“Starting Over”
On this Yom Kippur Day, as human beings in progress, we will look at the challenges and joys of this particular year and time of accountability, renewal and charity in Jewish religious tradition.
First Existentialist Congregation
An independent member of the Unitarian Universalist Association
On this Yom Kippur Day, as human beings in progress, we will look at the challenges and joys of this particular year and time of accountability, renewal and charity in Jewish religious tradition.
Susan Ottzen – harp, Ron Freeman – synthesizer, playing 4 pieces
from Le Petit Pas (the little steps) by Bernard Andres, a contemporary
French composer. They are very sweet meditative pieces.
Susan Ottzen, harpist, is a graduate of Case Western Reserve University/Cleveland Institute of Music. She moved to Atlanta to play with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra under Robert Shaw and has performed with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
She has a large teaching studio. Her students perform at group lessons during the year and attend piano camp and harp camp in the summer. They also perform each year at Fall Fest held at Agnes Scott College, sponsored by the Decatur Music Teachers Association.
In addition to playing harp and piano, she is an accomplished composer with grants from the Fulton County Arts Council and Georgia Council for the Arts, among others. Susan’s arrangement of Stormy Weather played on NPR’s Marketplace Radio for twenty years (whenever the stocks were down).
Most recently, she played harp as an extra for Tyler Perry Studios for a TV episode called “Reunited.” She recently collaborated with Francine Reed recording Stevie Wonder songs with the Jez Graham Trio. She also has a Jazz Harp and Clarinet Duo with Don Erdman playing jazz concerts at the Tucker Library and the Decatur Library in 2018. She is also teaching History of the Harp workshops annually for the Tucker and Decatur libraries.
Ronald Freeman Jr. has been performing professionally as a musician for 15 years. As an Atlanta native, he was heavily influenced by the traditional southern marching band culture. His high school alma mater is the Academy of Richmond County in Augusta, GA. He is currently studying Ethnomusicology at Kennesaw State University with aspirations of becoming a licensed music therapist.
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.
Janna Nelson currently lives with her husband, Scott Hooker, and her younger son, David Nelson-Hooker in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where they have now lived for almost six years. They moved there after 40 years in Atlanta to be closer to family, and they have always preferred the New Mexican climate and open skies and country.
For Janna, it is a return to a land and people of her youth. Born the youngest of six in rural Alabama in 1958, she moved with her family to New Mexico in 1963. Her father, a Southern Baptist missionary, and the family spent the next seven years in various locations on the Navajo Reservation before moving to Albuquerque. Witnessing and being part of several traumatic and life-changing events left her a seeker.
She moved with her parents to Atlanta in 1975 and culture shock ensued. Due to accessibility issues with high schools at that time, she took a GED and went to Clayton Junior College, then GSU, taking whatever she wanted, working various interesting jobs until she started working at Sevananda, where she worked for seven years. During this time she had her older son. At age 25, she returned to GSU and graduated with a teaching degree three years later, starting a career in education that was deeply satisfying. She also started performing music solo and with others, starting her lifelong partnership in song and love with Scott.
She discovered First Existentialist Congregation in 1981 and it was the first place that felt open enough for her mind and spirit, as she had left religion behind at this point. After years of involvement in various aspects of the community, she entered into a five year Existential Ministerial Studies Program with Rev. Lanier Clance and was ordained as a minister by the Congregation in 1999, which she continued to serve in a varying capacity until moving to Albuquerque in 2014. She is delighted to see the flourishing of this intentional community and still calls it one of her homes.
Anthony Knight is the President & CEO of The Baton Foundation, a Georgia non-profit organization that serves the emotional, intellectual and cultural needs of Black boys in grades five through nine. Before founding the Foundation, Mr. Knight worked for twenty-two years as a museum educator and consultant.
Mr. Knight has extensive experience with and interest in African-American history and culture, public and living history, informal education and Black youth. Mr. Knight’s work with The Baton Foundation reflects his ongoing interest in the issues and practices related to the collecting, preservation and interpretation of information about and material culture from the African Diaspora.
Mr. Knight’s undergraduate work was in Spanish and English (Ohio Wesleyan University), and his graduate work was in museum education (The George Washington University). Mr. Knight also holds a degree in Spanish-to-English translation from the Núcleo de Estudios Lingüísticos y Sociales, Caracas, Venezuela. Mr. Knight is a New York City native.
Angela Denise Davis, M.Div., M.S., is a ukulele instructor, workshop facilitator, ordained minister, and public speaker. Her work as a minister focuses on how the fusion of art and spirituality can enlarge the ground beneath our feet and enrich the ways we move in personal and social spaces. In addition, she is the creator, host, and producer of the ZAMI NOBLA Podcast.
She is a graduate of Clark Atlanta University where she earned a B.A. in Art. She also holds a Master of Divinity from Vanderbilt University Divinity School, and a Master of Science in Rehabilitation Counseling from Georgia State University
When I think about what I want to talk about it keeps coming back to, how I have learned to ask for my life’s lessons in a way that I wanted to receive them and how finding myself continues to change how I am able to perceive my circumstances.
The classic teachings of the Buddha and Jesus and Muhammad and many others have transformed millions of lives across the generations and the globe, our own included. How do these teachings align with the urgency of the Black Lives Matter Movement today? The connectionis both urgent and direct and worthy of our investigation. In a time when people all over the world are demonstrating their support for BLM, how do our spiritual communities strengthen this intention? Let’s name our best next step and take it. Let’s confirm and commit to our noble intention. Which personal, political and spiritual practices inform and strengthen us during these trying times? What are we doing to move ourselves and others towards liberation? Are there less than skillful ways that we may be holding ourselves and others back? The determination of freedom fighters past and present inspires our own practices both personally and collectively. In our community of spiritual friendship, let’s explore these connections together and garner the power and benefit they afford.
John Mifsud was born on the Island of Malta and identifies as Arab-American. He has practiced Insight Meditation since 2001 and graduated from the Community Dharma Leaders Training Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center where he is currently on the Board of Directors. John has extensive retreat experience and practiced throughout Asia. He is the Guiding Teacher of the Malta Insight Meditation Society and a former Community Teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center (EBMC). He is the founding leader of EBMC’s Deep Refuge Sangha for Alphabet Brothers of Color. He teaches internationally with a special interest in delivering mindfulness tools to marginalized communities.
Rev. Marsha Mitchiner grew up in middle Georgia and was an active member of her church. In her teen years, she became disillusioned with organized religion but felt a need to find a community of individuals seeking answers without dogma. She found her spiritual home when she came to First E in 1980 and joined Rev. Lanier Clance’s ministerial training program.
“My spiritual life began as a Christian in middle Georgia . During my teen years I began to question the concept of “one truth”. Through personal exploration and with three years of guided study by Rev. R. Lanier Clance, I have come to believe that there are many paths to truth, each valid to the believer. Our journey through life is a unique, subjective experience that is enhanced and supported as we share with others our authentic self. It is a joy to serve the First Existentialist Congregation and the greater community.”