Huntsville, Texas
Huntsville Unitarian
Universalist Fellowship
Huntsville, Texas
Newsletter - February 2008
"Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars... Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."
Huntsville UU Services
Please come at 10:00 for coffee and conversation before the service. Coffee will not be served after the service. Post-service conversation will continue over lunch. Sun. February 10: Our guest speaker will be Dr. Martha Lou Castillo.
Her topic will be "Meditation and Awareness."
Dr. Castillo was born in Utica, New York and after degrees from Ward-Belmont in Nashville, TN and Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, she taught art in Miami, Florida and later worked for Pan American World Airways. This led to a trip to Mexico City with her sister where she met and then married Jose Castillo. She moved to Mexico City with her husband in 1945, where she had four children and began work on a Masters degree while teaching at the American School. In 1963 at the death of her husband, she returned to the US to complete her MA at Michigan State and then moved to Florida. She took up teaching again in Key West and Miami and completed a doctorate from the University of Miami with a dissertation entitled "Sensitivity Training in the Ninth Grade English Classroom." Her studies in Sensitivity Training under visiting psychiatrists inspired her interests in meditation. When she retired from teaching in 1976, she enjoyed traveling with her companion of 35 years, Al Ruther, spending winters in Florida and summers in the Northeast. During her travels she continued her studies, including research on her ancestor Samuel Gorton, the founder of Warwick, Rhode Island, and at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. In 1996, Dr. Castillo started swimming competitively and in the 2007 Senior Olympics, she won gold medals in each of the four swimming events that she entered. She also holds several world records for swimming in her age group.
I In 1995 she attended a Vispassana Buddhist retreat in Massachusetts where she began the practice of meditation, which she continues to this day.
Sun. February 24: Our speaker will be Christina Branum-Martin. Her Sermon is entitled "Standing Barefoot on the Earth."
Christina Branum-Martin is a seminary student at the
Meadville- Lombard Theological School of Chicago in their non-resident program. She lives in Houston, Texas, where she and her husband have a 7 year-old daughter. She is interested in liberal theology's call to social justice and religious action, and the intersection of science and religion.
Of her sermon she writes, "The seventh Principle, which affirms “respect for the interdependent web of all existence”, is the center of our worldview as Unitarian Universalists. Yet we have difficulty finding religious language to express this theologically; we have inherited from our religious history a tension between transcendentalism and religious humanism. In my busy life, I found myself in need of a spiritual practice that reconnected me to the natural world and explored a way to talk about it in religiously humanistic terms. I found in the recent incarnation of the Humanist Manifesto, published in 2003, a foundation for a theology that celebrates a language of reverence and spiritual depth. From this, I found renewal as a person of faith in a secular world."
Huntsville UU Women
On March 20th, we will be meeting at 10:30 a.m. at Anne True's home (1879 Greenbriar Dr in Elkins Lake).
Alice Schulman will be facilitating a discussion on "Preparing for Widowhood". Luncheon will follow.
Huntsville UU Book Club
Rudolfo Alfonso Anaya was born in Pastura, New Mexico in 1937 and raised in Santa Rosa, and Albuquerque, NM.
His first language was Spanish, and he did not learn English until he was enrolled in school. His writings reflect his own personal struggles of being a Latino in a culture dominated by Anglos. Anaya earned both a B.A. and M.A. in English from the University of New Mexico. Working as a High School teacher, he wrote during the evenings. Bless Me Ultima, his first published work, won the Premio Quinto Sol award and is considered a classic Chicano work. Following the acclaim of this book, Anaya became a faculty member at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque where he remained until he retired in 1993. Following his retirement, Anaya has devoted his time to writing and traveling.
A Note From Your Minister
My and Martha's younger son, Jacob, is leaving for college in the Fall of 2008, so now is the time for a change in our lives. I have decided to search for a full-time position as a UU minister. Four congregations across this country have asked me to pre-candidate; pre-candidating is when a minister and a search committee meet and determine if they fit with one another. Then the next step will be a candidating week with the congregation with whom I fit the best.
This will happen in April or May. I will keep you all informed because I want to keep in touch; I care deeply for all of you and our church. I want you to know that the time I have spent with you all has been special and I cherish it.
I am working with the District Executive to help Huntsville find a new minister. There are some ministers out there in our district who are looking for part-time opportunities, and would love to come to Huntsville. I will be meeting and talking with some of them in the next month.
The Huntsville Unitarian Universalist Fellowship is a bastion of liberal religion in the Huntsville area, and we are all thankful that it exists, for us and all those looking for our liberal faith. My ministry will continue with you until the end of July, but you will always be in my thoughts as I continue on in my ministry. Blessings,
Living the Questions
This program was created by Revs. Jeff Procter-Murphy and Dave Felten, who currently serve United Methodist congregations in Arizona. The goals of this class are Christian Exploration and Spiritual Formation, and to facilitate this objective they have gathered together the world's leading biblical scholars. This program, while trying to educate Christians in a scientific world, does not profess to know all the answers, but rather probes what faith can look like in the 21st century.
This class will be offered several times over the next year, but the next opportunity starts on February 5th. The program will be offered either on Tuesday mornings (10:00 am to 12:30 pm) or Tuesday evenings (6:00 pm to 8:30 pm), and will not require homework.
The meetings on February 5th are orientation sessions. The material fees for this course are $12.00 per person.
Anyone who is interested should contact Laura Young at
295-1327 or laura@areiospagos.com
Chalice Lighter Call
The Southwestern Unitarian Universalist Women's
Conference
It Is Never Too Early To Make Plans
Newsletter
Annual Meeting
Officers
President: Mardi Sale Vice Pres./ Program Chair: Beth Williamson Treasurer: Richard Lane Secretary: Mary Welborn Appointed Positions
Organist: Dixon Lichtenauer
Co-Song Leaders: Melissa Templeton-Mahaffey, Beth Williamson Reading Leaders: Anne Sigler; Rick Norman
Growth/Membership Chair: Joan Stringer Newsletter/Order of Service Editor: Anne True Website Coordinator: Roberta Krock Publicist: Paul Culp |
