“Survival”

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“Survival” – the Rev. Dr. Don Fielding returns to Red RiverUU to share his unique preaching style.

You may download the MORNING PROGRAM or scroll down and read it below.

Of his morning discourse, Don writes:

It is a very scary time.  Survival is on everyone’s mind.  Will Ukraine survive?  W

ill democracy survive?  Polls are showing that young people are increasingly leaving religion; will religion survive?  And if religion is threatened, what about our religion?  Are Unitarian Universalism days numbered too?

I will have some thoughts about the survival of religion, and our religion as well.  Come and hear my recommendations about what we need to do to survive.

 

Over the last 25 years, Don has made the trip from Plano to lead our morning assemblies on many occasions. As part of our “Glimmers of Silver” 25th anniversary – we’ve asked him to return (again) to delight, challenge and inspire us with another sermon – one he has been working on over the last couple of months.

INTRODUCING OUR RETURNING GUEST MINISTER…

The Rev Dr. Don Fielding changes career paths after 25+ years as a geologist and chose to study for the ministry.  He graduated from Meadville/Lombard Theological School in Chicago – a UU seminary – in 1990, was ordained and served OTH the Denton UU Fellowship and the UU Church of Oak Cliff from 1990 until his retirement in 2003 when he became minister emeritus of the Denton UU Fellowship.  He says one thing he learned by serving two congregations at the same time is that a sermon that flies at one spot may fall flat at the other location since each congregation has its own way of being together.  Don returns after a far-too-long absence.  Don enjoys writing sermons, which he calls a reflection, and we call a discourse and presents worship in his own style which will be abundantly clear on Sunday.  It is a joy to have him back with us again.

TMP 04-03 FINAL EDITED FOR STEWARDSHIP MOMENT

“History Now? Diversity, Race, and Schooling”

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“History Now? Diversity, Race, and Schooling”

Dr. William Lloyd Fridley, speaking

THE MORNING PROGRAM:  Download it HERE or read it below.

America’s public schools, and in some cases colleges, are being subject to a host of measures regulating and restricting what is taught.  At least 36 states have adopted or introduced laws or policies that restrict teaching about race and racism.  Bills targeting divisive concepts (“ideas about race and sex that challenge the dominant narrative of America’s founding and history”) have been introduced in seven states and enacted in three. School boards across the country have taken steps to “investigate” and remove curricular materials and content, to prohibit training about diversity, and to ban books from school libraries.  We’ll examine select examples of these phenomena through historical, philosophical, and pedagogical lenses to address the question:  Does history have a future in our schools?

ABOUT OUR GUEST SPEAKER:

William Lloyd Fridley will be retiring after 23 years as Professor of Education at Southeastern Oklahoma State University.  Fridley is a philosopher of education, and a faculty advocate and activist working to promote shared governance in his work with the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and as archivist for the SOSU Faculty Senate.  He and his wife Carolyn will be moving their tent to Atlantic Beach, Florida.

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Democracy in Danger

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Download the Morning Program HERE … or read it below.

ABOUT THIS MORNING’S ASSEMBLY:   An exploration of proactive practices for peace in a world ripe for conflict.

INTRODUCING OUR GUEST MINISTER: Leading today’s morning assembly is the Rev. Dr. Mark Y.A. Davies.  Mark is the Wimberly Professor of Social and Ecological Ethics at Oklahoma City University where he has worked in both teaching and administration for 25 years. He is an ordained elder in the Oklahoma Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Mark’s Ph.D. is from Boston University in the area of Social Ethics, and he has served Boston University School of Theology as a member of its Dean’s Advisory Board and as the alumnus representative their Green Team as part of the Green Seminary Initiative.

Mark engages in advocacy and activism in the areas of peace, social justice, and ecological sustainability. Locally this is expressed through his work with the Human Community Network, which works to create non-violent systemic change for a just and flourishing human and ecological community through collaboration, education, innovation, and action. See www.humancommunitynetwork.org.

He and his wife Kristin live in Edmond, OK in the United States, and they have two daughters who attend Oklahoma City University.

 

TMP 03-20

What If I Had Only 30 Days to Love? Siding With Love Sunday

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Spring ahead! Daylight Savings Time Starts Today.

Download The Morning Program here … OR read it below

What If I Had Only 30 Days to Love

Side With Love Sunday

This year’s Side with Love Sunday focuses on Love, featuring stirring music, deep-hearted discourse, and moving testimonies from a range of UU leaders.

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Waging Peace in a Climate of Conflict

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Download The Morning Program here – or read it w/o downloading below.

ABOUT THIS MORNING’S ASSEMBLY:   An exploration of proactive practices for peace in a world ripe for conflict.

INTRODUCING OUR GUEST MINISTER: Leading today’s morning assembly is the Rev. Dr. Mark Y.A. Davies.  Mark is the Wimberly Professor of Social and Ecological Ethics at Oklahoma City University where he has worked in both teaching and administration for 25 years. He is an ordained elder in the Oklahoma Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Mark’s Ph.D. is from Boston University in the area of Social Ethics, and he has served Boston University School of Theology as a member of its Dean’s Advisory Board and as the alumnus representative their Green Team as part of the Green Seminary Initiative.

Mark engages in advocacy and activism in the areas of peace, social justice, and ecological sustainability. Locally this is expressed through his work with the Human Community Network, which works to create non-violent systemic change for a just and flourishing human and ecological community through collaboration, education, innovation, and action. See www.humancommunitynetwork.org.

He and his wife Kristin live in Edmond, OK in the United States, and they have two daughters who attend Oklahoma City University.

 

TMP 03-06 - FINAL

Love After Love – Rev Dr Thandeka – (video message)

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THE MORNING PROGRAM

Many of today’s “spiritual but not religious” people – one in four US adults – have found the access point to spiritual experience that Western Christianity lost: unconditional love.   Thandeka sees in the emergence of the “spiritual but not religious” community a great potential for her goal of “love beyond belief.” She has demonstrated in practice how, by paying close attention to the affects, dying established churches can come alive. She hopes that those who are alienated from these churches, often for excellent reasons, can develop community activities that will lead them to experience love beyond belief.

ABOUT OUR SUNDAY SPEAKER:

Thandeka is the creator of the Love Beyond Belief™ initiative for moderate, liberal, and progressive congregations and the founder of Contemporary Affect Theology, which is designed to explain emotional development in religious settings and terms. Polebridge Press published her new book, Love Beyond Belief: Finding the Access Point to Spiritual Awareness, in 2018.

Thandeka, Affect Theologian and President of Love Beyond Belief, Inc., is author of The Embodied Self: Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Solution to Kant’s Problem of the Empirical Self (1995), Learning to be White: Money, Race and God in America (1999, German edition 2009), and Love Beyond Belief: Finding the Access Point to Spiritual Awareness (2018). Her essays include work in The Oxford University Handbook on Feminist Theology and Globalization (2011), and The Cambridge Companion to Schleiermacher (2005).

Her books and essays have helped secure her place as a “major figure in American liberal theology,” as Gary Dorrien notes in The Making of American Liberal Theology: Crisis, Irony, and Postmodernity, 1950-2005  (John Knox Press, 2006).

Jaak Panksepp, the founder of affective neuroscience, commends Thandeka’s “decisive historical-philosophical analysis” as work that can provide “a universal substrate for nondenominational religious experience” (The Archeology of the Mind, 391).

Thandeka received her Ph.D. in philosophy of religion and theology from Claremont Graduate University. She was given the Xhosa name Thandeka, which means “beloved,” by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 1984. She is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister and congregation consultant, and formerly an Emmy award-winning television producer.

Thandeka has taught at Andover Newton Theological School, Harvard Divinity School, Lancaster Theological Seminary, Meadville Lombard Theological School, Williams College, and she was a Fellow at Stanford University’s Humanities Center, a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Process Studies at Claremont School of Theology in California, and Union Theological Seminary in New York City. She is a Fellow at Westar Institute.

Reactions to her book Love Beyond Belief

 

“When I met Thandeka 34 years ago and gave her a Xhosa name, apartheid was still the law of the land in South Africa. I reminded Thandeka that it was easy to be cynical, but takes great courage to have hope. Love Beyond Belief is a hope-filled book reminding us in historical and contemporary terms that we are loved always, even when we feel lost and alone.”
–Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu

“Thandeka has written an exciting and important book. After a lucid exposition of Schleiermacher’s affective base for liberal religion, which is illuminating and promising to save that formation from the torpor into which it has fallen, she also provides a thrilling new possibility for understanding Paul on the basis of affective theology … I have no doubt of the significance of this book for future work in the field.”
–Daniel Boyarin, University of California, Berkeley

 

The Power of Justice: The Life and Legacy of Desmond Tutu

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Reflections on the life of one of the most important leaders for racial and social justice of our time and the gifts he left us to address the urgent challenge for social justice in the present and future.​​

THE MORNING PROGRAM

With Amazement & Admiration

Our Annual Thanks
and Appreciation Gathering

On Sunday, Feb. 20
Immediately After
The Morning Assembly
In the Chapel and via Zoom
Meeting ID 989 0789 7878

FULL DETAILS are listed on the church calender – go the now by clicking/tapping HERE

ABOUT OUR GUEST MINISTER: Leading today’s morning assembly is the Rev. Dr. Mark Y.A. Davies.  Mark is the Wimberly Professor of Social and Ecological Ethics at Oklahoma City University where he has worked in both teaching and administration for 25 years. He is an ordained elder in the Oklahoma Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Mark’s Ph.D. is from Boston University in the area of Social Ethics, and he has served Boston University School of Theology as a member of its Dean’s Advisory Board and as the alumnus representative their Green Team as part of the Green Seminary Initiative.

Mark engages in advocacy and activism in the areas of peace, social justice, and ecological sustainability. Locally this is expressed through his work with the Human Community Network, which works to create non-violent systemic change for a just and flourishing human and ecological community through collaboration, education, innovation, and action. See www.humancommunitynetwork.org.

He and his wife Kristin live in Edmond, OK in the United States, and they have two daughters who attend Oklahoma City University.

Side With Love – Reproductive Justice

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THHE MORNING PROGRAM

This year’s Thirty Days of Love is focusing on four themes from the recently published report called Widening the Circle of Concern, which was developed by the Commission on Institutional Change, a UUA Board commissioned group charged with researching, reporting, and making recommendations for transforming white supremacy and other oppressions in the institutional history and practices of the UUA and its 1,000-plus congregations and covenanted communities.

In commemoration of the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade and the ongoing fight for reproductive health, rights, and justice, the Worship Team decided to have us join UU congregations across the country for a Sunday of solidarity, support, and reflection.  Most of the worship elements this morning are come Side with Love – Reproductive Justice Worship. You are invited to visit their website for more information.

 

Mindful Peacemaking: The Life and Legacy of Thich Nhat Hanh

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Reflections on the life of one of the most important peacemakers of our time and the gifts he left us to address the urgent challenge of peacemaking in the present and future.

THE MORNING PROGRAM (also available below)

Leading today’s morning assembly is the Rev. Dr. Mark Y.A. Davies.  Mark is the Wimberly Professor of Social and Ecological Ethics at Oklahoma City University where he has worked in both teaching and administration for 25 years. He is an ordained elder in the Oklahoma Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Mark’s Ph.D. is from Boston University in the area of Social Ethics, and he has served Boston University School of Theology as a member of its Dean’s Advisory Board and as the alumnus representative their Green Team as part of the Green Seminary Initiative.

Mark engages in advocacy and activism in the areas of peace, social justice, and ecological sustainability. Locally this is expressed through his work with the Human Community Network, which works to create non-violent systemic change for a just and flourishing human and ecological community through collaboration, education, innovation, and action. See www.humancommunitynetwork.org.

He and his wife Kristin live in Edmond, OK in the United States, and they have two daughters who attend Oklahoma City University.

TMP 02-06 - final

 

One True Thing –

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Finding Your One True Thing

Download the Morning Program here

The Morning ProgramTMP 01-30

We share a faith that claims to value questions over answers. Nevertheless, UUs are as vulnerable as everyone else to all the ways humans leap to judgment and even dogmatism. In a complicated, angry country lining up to take rigid sides, is there a way to discover what is true … and truly important?

Elena Westbrook was formerly the worship chair for Community UU Church of Plano, where she has been a regular guest speaker. Now semi-retired, she has also been a marketing writer, a proposal manager, a medical copyeditor, an environmental consultant, and a radio DJ. She lives in Fairview with her husband, Paul.  

You can find Elena’s meditations and prayers on the UU Worship Web.