Are you directionally challenged? (In the interest of full disclosure, I am.) Do you find it hard to ask for directions? Unitarian Universalists are all about questions. What does home mean to you? Where and when do you feel most at home?
Roddy O’Neil Cleary is a retired Emerita UU minister who is a religious hybrid, a catholic unitarian. She was a member of a religious community of sisters for almost 15 years, a campus minister at UVM for 15 years, and served at 1st UU in Burlington for 11 years. She is working at present in Hospice and prison ministry.
You don’t have to be an animal lover to appreciate that the happiness and well-being of humans and animals is deeply interconnected. Without a shift to a Gross National Happiness paradigm or something like it, many creatures – including giraffes and elephants – may be doomed to extinction. Without tending to the animal kingdom, we humans may also be doomed. Fortunately, there are some fine examples of how a GNH approach can help save the day.
Ginny Sassaman grew up in Central Pennsylvania before moving as a young adult to Washington, D.C. where she was media communications director for Common Cause, The American University, and the Women’s Legal Defense Fund before leaving the D.C. fast track to pursue a fulltime career as a watercolor painter. In 2001, she and her husband Bob moved to Vermont. In 2006, Ginny returned to school, earning a Master’s in Mediation and Applied Conflict Studies at Woodbury College in Vermont. While working as a professional mediator, Ginny stumbled upon the science of happiness, which she considers her true calling. She is a co-founder and past president of Gross National Happiness USA, & now serves on the GNHUSA advisory board. With a Certificate in Positive Psychology, Ginny’s specialty is the intersection between personal happiness and systems change to support wellbeing for all. Ginny is a member of the Unitarian Church of Montpelier, where she delivered her first sermon in 2013. Since then, Ginny has led services in local UU churches as well as churches in South Carolina, Wisconsin, and Massachusetts. Over the last three summers, Ginny led 16 services at the summers-only Barnard, VT UU Church. Those sermons are being compiled into a book, Preaching Happiness: Creating a Just, Joyful World due out in spring 2020. Ginny is always grateful to share the wisdom of happiness with UU congregations.
Truth and Meaning: The fourth UU Principle is a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. This service will explore the differences between truth and meaning, ask us to consider our responsibilities in the search, and celebrate our freedom.
Rev. Erica Baron was a member of MMUUF when she was in high school. After that, she went off to college and then seminary at Andover Newton Theological School and was ordained as a UU minister in 2008. She served congregations in Vermont and New York before becoming Congregational Life Field Staff for the UUA earlier this month.
