Part I I have some challenging questions for us, which I pose with love for you, for us, and for this aching world. I cannot promise you hope in this sermon, but as a good modern Universalist, I can promise you love. If this morning is a morning when you just cannot bear a heavy …
Once a month I conduct what I call A Ritual of Gratitude and Letting Go. It is based on the four-point spiral that guides the Work That Reconnects of Joanna Macy. The WTR is focused on spiritual engagement with climate change; this particular ritual that I have developed is more generalized. One: We start with …
First Parish Church of Groton, April 26, 2015 Audio version here. Perhaps you know this parable, which invites us to see with new eyes, or eyes that are willing to see newly: There once was a simple farmer who lived and struggled alongside his neighbors and friends, trying to exist and fulfill a peaceful life. …
How of Now: Holding this Earth, Our Gratitude, Our Pain (sermon) Read More »
In the early 1980s, we all lived under the pale of mutual nuclear destruction. Are you, dear reader, old enough to remember? I was in high school then and I took this very personally. While others were out partying, or working, I was reading Jonathan Schell’s Fate of the Earth. In general my parents could …
(Part I can be found here.) (2/26/2020: edited for clarity, as well as to remove some able-ist language) We long for a clear, identifiable fix. Something that we can advocate for – it might not come tomorrow or next week, but we can name it now (like body cameras on police officers, like grand juries …
There are three stories that describe this point in the earth’s narrative: Business as Usual; the Great Unraveling; and the Great Turning. Business as Usual is a familiar paradigm. This story values growth over all other things. But only particular kinds of growth. Not growth in wisdom. Or health. Or happiness. But growth in terms …
Everybody Loves a Good Ending (of the World) audio version: click here. Above is a link to my first attempt to audio record and post my sermons. Please forgive clumsiness as I learn. Below is the prepared sermon, which is mostly what is on the audio version, minus stuttering and mis-speaking and a few other …
Everybody Loves a Good Ending (of the World) (sermon) Read More »
Village Church, Cummington, MA ~ June 2, 2013 Karen G. Johnston, Candidate for the Unitarian Universalist Ministry READING #1 “Causes and effects assume history marches forward, but history is not an army. It is a crab scuttling sideways, a drip of soft water wearing away stone, an earthquake breaking centuries of tension. Sometimes one person …
Hope with Feet: Stepping Into the Great Turning (sermon) Read More »
Village Church, Cummington, MA May 19, 2013 Karen G. Johnston Candidate for the Unitarian Universalist Ministry Readings A Stone Jug A bulldozer digging a pond on my mother’s family’s land unearths two stoneware jugs buried four feet in the ground, one broken and one intact. Who put them there? When? Why? We suppose, but can’t …
Reading You might remember that in January, I quoted Nelba Marquez-Greene, the mother of Ana Grace Marquez-Greene, killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the tragedy of the Newtown massacre. A month after her daughter was murdered, she wrote Many want the “real” story. Here is the real story: Evil visited Newtown. Now it’s our …
Love Wins: The Reluctant Prophet in Us All (sermon) Read More »