not conducive to our nation’s stability and sustainability. Progressive-thinking citizens should not let fanatical extremists set the terms of the national debate over what is patriotic and good for the country. Wade Marbaugh has been attending the First Existentialist Congregation with his wife, Stell Simonton, since the early 1990s and has served on the Board of Directors and as its chair. Professionally, he has served in many roles, but his passion is writing and acting. He has written several plays for local stages, a novel, various TV series episodes, screenplays, and short stories. He currently is acting in Indie movies and in a touring play about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, which at some point will come to Atlanta. Wade 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. They have two adult children, Anna and Olivia Simonton.

• Facilitator: Marsha Mitchiner
• Musician: Kristen Hampton

“Does Wisdom Come with Age?”

The wisdom I sort of expected to come with age did not, and I am still the same person I was. Changes have come to my body and mind, many unexpected. Yet have I become more wise? 

Charlene Ball is a longtime member of the First Existentialist Congregation. She has taught English, writing, and women’s studies. After retiring from Georgia State University, she has been busier than ever. She has written a historical novel, DARK LADY: A NOVEL OF EMILIA BASSANO LANYER. With her wife Libby Ware, she has written two bibliomysteries, MURDER AT THE ESTATE SALE and MURDER AT THE BOOK FAIR, under the pen name Lily Charles. She also sells antiquarian books with Libby’s book business, Toadlily Books. Charlene is a member of the Social Justice Guild and the Indigenous Rights Committee.

• Facilitator: Libby Ware
• Musician: Jean Heinrich

“The Good Father”

Franklin Abbott will talk about the importance of good parenting and how our fathers (and mothers) influence who we become in life.  Epigenetics, the science of how our family histories affect our DNA will be part of my focus along with how our parents are prophets of our future, how their lives give us a glimpse of our destinies.  

Franklin Abbott is a psychotherapist and poet living in Decatur. In the ’80’s, he co-hosted a radio show on WRFG with his friend, First E founder, Lanier Clance. He is working on a new book of poems and stories that he hopes will be ready by Fall. Check out his blog: www.tenminutemuse.wordpress.com

• Facilitator: D. Patton White
• Musician: Craig Rafuse