This Sunday - Feb. 3, 2008

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Join us this Sunday as your Worship Committee leads the service in a thought provoking sermon on love. Fellow members will share the pulpit as they share their thoughts on our most wonderful human emotion, Love. We will also be distributing bags to all the members that will be used over the month of February to collect notes and other expressions of love that you choose to share with your fellow members.

Walking Together - Feb. 2007

I grew up in the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Columbus, Ohio, which was originally a Unitarian church and was so humanistic that there was rarely any mention of God on Sunday morning, let alone Jesus Christ. Indeed, when I gave my valedictory sermon before going off to seminary, I had intended to close with something to the effect “Dear friends, we are going our separate journeys and God knows when we will meet again.” But I looked at my friends of the First Church, and sensed that would be inappropriate. And so I said inanely, “Who knows when we will meet again?”

Now, I carry with me a strong sense of myself as a Unitarian. It is expressed in our fourth principle of a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. It values the intellect and believes that we can all learn and grow intellectually psychologically and spiritually. As William Ellery Channing (The Founder of American Unitarianism) might have said, we believe in the perfectibility of all human beings. But there was something missing in this Unitarian rational way of thinking and believing for me.

Later, I discovered something of the Universalist spirit in my ministry in a little country church called the East Liberty Church in Clarklake, Michigan not far from Jackson. I came to that church at a time of transition in my life — having left a previous church under pressure, lost my mother, and ended a marriage.

I found in the religion of Universalism our first principle, that is, we affirm the worth and dignity of every person. It was expressed on a wood plaque over the altar of the church, “God is Love.” I came to that church in pain and found people who were kind, reached out and supported me. It was an important time in my life.

We are blessed with both the spirits of Universalism and Unitarianism. We are a religion of the heart and mind. At this time of our transition, I hope that we can avail ourselves of both. If we can do that, if we can value all people and seek to comfort them in their pain as in the spirit of Universalism and seek to identify problems and solve them with a clear mind as in the spirit of Unitarianism, then we will grow strong. But more importantly, Emerson will still be our special home of our faith. - Rev. Harold Beu

Letter From Rev. Beu

Dear Friends,

The Board has decided to end Laura’s services as DRE. I agreed with that decision, but none of us are happy about it. Indeed, we feel compassion and concern for Laura and her family as well as for her friends here at Emerson. Laura has done good work over the years. I hope that we can keep hold of that fact.

This is a sad time for our community but there were good reasons for the board to take this action. We did so with the good of Emerson in our minds. I hope that you accept that was our motivation and try to understand our reasons for this action. I believe that we tried to understand Laura and her supporters. We knew that it was not easy to make some of the changes that were asked of Laura. But from our point of view they were important.

I can tell you from my own personal experience that when I was asked to resign from my church in New Hampshire by a majority vote of the Board, I felt compassion for them because I could see that they agonized over that decision. And while at first, I felt a desire to fight it, I knew that in the long run, that would only serve to divide the church. I knew that I did not want that. And I also knew that for the sake of my career it would be best to leave with a blessing. And so, I worked my last four months doing the best I could to serve them as their minister. Indeed, I think I gave my best sermons in that time.

Therefore, my friends, I ask that we help Laura leave with a blessing. Without a blessing, there is coldness and bitterness, but with a blessing there is warmth and compassion. To this day, I have many friends still at that church in Keene and I was proud of how I acted in the last 4 months of my ministry there. I truly hope that we can do the same for Laura and our community.

Faithfully yours
Harold

Congregational Meeting - 2/10/2008

What the Board of Directors of Emerson Church has been doing over the last year and a half or so is to move the Church toward a way of operating that is aligned with our existing by-laws and organizational manual. The changes made to accomplish this have resulted in some resistance and conflict in many forms that have involved the Board, past Board members, the Minister, the DRE, The Committee on Ministry, current and past Committee Chairs and current and past Friends and Members of Emerson.

We are moving away from a system where only a few people controlled most of the aspects of church life to a system where we allow the Minister to minister to the Church and encourage people to give their input into how things are done, allowing more people to join in and to work together.

Your Board has been trying to get through the changes, deal with the fallout, put out the fires, protect the congregation from the conflicts and keep things going at the same time. This caused confusion, stress, hurt feelings and more conflict.

We need to work through these problems which can be a great opportunity to move up to a more inclusive Church with more to offer its people and its community. But to do this we must get through this period of hurt feelings and conflict relatively intact.

We, the congregation of Emerson Church, need to make informed decisions on the future of the Church. To that end, you are urged to attend an informational meeting of the congregation on Sunday, February 10, 2007, at 12:15 pm in the sanctuary of the church. Let’s talk together to work out our problems in the Love and Dignity that we have for each other. ~ Rob LaPonsa, Board President

This Sunday - Jan. 27, 2008

On Being a Good Minister

Barzillai Frost was Ralph Waldo Emerson’s minister in Concord, Massachusetts and the subject of derision in Emerson’s Harvard Divinity School Address in 1838. In that address, Emerson chided the preacher who “had not learned the capital secret of his profession, namely to convert life into truth.” In other words, Frost’s sermons left Emerson cold because they tended to be intellectual and non-personal. But Frost had other good qualities as minister. And I think it is important for us to ask ourselves — are sermons the only or even the best mark of a good minister? Or, more importantly, how good are we as a community of ministers and promoters of the principles of our liberal religion? Join me as I try to answer these questions. - Rev. Harold W. Beu

Walking Together - Jan. 2008

My father was a nuclear physicist. We did not talk much about his work. He couldn’t because it was classified. But we did have one discussion about it in which I questioned his work that helped to enriched Uranium238 to Uranium235, which meant that it was fissionable material that could be used for either energy or for weapons.

My father began working in 1956 on a program called “Atoms for Peace” created by the Eisenhower Administration. I believe my father had a lot of idealism about that kind of work, since the thinking then was that nuclear power would provide clean and yes, cheap energy. He even wrote a monograph supporting that notion.

However, it was clear that the government [naturally] was not totally candid about this program and that indeed, most of what he did was to help in the process of making weapons. Our discussion was not satisfying for me since I was concerned about the creation of the hundreds, now tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. He said something like, “Well, if we did not do this, then the Soviets will.”

Ah yes, that is the problem. Nations are tempted into creating nuclear weapons because their enemies might, can or will do the same. But each nuclear weapon created is a sign of human failure to make this world a livable place. That means we are committing suicide as a species.

There is something basically wrong with our religions and philosophies that allow such self-destruction. I know that this is not the most pleasant of topics, but I believe that as people of good will and good faith and for the sake of our children and future generations, we need to dedicate ourselves to the abolition of these weapons.

Faithfully yours,
Rev. Harold W. Beu

This Sunday - Jan. 20, 2008

On Hope

Hope can be seen as a desperate mechanism, such that one can hope against all odds for the desired outcome. But without hope, there is no chance of any desired outcome. Those who are hopeless are truly the most unfortunate ones. I hope that you will join me this Sunday to consider this conundrum. - Rev. Harold W. Beu