We hope you’ll join us in one or more of these events or activities .

• THE CHURCH OFFICE IS OPEN. Office hours are Tuesday- Friday 8:30 a.m. – 2:45 p.m. If you’d like to leave a message after office hours, please call (585) 546-2826 or e-mail office@uuroc.org.


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Here is a sampling of activities you might want to put on your calendar. For more information about St. Lawrence District (SLD) activities, visit www.sld.uua.org, or ask Michael Scott or the individual contacts listed for events below.

September 15 – deadline for Chalice Lighter Grants. The deadline to file an “Intent to Apply” is Monday September 15. An “Intent to Apply” must be filed in order to obtain a Chalice Lighter Grant application. For more info visit www.sld.uua.org

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The Rev. Sally Hamlin speaking.

In The Wind in the Willows, Mole has just returned to his cozy home underground. Soon he lays his head contentedly on his pillow. Before he closes his eyes he lets them wander around his room, “mellow in the glow of the firelight. . . on familiar friendly things.” How good it is to be back! Yet he would not want to abandon the splendid spaces above ground; he has no intention of turning his back on sun and air and creeping home and staying there. “The upper world was too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage.”¹

Welcome, everyone! I am the Reverend Sally Hamlin, Minister of the First Universalist Church of Rochester.

Welcome to this service, to this beautiful house of worship.

In another couple weeks we will celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the first service in this building on October 4, 1908. When the merger of our two faith traditions occurred in 1961, each church in Rochester kept a name reflective of its theological origin, one Unitarian, and one Universalist. Thus, we have our historical First Universalist Church of Rochester, and we have First Unitarian, both of which are Unitarian AND Universalist. This can be a bit confusing at times, especially to a new visitor or guest today, so I thought I would mention that fact here, today, to clear up any confusion.

You may have found your way here today from another faith tradition or traditions. For those of you called ‘come-outers’, you have chosen this church as your religious home. You have decided to make this place, these people, your people.

Or you may be here today as a birthright Unitarian Universalist – a ‘born-inner’, as we say. Perhaps you were raised Unitarian or Universalist, and can claim a lifetime in this religious home.

Or perhaps, as many before you have, found your way to us, not having come from any particular tradition, but out of a deep personal yearning for a religious home. You came looking for a community involved in religious search, one that does not give up on the dream, the vision of what is possible in the world. You longed to be part of something greater than yourself, looked for a place to consider those questions sourced deep in your heart: what is the meaning of my life, why is there so much suffering in the world, how can I grow to be the best person I am capable of becoming? What is my understanding of the Divine, and what do I call that understanding? Is it God? Is it Ground of Being? Is it Nature? Is it Love?

And once here, you felt at home. Perhaps you cannot explain what it was that happened to you at the first few services you attended. Perhaps, what happens for many, happened to you? Did tears fall from your eyes? The relief, along with an intense feeling of joy, is what many experience at first here. The relief that, finally, once and for all, you found your religious home.

Here, the scope and breadth of what is possible in a beloved community gradually becomes known, and unfolds in ways previously only imagined. What feelings grow here are never achievable as a result of individual endeavor alone, but rather, come into being as a result of the natural affinity sparks of humanity have for one another, and like tiny stars, we leap toward one another in the search for light in the darkness, illuminating and expanding the fires of the Spirit of Life, the power of that combined combustion, fueling one another’s search for understanding the mystery that is called Life.

For this process of finding a religious home is best done as a collective process, undertaken with the efforts of many, with the understanding that we do not, we cannot, act alone, in the building of a religious home.

Yet despite being called a pilgrim people, our bodies and souls fill with longing and desire for roots that ground us, and a place to stretch our wings and explore all the mysteries that abound within a sanctuary of trust and respect. It is a wholly human longing to have such a religious home to call our own.

And I find myself very grateful lately that I have found my way back home. This time, I am not speaking of the metaphor of home, but actually, now, I am literally home. Home to my beloved western New York, to loving family members and friends, to the great lakes of Erie and Ontario, and the rolling hills of the Finger Lakes and of Allegany and the Adirondacks. Back to four seasons and the excitement of lake effect snowstorms, back to the land of my home. I love this part of the world. It is part of what defines home for me.

Yet it would be remiss of me in a sermon titled Coming Home, not to consider the meaning of having a religious home, or any home for that matter, without speaking of the homelessness that occurs daily, all around us. Global migrations of human beings are now seen in unprecedented numbers; millions of people displaced from their homelands, as a result of wars and conflicts and global warming, in places such as Darfur, Sudan, and in Iraq and Afghanistan, millions live in temporary shelters, moving, moving, always moving.

Most recently we heard that those displaced to Houston after Katrina, are homeless once again after the ravages of Hurricane Ike.

Unfortunately, the need for emergency shelter is not unusual in Rochester. We are, in this regard, too like many other places around the country. It is estimated that in any given week in the U.S., at least 200,000 children are homeless, with forty-two percent of those children under the age of five. In the San Francisco area, over 45,000 homeless live on the streets. An unimaginable number, really. Like a small town, the homeless roam the hills of the Bay area.

So what can we do about this? How do we reconcile the situation of our own relative privilege and the needs of so many? As a religious community, we possess what many in our country and around the world, dream of, clamor for, yet, in all likelihood will never have. We live in a community that is mostly safe from natural disaster. Many of us have inherited privilege as descendents of mostly European ancestors, and/or have had the advantages of good education and health care.

I recognize that we are not a completely homogeneous congregation, that some among us claim other identities, have known paths of struggle with class or race or gender which may be hidden from obvious view. So when I speak of our privilege as Unitarian Universalists, and as residents of this country, I want to make it clear that I understand that our struggles as individuals are often not acknowledged, and I do not diminish the depths of these struggles in any way.

But if the advantages we experience as Unitarian Universalists can be used to work for justice in the creation of better world, our work must be based upon the acknowledgement of our privilege. It behooves us to acknowledge it, not hide who we are or where we come from. Power and privilege, not acknowledged, or misunderstood, can unintentionally be used for harm, rather than for good. When we understand power and the sources of it, we may move forward more clearly, and use what we know and have and claim, to change the world for the better.

And from what I have observed, that is exactly what you have done at First Universalist. That is who you are. You have chosen to stand with those who are experiencing something most of you have never experienced. Yet, you have taken the time to learn, to study the issue of homelessness, and have, as a congregation, and in many cases, as individuals, decided to work with RAIHN.

Right here in this building, every few months, we meet face to face with those affected by the problem of homelessness, when we offer hospitality as part of First Universalist’s commitment to house those served by the Rochester Area Interfaith Hospitality Network, or RAIHN.

This deep commitment you make to others, shown with your time and with your devotion, demonstrates that you know that the devastating effects of homelessness for people in this very community, is profound. And your commitment is inspirational.

And this says a lot about your spiritual journey as individuals and as a religious community. You have decided to live our first principle which speaks of each person’s inherent worth and dignity. You recognize in your pledge to live by these guidelines that it could be you who is homeless, who has lost the job that led to a loss of health care, that led to a loss of a prescription plan, which led to not taking medications that keep a chronic illness in check, which led to an expensive hospitalization, which led to huge bills left unpaid, which led to a loss of a home, which led, ultimately, to being homeless. In another disturbing twist on the six degrees of separation theory, this scenario I just described could be true for any one of us.

The alienation and frustrations of the middle class are no joke. As the costs of just maintaining a roof over one’s head continue to rise, and, in the light of the past weeks national financial crash of banks and investment companies, along with our government’s bailout at our future expense, we are held in suspense as our retirement accounts diminish right before our eyes. We cannot predict what the future holds for any of us.

A few days ago, I attended the annual Symposium on Hunger and Homelessness at a hotel just a few blocks from here. I attended the workshop offered by Donna Ecker, co-director of Bethany House, the Catholic Worker house of hospitality for women and children in Rochester. As I listened to Donna speak of the philosophy and mission of Bethany House and the services it has provided for over forty years, I realized once again that the basic need of each human being to have shelter and food and a safe place to rest, is the same the world over, despite the circumstances which caused one’s homelessness.

And meeting that basic need is what RAIHN is all about. But it is also about much more than that.

Because when you volunteer to take a shift at RAIHN, what you offer to our guests, who are temporarily homeless, is much more than a bed and a few meals. It is about offering a message of hope, that there are people who care in the world, and that you are one of them. It proves that there are still those whose faith and belief in the inherent worth and dignity and goodness of all, calls them into service with compassion.

And the learning does not stop there.

As a RAIHN volunteer, you have the opportunity to find out that you are important as a human being. That, just by being you, you can make a difference in another human being’s life. The guests who stay here, bring their children here, sleeping in this very building, offer you a unique opportunity to see in the face of the other, what it is that is truly important about life.

As a volunteer for RAIHN, you can begin to remember what it feels like to matter in the world. You begin to recall that you are important. That the gift of your personhood is all you are asked to be. All you are asked to be, whether in the world or here at First Universalist, as a seeker or as a member, is yourself. The only one who can be you, is you.

And that, my friends, is enough. You are enough.

It is said that the definition of home is that it is the place that, when you go there, they have to take you in.

Well, whether it is a religious home you seek, or a temporary home in which to rest your head for a night to be safe and warm from the elements, with your children sleeping soundly nearby, may it be here that we find one and the same.

I would like to share a poem I wrote a few years ago with you now, titled “Coming Into the Home Stretch Now”.

Coming into the home stretch now
It was no less than everything that it took to get you where you are this very moment.

Like an athlete in the Religious Olympics this time.
You have trained for this event your whole life.

The focus- everyday, for what has seemed like forever;
the hold- of the dreams, of the hopes, of the “I know I can do this”
the release- of family, of friends, of belongings, of home
the persistence, the showing up everyday, without wavering
- to come here.

To the event of your life. It is no less than that. No less than everything.

What did you think? Did you think that it would be easy?

For some of you it is like coming home. Finally, home.
For some of you, it is like entering a new home. Familiar, and beckoning.
For others, it remains less strange than it was one short week ago.
Your journey, all your journeys, have brought you to this place.

Now I say:
Let it be no less than everything that you bring here.
Let it be all that you have carried and sorted and held and released.
All the good-byes, the letting go, the falling away, the separating wheat from chaff.
The separating.

You belong here.
And isn’t that a relief to know?
Your whole life’s journeys have deposited you in this place now.
Here is my advice to you: let it be like this, exactly.
Like the naked athletes who stripped away all non-essentials to hasten their arrival at the finish:
Come.
Coming into.
Coming into the home. The home.
Coming into the home stretch.
Stretch.
Claim now the wreath of olive branches and let it circle your heart.
You. Spiritual athletes all. Come into the home stretch. Claim your prize.

May we continue to give thanks for the many ways in which we have already made it home.

BATTER……UP!!!

May it be so. Amen.

©This sermon was written by Reverend Sally Hamlin for the congregation of the First Universalist Church of Rochester, New York and was delivered on September 21, 2008. No part of this sermon may be copied without permission of the author.

The Rev. Sally Hamlin speaking.

In her book, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith author Anne Lamott asks her friend and mentor Father Tom: “How are we going to get through this craziness?” She is referring to the challenging event they are facing. “Left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe,” he responds, a good answer for Lamott.

And it is a good answer for me, who, like Lamott, has the capacity to jump into despair and helplessness when pondering the slippery slope of the tragic condition of our world. The ever widening disparity between the rich and poor in our country, the continued wars we wage in Afghanistan and in Iraq, our decaying cities, and the everyday violence occurring in our schools, on our streets and even in our sanctuaries, takes its toll on me, puts me in danger of careening down the crevasse, a solitary and self-indulgent slide off the edge.

This past August, I was feeling unmoored, congregationally speaking. I had left my congregation in Duluth, and following our UU Ministers Association’s guidelines which, among other things, provides advice about ministers’ transitions, was no longer in contact with the congregants there. Thank goodness for friends, family and colleagues.

I was sitting in my daughter and son-in-law’s house, in the room they use as an office, checking emails, listening to the peeps and trills of their bright blue parakeet Popsicle as he tried to make sense of the hidden message of my keystrokes. I was awaiting news of the whereabouts of my missing household effects, which, as far as I knew, were on a truck somewhere between Minnesota and New York. Little did I know the boxes filled with all my worldly goods were not on any truck anywhere, but sitting on the floor of the moving company’s warehouse, unloaded there the same day they were picked up from my apartment. And, as I said, I was feeling a bit lost, between homes, between congregations, and more cognizant than ever, and in a new way, about how much I rely upon my work – which I love so much- and my UU community for grounding and meaning in my world. It is within this covenantal relationship we share that I find solace and renewal.

Just a few days earlier, I’d heard the horrible news of the events in our Knoxville Tennessee congregation. I had been alone in my car, traveling back to Buffalo, after three days in rural Vermont with no connection to the outside world. I turned on the radio and found the local NPR station and pulled off the road so I would not lose the tenuous signal as I moved in and out of the Green Mountains. I felt shock. Disbelief. How could this be? A shooting in a UU congregation? I could not hold back my tears. I was thinking of a particular person.

Just weeks earlier in June while at General Assembly in Fort Lauderdale, I met a new colleague, Reverend Mitra Jafarazadeh, minister at the Westside Knoxville congregation. Mitra’s congregation’s children, and I imagine, her own son and daughter, were among those participating in the Sunday service celebrating their production of the musical “Annie”.

In Florida, outside our hotel awaiting the convention center shuttle bus, Mitra shared with me her struggles in the mid-south to fight the overt and sometimes shady experiences of racism she and her family experienced in Tennessee on an all too regular basis. As I listened to this soft-spoken and elegant colleague describe her reality, I felt inspired and challenged to continue the difficult conversations we must engage in if we are serious about changing the status quo, serious about engaging our feet along with our hearts and minds, in true liberal religious fashion.

And now, in the news, I was hearing over and over the stories of shootings, the two deaths, congregants’ courage, and the outrage, all taking place in one of our congregations, a supposed refuge from horrors of the outside world. Our sanctuaries are supposed to be that: a refuge, a place of comfort and renewal. A beloved community, a supposed safe harbor, now hit and impacted by the same hatred we supposedly unite to fight against that exists outside our church walls, now had struck within.

And I began to think of those who were brave, who stood to protect the children and their friends from death, the two who died that day.

I wondered what else was in danger of disappearing, of dying, because of this man’s actions. I wondered: how many people will now stay away from church because they are afraid? Because we can now doubt in a new way, the illusion of safety that our congregations provide, what kind of new challenge will this present to us? What new bravery will the cowardly actions of one individual call into being?

Well, as it turns out, the story of this awful day is filled with other contradictions. The shooter was not a stranger to this congregation, nor a stranger to Unitarian Universalism. He was the former partner of a congregant. While the note found in his car said that he was angry with religious liberals and he felt he had liberals to blame for his employment difficulties, inside his home, according to the Bill Moyers’ Journal segment aired this past Friday night, books were found, written by radio ‘shock jocks’, filled with hate language aimed at religious liberals, people like us.

We have heard very little about what has happened to this man; obviously very disturbed as he was. Yet the effects of his actions still linger among us, and in other UU congregations. But after that day I began to wonder about what it means to be faithful, what faithfulness requires of us, what our faith asks of us. When we are feeling disenfranchised, disconnected from our communities of faith, when the world seems too overwhelming for us to find an adequate response, when we attempt to have some impact upon this mad world, how do we find our way back to belief, to faith, for support and sustenance?

What is our response when we, as Anne Lamott says “wake up some mornings pinned to the bed by centrifugal sadness and frustration”? Let’s be honest. We all succumb to these feelings once in a while. We are susceptible to our inner reptilian remnants which tell us to give up, to flee from the perceived danger, instead of engaging it. Activist writer Joanna Macy says that this despair for the world is part of a normal healthy response to all the sorrow and tragedy. And this can be of some comfort to us: we need not feel weak, but rather fully alive, with this response.

But, when, finally, we have had enough of retreat, we find a slight slender thread still strong enough to bear the weight of all we have encumbered, and we reach out to try again to make some sense of the madness that surrounds us. We find that tiny web-like strand, and hang on for dear life. We move forward tentatively, holding on, looking back only to remind us of what it was that we need not engage any longer, and turn instead in the other direction, back to what we know is true, what it is that calls to us from the depths of Knowledge. We feel the breath of God whisper in our ear, and we hear ‘do not lose faith; come back; come back’. Words come to us from far away, and we turn in the direction of our fellow pilgrims, and find our way to this, our congregation, to the beloved community of the faithful we call our religious home.

Theologian and religious scholar Richard R. Niebuhr names this connection to our religion “a kind of ligature by which we bind ourselves to divinity or that which bestows wholeness” and “by which we seek to bridge the distance that separates us from what is supreme in worth”. ¹

Is this connection to our religious home, our return to our particular religious values, where our questions and doubt are not only welcome, but expected, the same as having faith, being faithful? Is our responsive “yes!” to that distant call, what it means to be faithful in such difficult times? Or is it instead, a matter of belief, a matter of thinking through, logically, to a sensible conclusion, an answer to the question: “Where am I most likely to find what it is I need to navigate my way through the depth of such misery?”.

Buddhist meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg defines the difference between faith and belief in this way: “When we hold a belief too tightly, it is often because we are afraid. We become rigid, and chastise others for believing the wrong things without really listening to what they are saying. We become defensive and resist opening our minds to new ideas or perspectives. This doesn’t mean that all beliefs are accurate reflections of the truth, but it does mean that we have to look at what’s motivating our defensiveness. . . .

Salzberg continues: “With their assumptions of correctness, beliefs try to make a known out of the unknown. They make presumptions about what is yet to come, how it will be, what it will mean, and how it will affect us. Faith, on the other hand, doesn’t carve out reality according to our preconceptions and desires. It doesn’t decide how we are going to perceive something but rather, is the ability to move forward even without knowing. Faith, in contrast to belief, is not a definition of reality, not a received answer, but an active, open state that makes us willing to explore. While beliefs come to us from outside — from another person or tradition or heritage — faith comes from within, from our active participation in the process of discovery. Writer Alan Watts summed up the difference simply and pointedly as, ‘Belief clings, faith lets go.”²

To me, what Salzberg, a Buddhist, is describing, along with the essential Buddhist lesson about attachment, is how our own liberal religious tradition, Unitarian Universalism, a faith without creeds, provides a place for us to belong, to explore and share our beliefs and to turn them into action.

Liberal theologian and UU minister Paul Rasor names Unitarian Universalism, in his book of the same title, a Faith Without Certainty. Rasor invites us, instead, to consider the distinction between religion and theology. He describes religion as being “about the large scale world pictures that orient us in the universe and help give our lives meaning and purpose”. Alternatively, Theology, Rasor says, is “about examining these worldviews and the assumptions that go into them. It is about making our implicit patterns of orientation explicit, lifting them to the surface and examining them intentionally, honestly and critically. It is about reflecting on these patterns, trying to make sense of them by questioning, clarifying, and rearticulating them”.³

So, now, here is it, mid-September, and there is a lot at stake, a lot on the table. There is no time left for pondering, with our national elections only weeks away. And I am attempting, however poorly or well, to talk with you about the meaning of being a faithful community of seekers, holding onto one another in this crazy world. What is it that we hold out for one another that keeps us coming together, as individuals, struggling to make sense of the bad and awful things that happen in our lives? What does being faithful mean to us as a religious community which gathers week after week, singing our hope and our history through our hymns? We agree to consider our own and others’ failures only as testimony to our fallible and frail human condition. We attempt to name the evils of racism and hatred and power mongering in our world, and move with our feet and with our voice at the polls, to say ‘no’, we will not participate in their perpetuation.

Despite the inherent risks involved in such naming and claiming, it is clear to me that we need one another to stay faithful. We need to hear others’ sense of what is right, to feel the safe womb that a religious community can offer, to deepen and evolve in our understanding of how to live out our hope-filled vision of what is possible in the world. We need one another to ask our questions, to express our doubts, knowing both will be welcome here, that when we stumble, another will be there to correct us or to hold us, to inspire us, or to catch us.

I live with the absolute certainty that our collective journey can create the beloved city on the hill; that we will shine the beacon of light that beckons all into wholeness; that our voice which welcomes all to the table and the faithful called community will be heard far and wide.

May it be so. Amen.

©This sermon was written by Reverend Sally Hamlin for the congregation of the First Universalist Church of Rochester, New York and was delivered on September 14, 2008. No part of this sermon may be copied without permission of the author.

Join the Reverend Sally Hamlin in her first ‘official’ service with us, as we begin our fall services with the annual water communion. Did you travel somewhere this summer near a body of water? Or perhaps you enjoyed a ‘Staycation’ instead. Bring a (small) bottle or other container of water that represents the ways in which you were refreshed or renewed, blessed or bothered this summer….as we join the waters together in this moving ceremony.

Join us afterward for a reception to welcome Reverend Sally to our church family.

Your Voice is Needed – Lay Sunday Speakers

The new church year approaches, and we are excitedly looking forward to a “New Day at First UU” as we welcome our new minister, Sally Hamlin.  As a part of this joyous process, we are actively looking for congregation members and friends, to come forward with their experiences and diverse world views to be Lay Speakers on Sally’s monthly Sunday out of the pulpit. (Note: as of Sept 30, 2008, the Lay Sunday speakers list for 2008-09 has been finalized.)

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Linda Lorenzo speaking.

Love is the doctrine of this church…The quest for truth is its sacrament…and service is its prayer…. Most of us recognize this as the first part of our Affirmation of Faith, here at First Universalist. I believe we take these words very seriously…and we demonstrate our commitment to them in so many beautiful ways…It is about the third piece…”and service is its prayer”…that I would like to touch on today.

One philosophy that has been the cornerstone of my life has been, “Always be a giver!” A giver of knowledge, time, wealth and love. This mantra has served me well…and not just for the blessings of the receiver but in the boomerang or “butterfly” effect that occurs, when we reach out in service to others and the world.

In late December 2004 a natural disaster precipitated the largest humanitarian aid operation in human history. The South Asian tsunami killed hundreds of thousands of people and left more than a million others homeless. The disaster ripped families apart. Children lost their parents…and…parents lost their children. The shocking power of nature and the devastation of the tsunami caused another incredible reaction…a worldwide desire to help the survivors. Hundreds of thousands of people living in the affected countries fed their neighbors, gave them shelter, and comforted them in their grief. Foreign visitors ended their beach holidays as volunteers, picking up bodies and trying to help identify the dead.

Across the world, tens of millions of individuals responded to the tragedy by sending immediate donations to aid agencies. Governments responded to their citizens and contributed massive aid for reconstruction. The world pledged $8.5 billion. Some of you may have made donations yourselves. More than half the citizens of the world’s countries did something in the way of help.This generous global response made a positive, life changing difference for many people. The generosity in response to the tsunami and other disasters like our own Hurricane Katrina, shows how easy and natural it is to give from the heart.

In our world today there are many such “opportunities” to be of service…they aren’t as graphic or immediate or as easy to present through the media. But they are, sometimes, right in our own backyard.

In an article, by Erin Anderssen in the Globe and Mail, she states, “That Doing good deeds can improve health, and make you happier, scientists suggests”. The article goes on to describe a series of studies supporting the ways, in which, the act of giving, benefits not only the recipient but the giver as well.

One of the studies cited revealed that people who exhibit higher levels of altruism get a “helpers high”, a physical release of endorphins. This high was shown to “give the immune system a boost, speed recovery from surgery and cut down on restless nights.”

And here is an even more exciting finding…Thanks to new brain-scan technology, scientists have also discovered undisputable evidence that humans are “hard wired” to take care of and help each other.

To take this even further, a British poll of volunteers, in that country, found that half of those surveyed claimed that their health had improved while they were volunteering. And here’s the part I love…20% of them claimed they lost weight, as well, which is a higher success rate of any diet known to date.

Being generous in Spirit and deed is a great comfort to the soul. Whatever, we feel we may “lose” in the moment of giving, whether it be time, money, or opportunities, will be more than matched by all we gain. As Piero Ferrucci says so eloquently, “Being kind is the simplest way to become who we really are.”

We live in a world of violence, human suffering, and environmental destruction. What can we, as caring human beings, do to help heal the wounds of others and reduce their pain? What can we do to heal our own personal wounds and diminish our own suffering? We can give. Everyone has something to give, be it time, money, wisdom, love or a variety of other things. We can literally accomplish miracles, through our service.

Giving ideas, skills, and resources can dramatically improve and uplift the world we live in. Whatever our circumstances, we can have a positive influence on the lives of others.

There is a saying, you may have heard, “We may be only one person in the world. But we may be the world to one person” Each of us, at any given moment, have countless opportunities every day…to give hope, love and healing.

If you ever thought, that seemingly small acts of kindness and giving won’t make a difference, please remember this story of a little girl, named Carlie.

When she was 3, Carlie was a perfectly healthy child. Then one day she came down with a high fever. Her parents, took her to the hospital only to discover every parent’s nightmare…Carlie had cancer. When the treatments started, all her family could do was pray. Then near the end of 10 months of chemotherapy, Carlie’s grandmother gave her a surprise. She had asked the Make-a-Wish Foundation to grant Carlie’s dream wish.

Now, as I am sure that most of you know, this Foundation, exists for one purpose…to fulfill the special wishes of children who have been diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses. Three weeks before Carlie was to receive her wish…a trip to Sea World…she came down with pneumonia and influenza. Six days later Carlie was in a coma. She was given a 20% chance of surviving. After 17 days in the coma, she had lost 98% of her lung capacity. She was paralyzed, and had 13 tubes in her tiny body.

The doctors told her parents, that Carlie would not make it through the weekend. But the nurses, who had been told to say goodbye to Carlie on Friday at the end of their shift, were shocked and delighted to see her parents still there when reported to work on Monday. A miracle, had occurred…Carlie had regained consciousness. She had lost half her body weight , but she was alive! And 12 days later, Carlie was carried onto a plane to fly to Sea World. She got her wish to swim with the dolphins. When she returned after two weeks, she had the strength to run into her grandmothers arms.

And Today, 5 years later, Carlie is a healthy energetic child. Carlie’s wish and the idea of that wish fulfilled was the miracle that has kept this beautiful child alive and thriving. And Carlie’s wish was granted because approximately 170 generous donors sent money to the Make a Wish Foundation, maybe, even some of you had a hand in this miracle. They had never met Carlie. They gave without knowing her story, hoping only to help bring some joy to a sick child…and they what their kindness gave… was the gift of life. Carlie’s parents are giving back by spending their free time volunteering for Make a Wish. Carlie’s story shows that you have the power to give happiness and even life.

There are many more…millions more…stories of the life changing gifts that people have generously given to others …most times, never knowing the impact their kindness had. Some involved money, others time…all involved compassion and love.

In a speech in 1908, Eugene V. Debs said, “Now my friends, I am opposed to the system of society in which we live today, not because I lack the natural equipment to do for myself but because I am not satisfied to make myself comfortable knowing that there are thousands of my fellow men who suffer for the barest necessities of life. We were taught under the old ethic that man’s business on this earth was to look out for himself. That was the ethic of the jungle; the ethic of the wild beast. Take care of yourself, no matter what may become of your fellow man. Thousands of years ago the question was asked; ”Am I my brother’s keeper?” That question has never yet been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society.

Debs, continues…Yes, I am my brother’s keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by any maudlin sentimentality but by the higher duty I owe myself. What would you think of me if I were capable of seating myself at a table and gorging myself with food and saw about me the children of my fellow beings starving to death. ”

In September, we will be resuming our Monthly Friday Night Movie. We will be featuring a story, about a shero of mine, entitled, “Entertaining Angels, The Dorothy Day Story” Now Dorothy Day was no saint. She lived hard, made mistakes, and endured the consequences. But the unquenchable fire that burned within her could not be contained. Dorothy wanted to make a difference. During the Depression, she vowed to house the homeless, feed the hungry, tend the sick. Easily said. Not easily done when her total finances amounted to 97 cents in a battered canister. Yet Dorothy persisted, walking , frequently, on stormy waters of faith. She has been called “The American Mother Theresa” She was the founder of the Catholic Workers Movement and Press, and was an unstoppable activist for uninumerable causes right up to her death in 1980, (including being jailed when she was 72 protesting for the rights of farm workers)

This upcoming week First Universalist officially moves forward…to a “New Day” with our new settled minister, Rev. Sally Hamlin, who brings with her a rich and varied history of commitment to service and social action.

When asked in one of her candidating meetings how she felt about our going out into the community, to draw more people who would be traditionally more representative of the urban population…She responded with the idea…that we should be going out into the community not for any other reason, than it is the right thing to do…she quoted Rev. Sinkford when he stated in a recent article…”Justice for Justice sake”.

In her second candidating speech, she spoke of this commitment of how she see’s our place in this community…she stated..”what I see before me today, and what I witnessed all week, is a strong community, where love is respected. I see a place where you take time with one another. I see a place where hope resides, despite challenges and loss. You keep the flame of our Unitarian Universalist faith alive here, even as it has come dangerously close to flickering out. It stays bright by your devotion to one another and by your deep care for one another. This love is a testament to your ability to rise again and again to face what is before you, as you continue to speak for justice and for what is right in the world…This tells me you know what is important in the world, and when you speak of your dreams and vision for your downtown church, I see in your faces such hope for the world.

Your work with RAIHN, SEM, Empire State Pride, and weekday concerts are only be the beginning of what is possible for this congregation. When you know that Love is the answer to the question ‘how can we serve the world?’ there are no limits to what is possible.”

And, so as we move forward into our future…let us begin that journey with the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “Everybody can be great… because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

Whether you are Christian, Jewish, or even atheist, you are expected to have SOME position on God. Is it time to think beyond the God paradigm? Is God a useful concept in 21st Century America? What would a “post God” world look like? The Rev. Peter House (bio) speaking.

The toughest part of painting a room is choosing the color. Will it match the furniture? Will it be too dark? If you ask advice, everyone will tell you something different. I will use this metaphor to explore the way we live our lives. The Rev. Peter House (bio) speaking.

We all know people who are a little out-of-step. Some of them just are that way. Others make a conscious choice to break from traditional expectations. Sometimes they amuse us, sometimes they inspire us, sometimes they embarrass us, and other times they irritate us. But we all have received gifts from the marginalized people we have known in our lives. We will celebrate those gifts. The Rev. Peter House (bio) speaking.