Two of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s most well-known poems, “Ulysses” and “Crossing the Bar,” assist us in exploring one of the great polarities and paradoxes in human life: doing and being, striving and surrendering, never to yield and always to yield.

Bruce A. Bode is Minister Emeritus at the Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship (QUUF) in Port Townsend, Washington, from which he retired in 2018 as the Senior Minister after serving the congregation for fourteen years (2004-2018). Before coming to Port Townsend, Rev. Bode was the Interim Minister of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston, Texas (2002-2004) and the Hope Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma (2001-2002). Prior to that, he served for twenty-two years (1978-2001) as an Associate Minister at the Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a large, independent, religiously liberal congregation.

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