Torch Articles
FAMILY FUN NIGHT: Monday, February 4th, 6:15 pm Eliot Hall
ENVIRONMENTAL MINISTRY: Did you miss Jen Farrell of the Salt Lake City Waste and Recycling Division when she presented here last winter? Do you have questions about what can be recycled in Salt Lake City and County and what can’t – and why? Are you curious about what happens to the materials after they’re taken away? Jen will be here again on Friday, February 15, at 7:00pm. This is your chance to learn everything you need to know about recycling!
UU Open Minds Book Club: Thursday, February 21 at 7:00pm in the Haven. February book is “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking" by Susan Cain
Artists Discussing Art: Last Monday of every month Artists gather in the Haven at 7 pm to discuss each others art. This discussion is open to all visual artist, watercolor, acrylic oil, mixed media, fused glass, and clay. Bring work to discuss or just come to listen. Bring a light refreshment to share. Please contact Bill Reed at with questions.
Dinner and Dialogue: Meet other UUs on a more personal level over a potluck dinner. Sign up at the Congregational Life table in Eliot Hall to host or Join a group. Contact with questions
Meditation Walks: Nature Walks along the Jordan River, every Tuesday 10am to Noon. Meet at Arrowhead Park, 550 W 4800 So. Friendly dogs on leash welcome, 1 to 3 miles.
Mindfulness Group:
- Weekly meditation is held on Sundays at 10 am upstairs in the Parlor. We discuss mindfulness in daily living, meditate silently for 20 minutes and close with loving kindness. All are welcome, come and meet others who meditate.
- An evening of Buddhist teachings investigating the foundations of mindfulness meditation. What is mindfulness and how might it be of benefit in our personal lives, alone and together as a community? We will consider how to cultivate a daily practice of mindfulness as taught by the Buddha and is practiced today. All are welcome. Come to the Parlor on the third Wednesday at 6:30pm. For more information
SANCTUARY: SANCTUARY QUESTIONS? Want to learn more about our Sanctuary effort? Stop by the Sanctuary table in Eliot Hall after each service.
- VOLUNTEER: To volunteer to become a Sanctuary Host, sign up at: https://slcsanctuary.org/volunteer/
- DONATE: Online donations to the Sanctuary Family Fund may be made at: https://slcuu.org/sanctuary-fund. To donate by check, make check payable to: First Unitarian Church of SLC, and write: Sanctuary Family Fund in the note.
WALK: Walks along the Jordan River with Mary, every Thursday 10am to Noon. Meet at Arrowhead Park, 550 W 4800 S. Friendly dogs on leash welcome, 1 to 2 miles.
When asked to describe the relationship between religion and sports, we might be inclined to draw a blank. I always assumed that God, as a symbol of love and justice, would never favor an individual or team. We are, after all, God’s children; every one of us. Yet some athletes seek a little extra attention by flashing a signal to God with the sign of the cross right before stepping into the batter’s box. It’s as if to say: “Reward your loyal follower with a homerun.”
Football players also feel uninhibited to show their faith publicly, often crossing themselves after a touch down, indicating they could not have achieved the score without God’s help. Indeed, they were somehow chosen. And in basketball, a long (lucky) shot at a basket that falls in often ends with a sign of the cross as though to say, “Jesus loves me.”
You would think that with all the tumult in the world today, Jesus and God would have more important events in which to interfere. But on the other hand, perhaps the world is in such a mess today because God prefers to intervene in sporting events.
We may soon become a lot clearer on whether or not there’s a connection between athletes and the Divine. The Vatican has recently assembled a track team that will compete internationally. The Italian Olympic Committee has agreed to terms for the Holy See to join the International Association of Athletics Association. The Holy See, which always had its own flag, will now be among the delegations at the opening of the Olympic Games. They say there are no atheists in foxholes. Will there be atheists in the Olympics?
It sure gives me second thoughts about liberal theology. I would not feel comfortable competing against athletes who represent the Holy See with its apostolic succession going back to the first century where St. Peter and St. Paul got this papal thing rolling in the first place. It makes athletes on steroids pale in comparison to athletes representing the saints we read about in the Bible. Is it fair?
The 60 athletes representing the Holy See in international competition include priests, nuns, and members of the Swiss Guard, their secret service men who protect the safety of the pope. The team also has a 62-year old professor who works in the Apostolic Library. The head of their sports department, Monsignor Jose Sanchez de Toca y Alameda predicted that his team would make it to the Olympic podium. I am not betting against him. Although I have never seen a nun run track, I assume they have a lot of pent-up energy ready to break loose in the 100-meter race.
Suddenly it feels like there may be an imbalance in competition. It used to be that the best athlete won, but if a 62-year professor wins an Olympic medal, there will be no other accounting for that than divine intervention. Suddenly liberal theology doesn’t feel all that secure. I would not intentionally cheer against the Vatican team, but may have no choice if I want to remain a Unitarian minister. TRG
A young man in a red MAGA hat…
A tribal elder drumming and singing…
Maybe you’ve already heard this story. It made the rounds on social media last week: as a busload of young white men from a Catholic prep school in Kentucky clashed with a band of Black Israelites at the Lincoln Memorial, a Native American man stepped in between the two groups and began to drum and sing. And one young man, wearing the signature Trump hat, faced off against the drumming man, with a familiar sneer on his face.
We saw the viral video, and we made up our minds within a few seconds which side we were on.
And then, the news media stepped in, to analyze the deterioration of our national dialogue. We are so quick to rush to judgment, they proclaimed, as a longer video was released showing the black protesters seeming aggressive, the absent chaperones, all the details that might have changed our minds if we had just stopped to think for a moment.
I observed all this with a mix of feelings. I, too, had perhaps made a quick judgment; I hadn’t known all the facts. And yet, I didn’t like the way the media wrapped the story up and tied it with a bow. The only thing that worries me more than people jumping to conclusions is people jumping back from those conclusions, deciding, “well, we can’t ever really know what was in anyone’s mind, so we should just stay out of it.”
In one discussion of the video, I saw a white male commenter say, “I honestly don’t know how I would have reacted” – if he had been that young man, a teenager from a privileged family, who claimed to have been standing calmly and trying to defuse the situation.
Two things came to my mind when I read that: white people rarely do think ahead about how we will behave when we find ourselves face to face with racist hatred; and we are rarely aware (or aware enough) of what we are bringing into the situation with us, that might affect how other people see us.
This young man was wearing a hat that represents anger, hatred, and power; he was with a large group of other men wearing those hats, who were taunting and jeering; though he was young, he was not being supervised by adults; and after it was all over, his family was wealthy enough to hire a public relations firm to rescue his reputation. He was interviewed by the Today Show, and invited to the White House. But the people of color in this situation had none of those advantages and we never got to hear their stories.
How often do we see this same series of events play out in our public life? How often are young white men given the benefit of the doubt, while young men of color are jailed (or worse) without a second thought? And how often do we think, if only I’d been there, if only I’d known what to say…
My hope is that more white people will take the time to really think through what we’re going to say to interrupt racism and stand up for people of color. We also need to instruct our children, especially our boys, on how the way that they look, dress, talk, stand, and show up in the world matters. It may seem innocuous, but if it isn’t actively, intentionally anti-racist, it can end up hurting the people that we wanted to protect.
The good news is, our kids are way out in front of us on this. They are already learning much more about racism than my generation ever learned in school. If you talk to them about it, they will listen. So let’s talk about it! I’m happy to help if you need help getting the conversation started.
Chalice Lighting Family
Each month we invite a family from our Religious Education community to light our chalice.
Meet the Diller’s!
Almost six years
First Church and RE is important to us as a place of community and shared values with opportunities to participate in activities that help us grow, learn, and help others.
John, Jamie, Alex, Max, Lucy (dog), Snowflake (cat), Ben (cat), and Blaze (fish).
When Hope is Hard to Find
Note: this piece appears in this month’s edition of Quest, the monthly magazine of the Church of the Larger Fellowship (a Unitarian Universalist online community serving thousands of UUs around the world).
How can we find hope in circumstances such as these we live in today? Would it help to ask what it is we are even looking for? If hope is a thing, what is it? Is it like the family Bible or the inherited china dishes, beautiful to look at but never used? Is it wrapped up and locked down, protected like Fort Knox, the key shoved deep in our pockets? Has it been overused and beaten up, thrown out back to rust and decay? Or worse, is it a myth, a dream, a thing forgotten or abandoned, a wisp of a memory that escapes our grasping fingers and blows away?
We humans, with our acquisitive nature, are always searching for a thing to hold onto. Yet I have learned that we feel less hopeful if we are uncertain of what to do next. By contrast, we often feel a little more hopeful if we can think of something to do to help. So what will happen if we let go of hope as a thing to find, acquire, or achieve, and instead consider hope as a way of living?
As a lifelong music lover and former professional musician, I have a fondness for Russian composers, who have known something about hope and despair. My favorite composer, Dmitri Shostakovich, wrote his Seventh Symphony, the Leningrad Symphony, for the Soviet people while Leningrad was under siege during the second World War. It is a relentlessly desperate piece of work, yet the story behind it is one of unshakeable hope.
Leningrad of the early 20th century was a jewel in the Russian crown, a thriving, trendy city full of artists, writers, and thinkers. Dmitri Shostakovich was one of these artists, already a well known Russian celebrity, with a doting wife and two adorable children and a comfortable teaching position. He was a musician with an anti-authoritarian streak, yet his political grumbling had been tolerated by the Soviet regime in favor of his formidable talent.
In 1939, Adolf Hitler invaded the Soviet Union with Operation Barbarossa. He had managed to convince Joseph Stalin that they were on the same side, and Stalin had cooperated with the invasion of his own country by selling Germany munitions and supplies and by allowing the Germans to conduct reconnaissance and build up troops in Soviet-occupied territory. The invasion was swift and merciless; twelve hundred Soviet aircraft were destroyed in the first few hours of the operation.
The response in Leningrad, the city of artists and thinkers, was overwhelming. Biographer M.T. Anderson says, “Leningraders were so intent on responding to the Nazi threat that on the first day of the assault, a hundred thousand of them volunteered to take up arms.” Shostakovich was one of these volunteers, but he was turned away at the recruiting office because of his poor eyesight. In the following days of the invasion, the teachers at the Conservatory would instead be enlisted to dig trenches. Shostakovich was a terrible trench digger, as were most of the music teachers, who took frequent breaks to read a few pages of a book or pound out a few notes on a piano.
Over the next two years, the invasion would become a terrible siege, one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history. Shostakovich evacuated his family, but refused to leave himself. Consumed with compassion and solidarity, he stayed in the starving city with his comrades, and began work on the Seventh Symphony. Its famous invasion theme, styled to sound at first like annoying toy drums that gradually beat louder and louder until they overwhelm the listener with terror, gives way to a triumphant chorus. It was a rare message of hope and solidarity for the Russian people.
The most compelling performance of the Seventh was given by the Leningrad Radio Orchestra in August 1942, just a few months after its world premiere. Though the symphony had been scored for over 100 musicians, only 15 of the Leningrad Orchestra remained; the rest had died, or been sent off to fight. “My God, how thin many of them were,” one of the organizers of the performance remembered. “How those people livened up when we started to ferret them out of their dark apartments. We were moved to tears when they brought out their concert clothes, their violins and cellos and flutes, and rehearsals began under the icy canopy of the studio.”
Shostakovich was a world class composer, but when people are facing the greatest imaginable evil, who needs music? Yet with this work of art, Shostakovich had renewed the Leningraders’ will to live. This composer could be nothing other than what he already was, and so he created hope out of what he had been given. Had he dug a thousand practical and necessary trenches, he could not have done half of what he did with his true gift, the magic of his music and its singular message for the survival of the human heart.
No one person can save the world all by themselves. The sooner we come to terms with that, the better. And yet, I believe that the world needs more compassionate, selfless ordinary people— more nurses, clerks, mechanics, scientists, insurance adjusters, more teachers, more artists, and more trench diggers—who find ways to do ordinary things with extraordinary love. May we be blessed with the wisdom to discern our gifts, and the courage to use them to create hope out of what we have been given.
Wishing everyone a Happy New Year is sounding awkward. One can wish for anything, of course, and happiness ought to be at the top of the list of wishes. But extending happiness to others these days makes you feel silly or naïve. We are at an impasse on everything, from reversing climate change to shutting down the government. What does happiness for the year ahead supposed to mean?
Perhaps Happy New Year has a more personal connotation; wishing just you all the happiness, luck and good fortune. But how odd is that in this era of deregulation threatening the health of everyone? How odd is that when immigrant children are ripped away from their parents at the border? Why should I be happy while the country plunges into despair about health care, immigration, trade wars, poverty, and gun violence? These are edgy times; only fools would wish someone happiness while the country unravels.
What do we wish for 2019 to be? We’re sitting on a political powder keg about to explode. Everything can fall apart. What do we wish for, really?
I don’t know what can save us, but it seems obvious that what we are missing in our nation’s leadership is character. Our leaders/decision-makers are drowning in self-righteousness. They are beholden to an ideology that takes precedence over people’s lives. They blindly follow a creed that makes no sense in real life. Instead of Happy New Year, I want to say: “May this be the year of character development.”
Abraham Lincoln thought that most of us could deal with adversity. But the test of character is when people have power. That’s when things go awry. The frightful mix of adversity and power is exactly the problem today. People of character deal with power more humbly. That is certainly not the case thus far in 2019. How a person responds to difficult things is determined by character. We are a nation in search of character.
Which leads me to recall a most delightful Christmas holiday spent with five granddaughters from 9 months old to 7 years, with a four-year old and two five-year olds in between. We sent their parents packing for days in order to have “the girls” to ourselves. I am pleased to report that all the girls are strong-willed; no male will ever shout them down, intimidate, or out smart them. But we also became experts in rebellions and meltdowns.
Finding myself one afternoon with a four-year old facedown in the snow staging a tantrum, got me thinking about character as pivotal when dealing with adversity. I was trying to build character in this young child, finding a way for her to deal with her perceived adversity in a more positive manner. But then I discovered this was really a test of my character, not hers. Ostensibly I had the power, she created adversity, so how was I going to deal in responding to difficult things.
We worked it out all right with compromise being the saving grace. But we worked hard at negotiations; she knows how to bargain well for herself.
Why is compromise so difficult in Washington these days? Plenty of tantrums have been thrown, but nothing ever resolved. There’s lots of power in Washington, but no character. Power without character results in the despair we all feel this New Year.
When leadership on both sides develops character and learns compromise, stop having tantrums and work towards peaceful resolutions, then I will wish everybody a Happy New Year. Until then, Good Luck in the New Year. TRG
UU ELEVATION SPEECH CLASS
Rev. Monica Dobbins
Eliot Hall, 7pm
January 8th, January 15th, January 22nd
You've been a member for a while, and want to see our faith grow. But have you thought about *how* to share our “good news"? Imagine you have just two minutes to tell someone how cool Unitarian Universalism is - what would you say? This quick three-week class can teach you how.
Note: this class is for First Unitarian members only.
UU ORIENTATION
Rev. Tom and Rev. Monica
Eliot Hall, 7pm
January 14th
If you are new to our congregation, are interested in becoming a member, or want to refresh your basic understanding of being a UU, you are invited.
Registration is required: Please register here: https://goo.gl/forms/n3dQmpUSUTc6B0H52
Snacks will be served; childcare provided on request - please notify Rev. Monica, , no later than Thursday 1/10 if you need childcare in order to attend.
Environmental Ministry
invites you to:
An Introduction to The Work that Reconnects presented by Mutima Imani and Constance Washburn, Fri, Jan 18, 2019, 7-9PM, Eliot Hall, First Unitarian Church (Enter via the North Door). We face many life-shattering crises today. These crises are more than we can bear alone. The Work that Reconnects, based on the work of Joanna Macy, brings us together to share our despair, and our dreams. It connects us with our passions to participate in the Great Turning and helps us uncover and experience our innate connections with each other and the healing powers of the web of life, so we can discover our role in creating a life-sustaining civilization. This Friday evening presentation is free, with donations welcomed. Questions: Stop by the Environmental Ministry Table today or contact: Kathy Albury,
Environmental Ministry
invites you to a Weekend Workshop:
FROM DESPAIR TO JOY: The Work that Reconnects Weekend Workshopwith Mutima Imani and Constance Washburn, Sat, Jan 19 – Mon, Jan 21, 2019, Eliot Hall, First Unitarian Church (Enter via North Door). We will gather to make our way through the healing spiral toward a just and life-sustaining world. This retreat will explore the intersectionality of current events and empower us to do what is ours to do for the healing of our world, our ancestors and future generations. Pioneered by root teacher Joanna Macyin the late 1970s, this highly experiential and interactive work draws from systems thinking, deep ecology, and many spiritual traditions. More Information & Schedule: https://embodimentmatters.com/from-despair-to-joy/
Registration Fee is on a sliding scale: $150-$300. [No one will be turned away for inability to pay. Contact:Kathy Albury, ].
Registration forms must accompany payment and are available at the Environmental Ministry Table or by contacting Kathy Albury via email .
Registration Deadline: When workshop capacity is reached or Friday, January 18.
People's Justice Forum
Once again this year, First Unitarian Church is supporting the People's Justice Forum (PJF), a grassroots citizen lobbying organization that focuses on progressive issues at the State Legislature.
What does the PJF do? We follow the 45-day legislative season in February and March, and we decide as a group which legislation we want to support or oppose. Then we strategize about how to do it: contacting legislators, attending committee meetings, getting creative about awareness or protest, etc. Our issues include reproductive health, poverty, environmental justice, LGBTQ+ issues, etc.
What's the commitment? You must support progressive issues (there's a screener question on the application regarding your support of abortion rights). Then, you have to be able to commit to a weekly meeting on Monday night, and a kickoff event on the evening of January 17, to be held in Eliot Hall.
If you've been wanting to get involved in politics and have some fun with it, join the PJF! Please reach out to Rev. Monica at if you have any questions. Here is the link to the application: People's Justice Forum 2019 Application