11:00 Service ~ The Truth About Emily Dickinson
Although she wasn’t much of a joiner, Dickinson’s fearless, restless, and probing intelligence (not to mention her eccentricities) would have made her a perfect fit for the UU church. Raised in the conservative Protestant tradition of New England, her poetry suggests that she found Christianity inescapable, and yet she wrestled with it mightily. Along the way, she thought with as much depth and complexity as anyone about the ambiguities of faithfulness, the nature of God (and whether or not He exists), and the nature of Truth (and whether or not it can be known, and if so, how). We will focus especially on the latter – Dickinson’s notions of “truth” – as expressed in several of her poems, such as “Tell All the Truth but Tell it Slant,” “Truth Is As Old as God,” and “The Brain Is Wider than the Sky.”
Speaker: Dr. Christopher Stuart, currently Katharine Pryor Professor and Head of the Department of English at UTC. He is a recent “convert” (he delights in the oxymoron) to the UU church, to which he was drawn by his fiancé Kimberly Mathis.
9:30 Forum (downstairs) ~ Nonviolence in Our Society
Non-violence was defined long ago coming from the Hindu/Sanskrit word Ahimsa as “causing no harm, no injury, no violence to any living creature.” But Mohandia Gandhi insisted that it means much more than that. He said nonviolence was the active, unconditional love towards others, the persistent pursuit of truth, the radical forgiveness toward those who hurt us, the steadfast resistance to every form of evil, and even the loving willingness to accept suffering in the struggle for justice without the desire for retaliation.
Both of these themes describe an entirely new way of life and a new methodology for human living and social change. Practicing non-violence means claiming our fundamental identify as beloved human beings. When we accept ourselves as beloved we can also see others as brothers and sisters…beloved in their own right.
Presented by: UUCC Social Justice Committee and Grace Episcopal Church’s Campaign Nonviolence Chattanooga, a coalition of churches, organizations and people who support the cause of non-violence and hope to build a flourishing movement for a nonviolent world that has the capacity to end war, poverty and the climate crisis.