Jill McAllister

Peter Mayer Returns to the Fellowship, 2/23

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Well-known, and loved, singer-songwriter Peter Mayer is coming to the Fellowship on Sunday, February 23. He’ll be with us for the Sunday service, which will include more than just a few songs. He’ll also be doing concerts at the Eugene UU congregation on Friday night Feb. 21 and at the Salem UU congregation on Saturday night Feb. 22. Plan now to join us on Sunday, and attend either of the other concerts as well.

“What Do You Know?” 2/9/25

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And how do you know you know it? But even more important is “what difference does it make? Martin Luther King Jr said “shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.” And that “nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” The minister/writer Frederick Buechner once said “faith is not being sure where you’re going, but going anyway.” Which leads us to consider the relationship between knowledge and faith, which isn’t as simple as we might assume.

Between Us

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As Unitarian Universalists we greatly value learning and growth. Rev. John W. Brigham, quoted in our hymnal “Singing the Living Tradition” captured this value well: “Go your ways, knowing not the answers to all things, yet seeking always the answer to one more thing than you know.” Our Transcendentalist ancestors called this process of learning and growth “self-cultivation” and they saw it as an essential part of the religious life. So the question “What do you know?” has significance for us.

Using it as a frame, or a prompt, for Black History Month, the questions could include these: What do you know about “The War Before the War?” What do you know about the Harlem Renaissance? The Combahee River Collective? The women of the civil rights movement? The work of Octavia Butler, or Audre Lourde, or Bayard Rustin? What do you know about Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Case for Reparations”? What do you know about the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, or the St. Luke Penny Savings Banks, or Black Wall Street? How many massacres of African Americans in American cities in the 1900’s can you name? The list goes on and on.

The larger question – the more important for our religious lives, is this: what difference does knowing or not knowing make? Especially now?