Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Greater Cumberland

June 4th, 10:45 a.m.
Lora Powell-Haney – “Blooming with Delight: 100 Years of Flower Ceremony”

This June 4 marks the centennial of the first Flower Ceremony or Flower Communion, created by Czechoslovakian Unitarian minister, the Rev. Norbert Capek (CHOP-ek). We celebrate this beloved ceremony even in the midst of uncertainty and fear, just as people have done around the world since 1923. We’ll practice joy as an act of resistance. Please bring a flower to share, from your garden or roadside or market.

June 11th, 10:45 a.m.
JD Stillwater – “Befriending the Thief: Remembering Mary Oliver”

Death is a thief that steals our loved ones, breaks our hearts, and ravages our lives. One of life’s few guarantees, death will come for each of us in time. What good is it? The natural world offer hints at deeper purposes that might help us befriend Death. Mary Oliver’s poetry often touched on death as integral to life, and when enriched by understandings from science, her beautiful words inspire a new, friendlier relationship with it.

June 18th, 10:45 a.m.
Barbara Hurd – “Seeds in the Time of our Waning: how we see when grief is what we feel.”

How does personal loss affect how we perceive the world? What happens to our sense of time and attention to detail? Using my own recent experience with grief, I’ll consider those questions and the larger ones: might loss on a global scale induce griefs we’re not even aware of? If so, how does that unacknowledged grief alter how we see the world?

June 25th, 10:45 a.m.
Thomas Bowling – “The Wall of the Mind”

Our speaker for this service will be Tom Bowling, Vice President for Student Affairs, Emeritus at Frostburg State University. During a study-tour of German universities almost 30 years ago, Tom was introduced to the idea that, although the Berlin Wall had come down and the country was reunified, the former East Germans and West Germans were still divided by a “Wall of the Mind.” The program will further explore this concept and how such “walls” have only gotten taller and thicker. We will discuss how education, by celebrating science, curiosity, and information literacy, can play a key role in tearing down these walls that are dividing us.