Simple Joy
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Shortly after I watched the full moon slide behind the trees on the ridge outside my cell window, Dusty, a young orange mackerel tabby tomcat, made his morning round meowing to everyone he met what sounded to me a lot like “Good Morning.” Read more →
River of Joy
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“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.” ―Rumi Read more →
From Your Minister
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I was blessed with an optimistic, joyful disposition, which I inherited from my mother. Read more →
REsources for Living
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Unitarian Universalist minister Bill Clark tells a story about being at the beach after a long, hard day. Read more →
At the Heart of All Creation
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At the heart of all creation lies a good intent, a purposeful goodness, from which we come, by which we live our fullest, and to which we shall at last return…. Read more →
Joy
July-August 2016
A flower blossoms for its own joy. —Oscar Wilde
Articles
We Need Joy
After college, my best friend and I drove from her home in Texas through the Southwest. Read more »
A Bright Golden Thread
When a weaver starts a new piece, she first must tie the warp strings on her loom to form an underlying base of the fabric she will create. Read more »
Thanks to Congregations
The CLF would like to thank the following congregations who, between March 2015 and March 2016 have taken up collections to support our ministries. Read more »
Joy in Ordinary Time
My Mama was a second grade teacher at the Gladwyne Elementary School in the rich suburbs of Philadelphia. Read more »
Simple Joy
Shortly after I watched the full moon slide behind the trees on the ridge outside my cell window, Dusty, a young orange mackerel tabby tomcat, made his morning round… Read more »
River of Joy
“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.” ―Rumi Read more »
From Your Minister
I was blessed with an optimistic, joyful disposition, which I inherited from my mother. Read more »
REsources for Living
Unitarian Universalist minister Bill Clark tells a story about being at the beach after a long, hard day. Read more »
Did You Know?
that CLF has a web page just for kids, parents and religious educators, tied to our monthly theme? Read more »
At the Heart of All Creation
At the heart of all creation lies a good intent, a purposeful goodness, from which we come, by which we live our fullest, and to which we shall at last return… Read more »
Where Are We Going?
Join with friends or family to sing this round to celebrate life’s mystery together.
Here are the three parts:
First part: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?
Second part: Where do we come from?
Third part: Mystery, mystery, life is a riddle and a mystery!
Listen to the video below to learn the melodies with the Orange County Unitarian Universalist Choir.
To hear hundreds of UUs singing this song at General Assembly 2008, watch the first few minutes of this video from morning worship with Rev. Fred Muir.
The lyrics to this song come from the title of one of artist Paul Gaugin’s paintings (you can see the words from the first part of the round, written in French, in the upper left-hand corner):
Paul Gauguin – D’ou venons-nous (1896) Museum of Fine Arts Boston
Song credit: “Where Do We Come From?” by Brian Tate, as included in the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Singing the Journey: A Supplement to Singing the Living Tradition. Copyright 1999 by Brian Tate.
A Tale of Two Ministers
For our theme of Mystery we actually have two people to honor. The first is Rev. Dr. Judith Campbell, a UU minister who writes mystery novels about a UU minister named Olympia Brown. The second, of course, is the original Rev. Olympia Brown, who the character is named for.
The Olympia Brown in the murder mysteries is, like her author, a modern woman. But she shares a courageous spirit and a sense of justice with the historical Olympia Brown.
Olympia Brown, Universalist minister
That Olympia Brown was born in 1835, and she was the first woman in the U.S. to graduate from a regular school for the ministry, and she was ordained into the Universalist ministry as the first woman to be fully ordained and recognized by her denomination.
Olympia Brown served as a minister until the age of 53, when she decided to retire from church work in order to work full time on promoting women’s rights.
Judith Campbell, our mystery writer, has been both a professor and a minister before turning to writing murder mysteries as well as other kinds of literature.
