The First Home Is a Watershed
Music led by Erin Galloway
Rain falls on a roof in Spartanburg, runs off the eave, crosses a yard where a black walnut is already dropping fruit in July, and makes its way to Lawson's Fork, then the Pacolet, then the Broad, then the sea. Every house in this county sits on a slope, and the slope decides where the water goes. Before a home is a house, a deed, or a country, it is a slope down which the rain runs.
In the first of two reflections, Sam Harrelson begins with the ordinary facts of this ground. Red clay, one creek, one tree. Drawing on philosophy, theology, poetry, and the practice of close attention, he asks how a place works on us before we learn to put a name on it, and what it would mean to say that the ground has been keeping us all along.
What We Ask of the Water
Music led by TJ Turner
A single data center of the kind now proposed in Spartanburg County can draw hundreds of thousands of gallons of water a day, and a good deal of what it takes leaves as vapor. That water does not come back down the creek. The permits are public. The comment periods are open. Most of us have never read one.
Following the water outward from the creek into the wider watershed, Sam Harrelson considers the grids, buildings, and infrastructure that seem placeless and are always somewhere in particular. What do these systems ask of our rivers, our power, and our neighbors? Who is in the room when a place is remade, and who is informed afterward? In the country's 250th year, this reflection asks what it means to seek the welfare of a home we hold in common with people whose experience of it differs from our own.
August Service Theme
A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand (Abraham Lincoln)
"A house divided against itself cannot stand." Abraham Lincoln shared those words in his “House Divided” speech at the Illinois Republican State Convention, Springfield, Illinois June 16, 1858. Those words remain as relevant today as ever. This month, we will explore the promises and paradoxes embedded within American Democracy, exploring the principles upon which this country was founded, the beliefs that shaped its earliest leaders, and the civic responsibilities that accompany such freedom. We will examine what it means that Democracy is not just about having structures in place, but about practicing respect, engagement, and caring for each other as we work toward justice.
August Share The Plate
School Supplies for Vida y Salud
Exploration of Faiths: Unitarian Universalists
Gratitude to the Spartanburg County Public Library and especially to Gwen Murtha for the opportunity to share about the Unitarian Universalist movement and our congregation in their Virtual Exploration of Faiths series.
Thank you to every person, whether part of our congregation or not, who makes this world more and more one in which we are Free To Love.
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