Sunday, February 5, 2012 – Morning Worship 11 a.m.
“The Challenge of Historical Literacy in the Age of Obama”
Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad
Director of the Schomburg Center
Please join me in welcoming Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, who become the new director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in July 2011. As so many of our members know, the Schomburg is one of our nation’s premier collections of writings and artifacts related to the global black experience.
In addition to being a scholar and educator, Dr. Muhammad is also the author of “The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America” published by Harvard University Press in 2010 for which he recently received the John Hope Franklin Prize from the American Studies Association.
See you at Community for our distinguished guest!
Sunday, February 12, 2012 – Morning Worship 11 a.m.
“MORE LOVE STORIES”
Rev. Bruce Southworth
Valentine’s Day, which is almost upon us, is wonderfully romantic for some and deeply annoying for others. Do you find it sappy, sentimental, sweet, or sour? How do you greet the day?
Beyond that day, how goes it with your spirit this day? How do love and loneliness blend in this season of your life? Or working for justice (the social incarnation of love)?
See you at Community!
Upcoming Programs – For complete listing, www.ccny.org
Other Good Stuff at Community
UN Global Affairs Meeting, Conference Room Sunday, February 5, 9:45 am
Let’s Get Acquainted, Conference Room Sunday, February 5, 12:30 pm
Volunteer Choir Rehearsal, Hall of Worship Sunday, February 5, 12:45 pm
Green Sanctuary, Front Lounge Sunday, February 5, 1 pm
Resistance Cinema, The Vanishing City, Gallery Sunday, February 5, 1:15 pm
12 Steps to a Compassionate Life, Conference Room Monday, February 6, 6:30 pm
UU Christian Fellowship, Front Lounge Tuesday, February 7, 7:30 pm
Healthy Congregations, Gallery Saturday, February 11, 9 am
Arabic Language Workshop, Front Lounge Saturday, February 11, 10 am
People’s Voice Café, Assembly Hall Saturday, February 11, 8 pm
Buddhist & Yoga, Front Lounge Sunday, February 12, 12:45 pm
Volunteer Choir Rehearsal, Hall of Worship Sunday, February 12, 12:45 pm
UN Global Affairs & Community Women, Assembly Hall Sunday, February 12, 1:15 pm
Common Read: The New Jim Crow, Conference Room Wednesday, February 15, 6:30 pm
Antiracistalliance.com Potluck, Gallery Friday, February 17, 5:30 pm
Esperanto Society, Third Floor Conference Room Friday, February 17, 7 pm
Action For Justice, Front Lounge Saturday, February 17, 10:30 am
Black History Month Program, Gallery Saturday, February 17, 11 am
MINISTER’S CORNER
ORP!
ORP!!
ORP!!!
Three Cheers for Our
Organ Restoration Project
In the weeks ahead, you will be receiving invitations to contribute financial support, or additional support if you choose (!), for the Organ Restoration Project.
This fund-raising campaign will enable us to fulfill our commitment to ourselves to pay for this resoundingly important project that we undertook two years ago, by near unanimous vote.
The refurbished organ will sound with glory when it comes back! The refinished console (with all its ranks of keys, stops, and pistons) will have added memory. The pipes, leathers, electric cables, and all the rest are also receiving loving attention and return to us in the spring.
A dedicated team has been planning this outreach, and everyone’s gift is important. Early Leadership Gifts have blessed and encouraged this work, as have all who participated in fund-raisers.
Members of the Organ Restoration Project Team will be phoning in February and will be very happy to make individual appointments if you wish.
We shall receive a Commemorative Pin when we pledge, and please consider a generous three-year pledge. With your pledge will come invitations to a variety of celebratory events.
The Madeleine Hosmer Holmes organ was originally installed in 1954 and will now enrich us for many more decades to come.
We know that not-so-secret secret: Giving feels good and makes a difference!
Please welcome a call from your fellow member, and please support our beloved music program generously. With appreciation, Bruce
Make a career of humanity…. You will make a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country, and a finer world to live in....
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
It is only through the telling of our stories about the destructive dynamics of racialization that many white Americans will be able finally to come to terms with the social costs of “whiteness,” for themselves, their children, and for the larger society. No genuine dialogue about race is possible when millions of whites are taught to believe that blacks have been marginal to the construction of American society, or that the “race problem” has now been solved.
Manning Marable
The Great Wells of Democracy
I would like to tell you in closing a story of an old man. The old man was very wise, and he could answer what was almost impossible for people to answer, so many people went to him. One day two young people went and said, “We’re going to trick this old guy today. We’re going to catch a bird and we’re going to carry it to the old man. And we’re going to ask him, ‘This that we hold in our hands today. Is it alive or is it dead?’ If he says ‘Dead’ we’re going to turn it loose and let it fly. But if he says, ‘Alive,’ we’re going to crush it.” So they walked up to the old man and they said, “This that we hold in our hands today, is it alive or is it dead?” He looked at the young people and he smiled. And he said, “It’s in your hands.”
Fannie Lou Hamer
from The Special Plight and the Role of Black Women
“Sleeping Through a Revolution?”
Sermon Brief – Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday, January 15, 2012
… Were Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. here today (and what an exercise to speculate in that way!), he
too would still be giving a wakeup call to “the fierce urgency of now." King would remind us that there is no new world order – only the same old imperialism.
As much as King has been honored for his leadership in the social arena, I have also found deep, abiding spiritual resources in his writings and speeches – tools, guideposts, clues about how to be “creatively maladjusted.”
If your temperament does not impel you immediately in that direction, or if your spirits are weary from the struggle, or if your faith finds you in one of those difficult times of inertia, perhaps forgetful of those things that lead to hope and courage, try to remember that we are of the same stuff in a “web of mutuality”, all of us, with all the ethical obligations of kinship that lead us out of our solitary selves, out of conformity that kills the spirit.
Much of what King says is the ordinary wisdom of spiritual growth. He appeals to each of us to take stock of our lives – and to be careful, mindful, about misplaced values.
In his ordinary, flawed humanity (like you and me), he still is able to offer lessons for life: day-to-day wisdom of challenge and blessing.
So many lessons, and I close with his “new definition of greatness” – one of the abiding truths that blesses and sustains, that offers me hope and courage.
For us, greatness? Let us stay awake amid the revolutions around us. Let’s keep it simple, and so often, that is how we live in the fullness and beauty that is ours to claim.
Martin Luther King, Jr. offered so much, and here is one takeaway: “Everybody can be great. Because everybody can serve.”
Rev. Bruce Southworth
http://images.acswebnetworks.com/1/1791/11512_Sleeping_Through_a_Revolution.pdf
