Fun Sunday

I've long thought that the "down Sundays" (the Sundays after holidays) are as much self-fulfilling prophesy as anything, and I always try to do interesting things on these weeks. The Sunday after Christmas is one of the hardest and most interesting, since we don't have RE that day and it has to be an intergenerational service. This year we tackled the Golden Compass. Both services were full and I think everyone had a good time. (Since someone asked, here's what we did. We talked a little about the story for those who had not read the book, I lead a guided meditation for the purpose of letting everyone find their daemons, after which people shared their experience with their neighbors, I talked about the UU values in the story (about thinking for yourself, and about being open minded to new understandings of words like God) Ron did a brief theology of Dust, and we ended with an "imposition of dust", inviting all who wished to come forward and get a smudge of glitter on their hand or forehead or just get dusted with glitter. We used the new, tiny glitter so I'm still in good with my janitor, and somewhat to my surprise, most of the people who came up wanted glitter on their forehead. It was great fun.)

Also present at the service was someone from my first congregation. She introduced herself as having known me from the days "of the church of Jesus Christ of the Air Conditioner." That got a non-comprehending laugh and took me back years and years, to the early 1980's, when the church I served in Columbia, South Carolina, owned a tiny church which had once been an Episcopal chapel in a Mill Village. it did indeed have a lovely stained glass window of Jesus in the back, and at some point, the bottom panel had been removed for an Air Conditioner. John Buehrens, later the president of the UUA, visited the congregation before I arrived and dubbed it with that name.

At the second service there were a couple of guys from Knoxville, a church which I served for a Summer as an intern and then for a year as a part time interim.

So many people told me they'd seen The Golden Compass for this service that if there is a sequal, I'm going to take credit for pushing this movie over the top.