WORSHIP SERVICES
May 14th – “Love, Justice and Peace – the Challenge of Mother/Father’s Day” – Rev. Richards
If you wish, please bring a picture of your Mother and/or Father to our service, to put on the table in the front of the sanctuary.
Julia Ward Howe, a well known Unitarian of the mid-19th century, and my mother had it right. Parenthood has little to do with perfume, neck-ties, adoration or pedestals, and everything to do with love, justice, non-violence and peace, whether among two year old’s or adults.
May 21st – Rev. David Farrington
May 28th – “Hope Inspires Solutions” Rev. Richards
A few ideas about keeping our sanity in the face of an increasingly hard hearted and ‘mean spirited’ world.
June 4th – Steve Wills’ TED and Response program
EVENTS and ANNOUNCEMENTS
Board of Management meeting on Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 12, 2017 after coffee hour in the church BYOL (Bring Your Own Lunch).
June 11th – Annual Meeting of First Church Unitarian of Athol
We vote on the Mission Statement at this meeting.
IN CLOSING
The Rhodora
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
On being asked, whence is the flower?
In May, when sea winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals, fallen in the pool,
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the redbird come, his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! If the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for Being:
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask, I never knew:
But, in my simple ignorance, suppose
The self-same Power that brought me there,
brought you.