Archives: Services

This I Wonder, This I Believe

“This I Wonder, This I Believe” is a cherished topic for exploration with members of Mount Mansfield Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. Guest Stephen Kastner will share their own life experiences, personal insights, and wisdom.  Stephen asks, “When will we ever realize that we will never understand the mystery of life?  We swim like fish in a sea of sensations trying to make order out of chaos.”

Stephen Kastner writes essays, science fiction, memoirs, poetry, and is currently working on a screenplay and novel about his Quaker ancestor Thomas Maule, who was arrested for defending the wise women accused of witchcraft in Salem in 1692. He leads the Green Mountain Writers Group in Vermont and creates digital media professionally as DesignWise Studios.

Thanksgiving Advent

Many Christians view Advent — the month of spiritually preparing for Christmas — as a vital part of observing the holiday. Rev. Barnaby looks at how Thanksgiving might be saved from commercial corruption by its own Advent period and some UU-grounded practices that might help.

Rev. Barnaby Feder, a lifelong UU, was raised in the San Mateo, Calif., congregation. After several decades as a reporter, primarily with The New York Times, he entered seminary in 2008. He has served UU congregations in Morristown, N.J., Stroudsberg, Pa., and for the 11 years that ended June 30, the Champlain Valley UU Society in Middlebury. He is edging into “retirement” as the half-time interim minister for the Universalist Unitarian Congregation of St. Johnsbury. He and his wife, Michele, live in Middlebury with an odd cat named Alma.

The Wisdom and Lessons of Star Trek

Gene Roddenberry, a humanist, based the ideals of Star Trek on principles that reflect our Unitarian Universalist ideals and values. Since its beginning in 1966, it addressed problems of racism, poverty and violence, building on concepts of the inherent rights of all, and protection of the vulnerable.  Roddenberry provided us with the vision and hope for the future and the potential of humanity.  Come explore together and catch a dose of Roddenberry’s optimism for the future.

Lindamarie Hill is a Master Healer/ Instructor, who founded Trinity Point Holistic Center in 1998. She combines her expertise in life skills teaching and curriculum development and a background in Yoga, Qi Gong, meditation and healing prayer, with cutting edge training in many complementary and integrative medicine therapies. Lindamarie wrote a popular Mind/Body/Spirit column for the Plattsburgh Press Republican, and poetry, some of which became music lyrics. She has taught and worked internationally. The passions that drive her life are family, friends, community healing and building, the arts and caring for the Earth and each other.

A Course in Miracles and How I Came to It

This Service will be a synopsis of Julia’s spiritual seeking and a bit of life for context. An introduction to the framework, content, and purpose of the Course.
Julia Davenport was born in Yosemite CA and has lived in Fl, PA, TX and now VT for 15 years. She has been married to Otis Cleveland for 22 years now and is the mother to 3 young men in college- Moses, Max and Cooper Cleveland. She has 4 cats and feral gardens. She is a natural foods chef, certified health coach, practicing herbalism, aromatherapy, yoga, dance, drumming, singing, Taoism, Wicca and A Course in Miracles.  She teaches Zentangle, arts and crafts, and is in love with plants in general.

Beauty and Art

The phenomenon of experiencing beauty is considered a remarkable event for all individuals. The initial encounter with a beautiful object, can elicit an emotional and intellectual response that transcends the mundane and transports the individual into a realm of heightened perception. However, despite the “realness” of such experiences, they are difficult to articulate precisely and comprehend entirely.
Even though the emotional impact of art can be difficult to measure and quantify, it remains a subject of great interest. Art has a unique ability to purposely move us into this profound experience, evoking a wide range of emotional responses that can vary from person to person yet be more shared than not. Through the years I have had a growing interest in the relationship between art and the responses it evokes, particularly within the context of the experience of beauty. I wish to share these insights.
 
Bio for Dusty Kemp:  I enjoy many things: teaching, being a Dad, writing poetry, recovery, apples, but most of all I like doing art. I really don’t like doing yard work or eggplants.

Gathering the Waters

The Sunday Service committee is ready for another Fellowship Year! This service will incorporate a new tradition. At the last service in June, we handed out index cards to the Fellowship and asked them to write what they hoped to do or see during the summer. At this opening service, we will ask people to share what they wrote and if it came true, in addition to “sharing the waters” from a special place. The index cards were attached to everyone’s name tags and will be waiting when people enter the Barn. We also invite everyone to bring a small container of water from your home or a place you visited to combine into a community bowl as a symbol of our joining together again. All water is sacred. Folks attending via Zoom can share their water virtually and also share what they wrote on their cards at the last service.

Poetry: The language of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all

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Poetry has long been at the heart of building community and of building and sustaining movements of peace, liberty, and justice. As poet Major Jackson says, “Once a reader has fully internalized the poem’s machinations, she collects a chorus within her and is transformed. This ritual generates empathy and widens our humanity.” And as poet Janice Lobo Sapigao states, “Poetry is activism because, line by line, it contains the potential to ask difficult questions, to participate in literary spaces, to push past discomfort, and to build worlds where possibilities drive us. People say they are often moved, held, or taken by poems–and aren’t those actions the basis of activism? Poetry, this way, is a movement.”
In this interactive service, we’ll reflect on and celebrate the power of poetry to drive us toward the 6th principle goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all. 
We ask our fellowship members and guests to share poems that have challenged, moved, and sustained them in working toward this goal themselves.
Danielle Thierry is a member of MMUUF, where she’s active in the Last Minute Choir and the Religious Education and Cares and Concerns committees. Danielle previously served as the organizer/executive director of the Burlington Writers Workshop, where she focused on broadening access to free and supportive writing workshops, retreats, and publishing opportunities and co-founded the community-led literary journal Mud Season Review. Danielle has a master’s degree in creative writing and journalism from Rowan University and has taught writing in community college, workshops, and other settings. She currently works on initiatives to make federal government benefit programs more accessible and equitable through clear language and people-centered design.
Ann Bonanno is a member of MMUUF, and has chaired the Sunday Service Committee for the past decade.  After all this time, she is beginning to define her spirituality, which is clearly based in the natural world and the connections between all living things.  Ann believes strongly in living in gratitude, and spends some time each day grateful for the beautiful state of Vermont and the MMUUF community.

Celebrating the Return of Spring!

For thousands of years, country folk around the British Isles celebrated Earth and sky cycles that occur every year.  In spring, in May, the holiday of Beltane was celebrated.  We can imagine how people felt when the winter was over, and the green plants and luscious flowers again emerged, a miracle once more!   We will participate in our usual service, with a short Beltane ritual during the usual sermon part.  At the end of the service, weather permitting, we will dance around the Maypole with fiddle music from Sarah Hotchkiss.

Evergreen Erb is a member of the MMUUF fellowship, and loves to be in community with such wonderful folks.  She is deeply in love with the Earth, and has been especially enjoying deep dives into learning more about birds, ferns, and mosses.  She has learned that the more you learn about the natural world, the more there is to learn.  Who needs to travel the world, when the world right here has so much to teach us? After many years living in Jericho, Evergreen now lives up a mountain in Huntington, where she is grateful to be in a large forest with great views of Huntington.

The Power of One

This talk will help us understand the transformational impact one person can have on the lives of those around us. It will strive to enhance awareness of the needs of our struggling community members with minimal social capitol and supports, and inspire us to show up more directly with our own time and resources to ensure all in our community have the opportunity to live happy and healthy lives and meet their human potential.

We will hear of Will Eberle’s lived experience with trauma, poverty, homelessness, addiction, and mental health challenges, the transformative impact individual people have had on his life, inspiring stories he’s encountered in his human services career in Vermont, and ideas about how we can all do more to help struggling Vermonters.

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Will trains, consults, speaks, and informs policy on human services, homelessness, and mental health and addiction recovery nationally. Will is the Executive Director of Recovery Vermont/The Vermont Association of Mental Health and Addiction Recovery – Vermont’s largest non-profit state-wide mental health and addiction recovery organization and the founder and principal of Mission Driver Consulting. Will oversaw daily operations across two counties of Vermont for the Vermont Agency of Human Services for six years as a Field Director. He was the Executive Director of the mental health drop-in center Another Way for five years where he implemented Vermont’s Federal Mental Health Transformation grant. He started his human services career as a mental health peer support counselor, street outreach worker, and vocational trainer and mentor for at-risk youth.

Will is a Curtis Scholar with a Masters of Public Administration degree from Norwich University and a Bachelors of Psychology degree from Johnson State College. He is a graduate of the Vermont Agency of Human Services Leadership Academy and a member of the Snelling School of Government’s Vermont Leadership Institute class of 2023. Will Eberle is a person in recovery who experienced homelessness, ACEs, and crushing poverty as a child in the Mountain West. As an adult, Will has overcome trauma, mental health challenges, addiction, homelessness, and abuse – he models resilience and neuroplasticity in his life and work.

Will lives in Northfield, Vermont with his wife and three kids. He serves on his local school board and coaches youth baseball and soccer. He loves cooking, reading, writing, cooking, building projects, trail running, playing and listening to music, yard sales, canoe camping, knitting, and fishing.