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Please scroll down to see earlier 2010 programs |
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Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Shoals -2010 - Calendar of Events for September
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| September 5 - Dr. Bob England, Professor of History, Northwest Shoals Community College will speak on the Jacksonian influences on Alabama Politics |
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| September 12 - Daphne Simpkins, Professor of Creative Writing at AUM will present "The Spirit of Dissent—A Righteous Calling" In the essay “My First Acquaintance With Poets” William Hazlitt writes about his heritage in the Unitarian Church. Specifically he is interested in the “Spirit of Dissent,” a calling his father had given his life to as a "Dissenting Minister." In this essay Hazlitt offers us an insider’s glimpse into the tensions of early Dissenting Ministers, who represent a philosophical root of the present-day Unitarian Universalist church. We will move from Hazlitt’s essay to a refreshing look at Samuel Taylor Coleridge who is featured in the essay, and finally, we will consider the nature of dissenting voices: how they found their roots in both French and American history and why they still matter today. |
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| September 19 - Dr. Larry Waldrep will present the topic "Zen Buddhism, its past, present and future." |
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| September 26 - Dr. Lisa Jennings, UU Church on the River in Memphis. Her topic will be announced shortly. |
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Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Shoals -2010 - Calendar of Events for August
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| August 1, 2010 – Daphne Simpkins, Professor of Creative Writing at AUM, will present, “Treasure in Earthen Vessels: Humility, Service and Gratitude” An alternative title for this presentation might be How To Eat Crow and Like IT (Vegetarians, too); but in the spirit of serving a broader array of foods on the buffet, this presentation will lead a discussion in finding your hidden strengths, which can appear to be positions of weakness associated with humility, service and gratitude. Dr. Martin Seligman, psychologist, Erin McKean, lexicographer, and Jesus, dreamweaver, will be referenced. |
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| August 8, 2010 – Brenda Durham, Vanderbilt Divinity Student, will present, “Life Aplenty”. Prosperity Consciousness – Is it all about making money? Or could there be more to living a life of bountiful, copious, overflowing joy in our lives? What is the spiritual connection? What are the natural laws of giving and receiving, and of having more of what we desire in our lives? Come learn how to release the blocks to the path of fulfillment on life’s journey. |
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| August 15, 2010 – Ken Sizemore, musician ,songwriter and folk singer will present, “The Music of Pete Seeger”. Ken has been playing and performing folk music for many years, first in the Nashville area and now in Panama City, Florida. He regularly performs on the beach in Panama City and the Gulf Coast. |
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| August 22, 2010 – Sharon Austell, Vanderbilt Divinity Student from Lynchburg, Tennessee will conduct the worship service. The topic of her sermon to be announced. |
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August 29, 2010 – Dr. Larry Bates, Professor of Psychology at the University of North Alabama, will present, “The Religion –Health Connection: Facts and Fiction.” “Any link between religion and health defies simple explanation. Clearly there is a link, but probably not as robust as advertised in the sound bites we see on the news or as fodder for our sermons. The effects are also a bit bipolar, with both positive and negative effects, and related to both physical and mental health. Hence, we’ll take a fresh look at this odd relationship from an empirical standpoint.” |
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Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Shoals -2010 - Calendar of Events for July
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| JULY 4, 2010 – “Flutes of the World” Paul McAuliffe of the UU Fellowship of Bay County, Florida, has lived in New York, Vermont, Maine and Texas. A former National Park Ranger, he is also a bamboo flute maker and short story writer. Diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome ( a mild form of autism) in 2008, he now facilities support groups for both Asperger’s adults and children. |
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JULY 11, 2010 – Ken Johnson, Chaplain of the UU
Fellowship of Murfreesboro, TN will present, “Spiritual Practices: The World
Needs More People Who Have Come Fully Alive!” UUs have a strong history of
socially engaged spirituality. We pray with our feet! We believe in
action. Life is demanding! In this process, most people get caught
up in an externally focused life. We take care of the spouse, we take care
of the kids, we take care of the lawn, we take care of the dog, and we take care
of the school board and the town council. Then one day we find ourselves
burning out—very tired, cynical, depressed, and wanting to throw in the towel.
Is there a more skillful approach to altruism and social action? Ken Johnson was deeply involved for over 20 years in fundamental Christian ministry. He worked in pulpit ministry, small group leadership, adult Christian education, and men’s ministry. His special interest as a Christian minister was “expository” Biblical sermons – with a strong emphasis on life application. Ken has also had a focused interest in understanding and helping to facilitate spiritual growth and transformation for many years. The majority of his ministry experience was with conservative Churches of Christ. He is a graduate of David Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee and of Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. Ken resigned in 2001 after evolving out of fundamentalism and is currently working as a chaplain with the UU Fellowship of Murfreesboro, TN. Ken has worked in the mental health field in acute care psychiatry for about 18 years. |
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| JULY 18, 2010 – Doug Traversa, Lay Minister for the UU Fellowship of Tullahoma, TN and a student at Vanderbilt Divinity School will present, “Religion Sans Love”. Religions fail when they lose sight of love. We will look at historical examples of this and discuss why our faith and ethics must be built on a simple love of others. Whether you are an atheist or a deeply religious person of any faith, love must be the foundation of your beliefs, or you risk becoming a monster. |
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| JULY 25, 2010 – The Blue Navigators will kick off the Handy Fest with a program of music from genres such as blues, rock, folk, and country-- from Bob Dylan to the Rolling Stones to Jimmie Rogers. Come join us for a fun hour of great summer music! |
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Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Shoals -2010 - Calendar of Events for June
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| June 6, 2010 – Daphne Simpkins, AUM Professor of Creative Writing will present, “Hausmusik to Consolation”. In previous times, hausmusik ( the music that is often played at church for meditation purposes), was not created or played to entertain but to lead listeners to a meditative place where congregants might fulfill a goal fulsomely described by Paul in Philippians 4:8 “..Whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of a good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy---meditate on these things.” But why? Our spirits know before our hearts do; our hearts long for meaning and consolation like a deer pants for the water. We will pause to meditate about the consolation that heart-driven, soul-longing meditation can bring. |
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| June 13, 2010 – Brandon J. Simonson will present, “Legal Innovation on the Periphery: The Intersections of Gender, Ethnicity, and Empire in Ancient Near Eastern Law.” This presentation will examine early manifestations of social justice in the legal materials of societies in the ancient Near east. It will explore an early presence of tendencies toward social and economic justice in legal contracts. By examining these tendencies, this presentation will draw parallels with our own society, amplifying humankind’s continued effort to confront issues of injustice. Brandon is from Red Wing, Minnesota and is a recent graduate of Vanderbilt University, receiving the Master of Divinity degree from the Divinity School in May. |
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| June 20, 2010 – Brenda Durham will present, “Ars Viviendi- The Art of Living Well”. We can easily become discouraged and pessimistic when we turn on the news and are continually bombarded with the dominance of the negative sides of our human natures in society. We can become frustrated with the human race and give up on others. Or we can learn to look beyond appearances to see what is true for everyone and find hope in the world and learn to experience the art of living well. Brenda Durham is a Divinity School student at Vanderbilt University. She is from Birmingham, AL and holds a Master’s degree in Public and Private Management from Birmingham-Southern College. Her goal is to pursue ordination as a Unity minister. She is a Master Prosperity Teacher having trained with Edwene Gaines and is a Master Reiki practitioner. Prior to beginning Divinity School, she worked for many years as an administrator and provider of homeless housing programs. Brenda is also a pianist by “divine” training, playing improvisational pieces as inspired by her audience. |
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| June 27, 2010 – “Return More: Living a Life of Significance” , the 5th installment of the DVD The Five Things you Must Discover Before You Die by Dr. John Izzo will be shown |
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Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Shoals -2010 - Calendar of Events for May
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| May 2, 2010 – Doug Traversa, Lay Minister for the Tullahoma, Tennessee UU Congregation and Vanderbilt Divinity Student, will present, “Asking the Right Questions”. One of the biggest problems in our search for truth and meaning is knowing what questions to ask. It is easy to get side-tracked by questions that can never be answered. By focusing on questions that can lead to practical answers, we can succeed in our quest. Knowing what questions to ask can lead to transformative breakthroughs in our lives. |
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| May 9, 2010 – Sharon Austell, Divinity Student at Vanderbilt University will present, “Mama Mia”. This program will center around moms/female role models in honor of Mother’s Day. |
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| May 16, 2010 – The local band, The Bear, will give a performance of different styles of music that include folk, rock, bluegrass, Americana and experimental. The band formed in the Shoals area in 2006. It started as a duo and has recently added members. The members in the band are Amber Murray, Nathan Pitts, Ben tanner, Kyle Minkler and Ben Stedman. They are currently recording their first album which will come out in late summer or early fall. |
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| May 23, 2010 – Local singer and songwriter, David Walton will present a musical program of original songs on acoustic guitar and bamboo flute. |
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| May 30, 2010 – The DVD series, The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die, by Dr. John Izzo will continue with the 4th installment entitled, Enjoy More: Living a Life of Joy. Dr. Izzo interviewed over 200 people, ages 60-106, each of whom was identified by friends and acquaintances as “the one person they knew who had found happiness and meaning. “ He asked them questions about their lives and in this series he shares their stories and what he learned from listening to them. |
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Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Shoals -2010 - Calendar of Events for April
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| April 4, 2010 – Daphne Simpkins, Professor of Creative Writing at AUM, will present, “Reflections on “The Song of Bernadette”. In a discussion of old movies—specifically movies starring Jennifer Jones—UU member Phillip Oliver asked me whether I thought people really did have visions from God like Bernadette does in the biographical move “The Song of Bernadette.” We wondered together if visions are not emanations from a person’s imagination, the way artistic visions can be or are they truly imposed upon people by God. More curious for me, a Protestant, I wonder why Catholics have visions of Mary, as Bernadette does, but Protestants don’t seem to—or, if they do, they don’t on record with these visions that result in memorials, like Lourdes, the famous French healing place, which marks the location where Bernadette received her visions of Mary, the Mother of Christ. Recognizing that we cannot definitively answer this question outside the boundaries of faith, we will use Bernadette’s story on Easter Sunday as a springboard, Phillip’s questions as the dynamic, and then think through together the anecdotal evidence as represented by Bernadette’s story in both the movie and the book of the same title by Franz Werfel. |
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| April 11, 2010 – Dr. Larry Bates, Professor of Psychology at UNA, will present, “Smaller”. This talk examines things in life that we want to reduced to a lesser degree of largeness; like say my waste/waist. Actually, it’s more like one man’s obsession with fat, different kinds of fat. When it comes to dieting, I prefer to weight/wait. So this is just a post-Lent sick self-analysis by a psychologist on why he wants to be smaller, in a lot of weighs…er..ways”. |
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| April 18, 2010- Paul Graham, Director of Urban Forestry for the City of Florence, will present, “Urban Forestry: Community Stewardship”. |
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| April 25, 2010 – The DVD series “The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die” by Dr. John Izzo will continue with the 3rd DVD in the series entitled, “Love More: Living a Life of Kindness”. Dr. Izzo is the bestselling author of Second Innocence and host of the PBS series The Five Things You Must Discover Before You Die. He holds advanced degrees in religion and psychology, he has spoken to one million people on four continents about living purposeful lives. |
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Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Shoals -2010 - Calendar of Events for March
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| March 7, 2010 – “How a Year in Afghanistan Helped Make Everything Clear”. Doug Traversa will share how his deployment in Afghanistan taught him valuable lessons and led him to Unitarian Universalism. He will share stories about facing death, learning about Islam from his interpreters, and how tough his adjustment was returning to the States. He will discuss how he became a Unitarian Universalist, and how vitally important our religion is today. Doug Traversa retired from the Air Force January 31, 2009 and became the lay minister of the UU Church of Tullahoma the next day. He is a student at Vanderbilt Divinity School in the Master of Divinity Program. He is married to his wife, Jancy; they have been married 25 years. They have three wonderful children who are all on their own now. They have five dogs in their home, plus foster dogs. |
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| March 14, 2010 – Local band, The Blue Navigators, will perform a variety of blues, rock, country and folks songs. |
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| March 21, 2010 – UPDATE - Dolores Hydock – “Dead Cats and Spunk Water: Superstition and Magical Thinking in the Writing of Mark Twain”. From the Garden of Eden, when Adam struggled to explain the appearance of “this new creature with the long hair,” to Tom Sawyer’s search for a superior cure for warts, Mark Twain’s inventive characters—and sometimes Samuel Clemens himself—often used superstitions, folk wisdom, and imagination to make sense of an uncertain world. Join storyteller Dolores Hydock for an explanation of the magical thinking of Mark Twain’s masterful stories. |
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| March 27th, Saturday night,2010 – Ken Sizemore, singer, songwriter and folk musician from Panama City, Florida, will give a free concert at the UU Congregation of the Shoals. The concert will begin at 7:00 p.m. |
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| March 28, 2010 – Singer, songwriter and folk musician, Ken Sizemore will present, “We Shall Overcome---Songs of the Civil and Human Rights Movement”. Mr. Sizemore dedicates this program to Martin Luther King, Jr. |
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Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Shoals -2010 - Calendar of Events for February
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| February 7, 2010 – Daphne Simpkins, Professor of Creative Writing at AUM, will present, “Civil Rights and the Jewish Community”. Inspired by Mary Stanton’s book The Hand of Esau this lecture will explore the question of how the Montgomery bus boycott affected the Jewish community in the South, specifically, Montgomery, AL. Like other minority groups who find themselves embroiled in larger sociological issues, the Jewish community had many particular considerations to weigh ( and their own faith to consider as well as their own economic survival) when challenged to respond to this movement toward equal rights that had its roots not only in the Constitution, but according to Martin Luther King, Jr., the Christian gospel. |
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| February 14, 2010 – “Risk More: Living a Life of Courage and Adventure”. John Izzo, Ph.D., is the bestselling author of Second Innocence and the host of the public television series The Five Things You Must Discover Before You Die. Dr. Izzo interviewed over 200 people, ages 60 – 106, each of whom was identified by friends and acquaintances as “the one person they knew who had found happiness and meaning.” This DVD series shares their stories –funny, moving, and thought-provoking—and the Five Secrets he learned from listening to them. This is the 2nd DVD of the series. |
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| February 21, 2010 – “The Beauty of the Country and the Warm, Gentle People of Nicaragua”. Betty and Ron Gillespie will share their November 2009 visit to San Juan del sur, Nicaragua in photos and stories. Ron and Betty spent eleven days enjoying the beautiful crescent beach of San Juan del sur, exploring the warm sun, the tropical paradise and the beauty of the Pacific Ocean. |
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| February 28, 2010 – The UNA Department of Music and Theatre presents, “Turn of the Millennium: Choral Gems from 1990-2010”. This concert features the UNA Chamber Choir and the Vocal Jazz Ensemble in a program of the best modern choral music from around the world and right here at home. Composers include Part, Whitacre, Hogan, Owens, Loeppky, Lauridsen, Stone, Paulus, Meader, and many others. A wonderful choral experience not to be missed! |
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Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Shoals -2010 - Calendar of Events for January
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January 3, 2010 – Sharon Bonner Austell will present, “Looking at the Road Through the Raindrops”. Ms. Austell will talk about the lenses through which we view our lives, and ways to improve our views by recognizing our strengths and indwelling divinity. (Ms. Austell has a BA in religion and psychology from Athens State College and is a first year student at Vanderbilt University in the Master of Divinity program. She is pursuing ordination in the United Methodist Church. She has been married for 19 years to her high-school sweetheart and they have four children.) |
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January 10, 2010 – DVD presentation of “The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die”, by Dr. John Izzo. Talk # 1 on January 10, 2010 will be "Reflect More: Living a Life of Intention". (John Izzo is the bestselling author of Second Innocence and the host of the public television series The Five Things You Must Discover Before You Die. Holding advanced degrees in religion and psychology, Izzo has spoken to one million people on four continents about living more purposeful lives. For this book/DVD series, John Izzo interviewed over 200 people, ages 60-106, each of whom was identified by friends and acquaintances as “the one person they knew who had found happiness and meaning.” From town barbers to Holocaust survivors, from aboriginal chiefs to CEOs, these people had over 18,000 years of life experience between them. He asked them questions like, What brought you the greatest joy? What do you wish you had learned sooner? What ultimately mattered and what didn’t? Here Izzo shares their stories- funny, moving, and thought-provoking—and the Five Secrets he learned from listening to them.) |
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| January 17, 2010 -- Brandon J. Simonson will present, “On Jewish Life in Persian Egypt: How Ancient Languages and Cultures Can Contribute to Our Understanding of Religious Literature”. This presentation will explore the people behind the texts, but not those who necessarily contributed to the writing of the texts, by examining the daily lives of the inhabitants of the Jewish colony in Elephantine, a small island on the Nile River. This examination is possible due to the survival of several letters, lists, and laws from the community, all preserved on papyri. Valuable to the study of ancient life in Persian period Egypt, these texts also provide a glimpse into life contemporaneous with the development of the biblical text and can perhaps provide insight into the ancient lives of those not preserved in aristocratic documents like the biblical text. ( Brandon J. Simonson is from Red Wing, Minnesota and is currently a master’s student at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He recently submitted his thesis on the role of ancient languages and cultures for interpretation in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. He has presented papers at Yale University, Vanderbilt University, and at regional meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature.) |
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January 24, 2010 – Gerald and Cindy Crawford will present, “Our Friends to the North—The Canadian Maritime Provinces”. The Crawfords spent most of August and September traveling in Eastern Canada with a group of American RV enthusiasts. They learned so much about, and gained a great respect for the warm people and beautiful windswept country in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Labrador and Prince Edward Island. The presentation will include photos and history, along with a close look at the Acadians, the hardy descendants of Seventeenth- Century French colonists. |
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January 31, 2010 – Brenda Durham will present, “Ars Viviendi – The Art of Living Well”. We can easily become discouraged and pessimistic when we turn on the news and are continually bombarded with the dominance of the negative sides of our human natures in society. We can become frustrated with the human race and give up on others. Or we can learn to look beyond appearances to see what is true for everyone and find hope in the world and learn to experience the art of living well. (Brenda Durham is a Divinity School student at Vanderbilt University. She is from Birmingham, AL and holds a Master’s degree in Public and Private Management from Birmingham-Southern College. Her goal is to pursue ordination as a Unity minister. She is a Master Prosperity Teacher having trained with Edwene Gaines and is a Master Reiki practitioner.) |
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Services begin at 11 a.m., Coffee hour follows service. |