Happy New Year! Our fiscal year started July 1, and with that, we say good-bye to President Nils Pedersen, Vice-President Rob Wamstad, and member-at-large Pam Daly. Nils, Rob, and Pam: we cannot thank you enough for your fine service to QUUF. We also welcome three new Board members – David Covert, Frances Loubere, and Virginia … Continue reading Greetings from Your New Board President
Guest Blog Post from Membership Coordinator, Abigael Crecca. I am in Eastern Oregon regularly these days, in the quiet and solitude of my family home. Hearing stories and flipping through mountains of photographs to find my place in the order of things. My mom passed away last March, and my nephew Jake is caring for … Continue reading Journey to the East Side
I’m just five weeks away from concluding my time as your minister, and as such I’m attempting to turn over as much as I can of whatever I have to whomever is interested. In this frame of heart and mind, this morning I stumbled across a print version of a service from Sunday, February 7, … Continue reading Oh, We Give Thanks…
Who are we, really? And what is the consciousness that can ask this question? I’ve been prompted to reflect on this quintessential philosophical question in relation to a bout of the “Quimper-area crud” that befriended me early in the week of Good Friday/Easter and from which I’m still recovering. During these past four weeks, I’ve … Continue reading The “I” and the “Not-I”
This morning I’m working – or planning to work – on my message for this Sunday, a shared sermon with Joseph Bednarik – “Poetry, Poets, and Religion: Personal Glimpses” – in which each of us will speak about our individual journeys with poetry. One of the poems for my journey that yearly cycles into my … Continue reading Nature’s First Green Is Gold
Each of us, no doubt, will have our individual responses – various combinations of sorrow, anger, frustration, despair – to yet another mass shooting this past Wednesday in which the lives of seventeen persons were killed and many more injured when a former student entered Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland FL in mid-afternoon … Continue reading The Sorrows of the World
Flossie and I returned earlier this week from a restful and renewing four weeks away in which most of our time was spent in the desert home of friends in Borrego Springs, California, a “dark sky community” in which the night-time lighting is kept to a minimum. The emotional highlight of my time there was … Continue reading The Dome of Heaven
There are typically three movements with regard to planned human events: the anticipation of the occasion, the actual occasion, and the review of/reflection on the occasion. The three movements of Christmas, we may say, are: the wrapping for Christmas, the unwrapping of Christmas, and the wrapping up of Christmas. How quickly do you say goodbye … Continue reading Wrapping Up Christmas
I’m writing just prior to the Winter Solstice – December 21, 8:28am in our part of the world – which brings to mind a poem that has been a delightful companion to me for many years. It’s a poem by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke in praise of darkness – actually, it’s a prayer … Continue reading Solstice Darkness
Last Sunday in introducing the lighting of the Candle of Love, I said that for me this third candle of the advent season comes closest to the heart of Christmas … and that’s because Christmas has to do with the heart, and the heart has to do with love, and love has to do with … Continue reading In Defense of Love
