From the kitchen of

Yvette Lepage and Mark Tendick

A family favourite–never any left over!

3 large ripe tomatoes, chopped

2 cucumbers, peeled and chopped

1 small red onion or 2 green onions, chopped (optional)

1/4 cup olive oil

4 tsp lemon juice

11/2 tsp crumbled dried leaf oregano

salt and freshly ground pepper

1 cup crumbled feta cheese (125g)

6 black olives, sliced (optional)

In shallow bowl, combine tomatoes, cucumber and onion. Sprinkle with oil, then with lemon juice, oregano, and salt and pepper to taste. Sprinkle with feta cheese and olives over salad. Makes 6 servings.

From the kitchen of Yvette Lepage and Mark Tendick 

Who says you need meat for protein?  Chick peas are high in protein, as well as in fiber and iron.  Tasty too.  So, eat up!

 

1 can chick peas (19 oz.)

2 tbsp finely chopped red onion or green onions

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 tomato, diced

½ cup chopped parsley

3 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp lemon juice

salt and pepper to taste

 

In salad bowl, combine all ingredients and toss.  Chill for 2 hours to blend and develop flavours before serving. Taste and adjust seasoning.  Makes 4 servings

A Sermon Given
by The Rev. Roger Fritts
on October 18, 1998
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland 

A few years ago researchers conducted a nation wide study on the subject of church affiliation. The results showed that more than 450 thousand adults in this country call themselves Unitarian Universalists. This makes us the fifteenth largest religious group in the United States. Yet given that the population of this country is more than 260 million; 450 thousand is but a drop in the bucket. We are dwarfed by the Methodists, who have more than 10 million members, and by the Southern Baptists who have more than 15 million members. We are a mere blip on the radar screen of the Roman Catholics who count 60 million people as members in the United States. 

Because of our size, I often find myself in the situation of trying to explain my religion to people who have never heard of Unitarians or Universalists. For example I might find myself in a conversation where someone asks me what I do for a living. I explain that I am a Unitarian Universalist minister. The people I am talking with often respond by saying that they know nothing at all about Unitarian Universalism. They ask me to explain my religion to them, in a few words.

I do not believe I can give one right answer to this question. Instead several possibilities always come to my mind. For example: 

One answer I give is to refer to the origins of the words Unitarian and Universalist. This is a particularly helpful way to explain who we are to a person who is deeply committed to a Protestant or Catholic church. I explain that Unitarian refers to the unity of God as opposed to the Trinitarian belief. Unitarians believe that Jesus was a human being, while Trinitarians believe that Jesus was God. 

Universalism refers to the belief in Universal salvation, in contrast to the Calvinist belief that God preordains some people at birth to go to hell or to heaven. Universalists believe that no hell exists and that after death everyone goes to heaven. Christians who have struggled to understand the theology of the trinity, or who had struggled to deal with a theology of predestination, can quickly see how Unitarian Universalists are different. 

Another answer I might give is to talk about our emphasis on tolerance and respect. This is a helpful way to explain our religion to people who are angry and disillusioned with all religion, because of their experience with self-righteous, judgmental religious people. Unitarian Universalists, I explain, believe that people should be encouraged to present their ideas about religion without fear of censure or reprisal. People who have left organized religion behind because closed-minded clergy have disillusioned them, may see how we try respect the dignity of every person.

Still another answer I might give is to list famous persons who have been Unitarians or Universalists. This helps when people tell me they have heard that we worship the devil or that we are a new-age-flaky religion. I say that Thomas Jefferson, and Henry David Thoreau held Unitarian beliefs. I explain that a leader of the effort to gain women’s right to vote, Susan B. Anthony, was a Universalist. I say that the last Unitarian to run for President of the United States was Adlai Stevenson and that the last two Secretaries of Defense have been Unitarians. This name dropping is effective with people who confuse the Unitarian Church with the Unification Church. The Unification Church is a conservative Christian group established by a minister from Korea, who claims that he is the messiah. 

I have given all three of these explanations on one occasion or another. However, each of these answers, the origins of the words, the importance of tolerance and respect, and the names of famous Unitarian Universalists, are rooted in another, more basic definition. In trying to explain who we are I find myself turning to this basic definition. 

At some point in the conversation I often say that the use of reason is the unique quality of our church. Reason is the special strength of our religion. When others invite us to take something on faith, we want to know “Is it rational? Is it logical? Is the faith statement consistent with what we know about the world? Is it probable, based on our own experience?” 

Our belief that Jesus was a human being, not God, is a result of our use of reason, going back to the beginnings of our religious movement 400 years ago in Europe. 

Our belief that God does not preordain which babies will go to heaven or to hell is a result of our use of reason, going back to the beginning of Universalism 200 years ago in New England. 

Our belief that we should treat every human being with dignity and respect is a result of our use of reason. The Universalists were the first to oppose slavery and the first to recognize the ordination of a woman minister. 

Our ability to attract to our membership outstanding philosophers, political leaders and scientists is a result of our use of reason. From Ralph Waldo Emerson to Robert Fulghum we have been blessed with creative thinkers in our membership. 

Montgomery County has an enormous variety of religious groups. We have a super market, a shopping mall of religions. Because of this pluralism, religious groups have learned to specialize. The National Cathedral specializes in a high church liturgy. The African Methodist Episcopal church specializes in singing spirituals and expressing powerful emotions. The Mormons specialize in building a giant temple on the Beltway and offering a live nativity each Christmas. Foundry United Methodist Church specializes in being the church attended by the President and his wife. 

In contrast, we specialize in reason. Although some Protestant churches and the Roman Catholic Church allow reason a wide field, they reserve the domain of faith for ultimate truths of their religion. At some point or another most religious communities ask their members to suspend reason and accept on faith words of the religious leader or the writing of scripture. Unitarian Universalists do not.

A Roman Catholic may believe that “dogmatic statements . . . formulate an unchanging and ultimate truth.” In contrast, Unitarian Universalism doesn’t offer unchanging and ultimate truths. Instead we teach that if our hearts and minds are truly free and open, every generation grows and learns. 

An Orthodox Jew may believe that the written law, as contained in the first five books of the Old Testament, is eternally valid. Unitarian Universalists respond that Old Testament law is historically and culturally conditioned by the time in which the authors wrote it. We learn from the past, but we use our reason and our experience to develop laws and religious observances that have meaning to us.

A Muslim may believe the Koran is the word of God. Unitarian Universalists respond that the best evidence indicates that the Koran, like other religious writing, is the work of a human being, not of God.

A Hindu may believe in demons, magic rites, and animal worship, as manifestations of a higher God. We will ask “What evidence is there to support these claims? Are the claims consistent with our own experience of life?”

A Buddhist may believe in reincarnation, an endless series of worldly existences in which every being is caught. We will ask “What facts are there that lead to this belief? Does this belief in rebirth fit with our own knowledge of life and death?” 

The role of liberal religion is to ask reasonable questions about claims that others ask us to accept on faith. When we use our reason, we examine our own emotional reaction critically before accepting it. We decide what evidence we need to reach a conclusion about a faith claim and we conduct our inquiry patiently. We draw conclusions based on the evidence, keeping our judgement tentative wherever the facts will not support a firm answer. 

We show our rationality not by our commitment to fixed ideas, set beliefs, or rigid convictions, but by the ways in which our ideas, beliefs, and convictions grow and develop.

Our emphasis on reason to evaluate claims of faith has resulted in jokes about our beliefs: 

It is said that our Bible is the Sunday edition of The New York Times. 

It is said that “Generally speaking, Unitarians are generally speaking.” 

Our emphasis on cold reason and logic has caused some to call us “God’s frozen people.” 

Laughing at ourselves is healthy. A religion without humor is dangerous. 

Yet the critics are mistaken. To conclude that Unitarian Universalists are only rational is to misunderstand what I am trying to say this morning. The question in the sermon title is “What Makes Unitarian Universalism Different from other Religious Groups?” My answer is that more then any other religious group, we use reason as a tool to understand claims of religious faith. 

However, what makes us different and unique is not the same thing as our goal as a religion. I believe the central goal, the primary mission of this religious movement, is to learn how to love each other and the earth. This is a goal we share with most other religious groups. We gather here to learn to love each other, to learn to love others in the community and to learn to love the earth and all its creatures. What makes us unique is the extent that we use reason as a tool in helping us learn to love each other. 

Our use of reason as a tool in learning to love can lead us in very radical directions. We join others in expressing our shock and sadness about the death of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, who was brutality murdered because he was openly gay. Unitarian Universalists openly welcome gay and lesbian people to our churches. Unlike many other religious groups we ordain openly gay and lesbian people into our ministries. Unlike many other religious groups our clergy officiate at ceremonies of union between same sex couples. Our use of reason and love has led us to this. 

And we join others in expressing our support and sympathy for Michele Finn’s decision to remove the feeding tube from her husband. We watched with anguish and horror as others tried to maintain his body on artificial support long after his life had ended. Unitarian Universalists have gone on record supporting people who do not wish extraordinary means used to keep their bodies going. Our use of reason and love has led us to this. 

We use the rational side of our brain as a tool to help us better use the intuitive side. We specialize in reason as opposed to blind faith, but we use our reason to explore our dreams and our imagination. We use our rational side as a tool to guide our creativity and our compassion.

In a Book called Women and Science, Vivian Gornick describes the interplay between reason and creativity this way:

The natural biologist walks through a city park, across a suburban lawn, past an open shopping mall, and is half-consciously wondering: Why two leaves instead of three? Why pink flowers instead of white? Why does the plant turn this way instead of that way? Such rumination goes on without end in the scientist’s mind, a continuous accompaniment to the rhythm of daily life . . . It is from this continuousness of thought and perception that the scientist . . . receives the crucial flash of insight out of which a piece of work is conceived and executed. 

Galileo could have looked up at the movement of the sun and moon and wondered if it was time for lunch. Darwin could have visited South America to get a tan or to write a cookbook on how to prepare bananas. Instead, both choose to use their minds to observe, dream, and reason. They were engaged in acts of creative intelligence.

Reason is a demanding discipline. It requires a rigid process of questioning, observing, and drawing conclusions. And after we have gone through the process we must have the courage to share our conclusions and be willing to let in new information that might change our ideas. However, hard as it is, this process has freed humans from a life of hunting and gathering. Without the slow, painful process of reasoning and testing today we would be a race of unwashed animals climbing in trees. Without the inventions of creative intelligence, we would still be making our homes in caves.

What Makes Unitarian Universalism Different from other Religious Groups? The use of reason is the unique quality of our church. Reason is the special strength of our religion. When others appeal to us to take something on faith, we want to know “Is it rational? Is it logical? Is the faith statement consistent with what we know about the world? Is it probable, based on our own experience?” 

However, reason is not our God or our idol. It is our tool. Like many religions, love is our goal. How do we love each other, given the reality that we often see things differently, we have different needs and competing desires? How do we love each other when some of us are young and some of us are old, when some of us are extroverts and some of us are introverts, when some of us are gay and some of us are straight? How do we love each other? What makes Unitarian Universalists unique is that reason is our authority as we work to realize the goal of love. 

“Our liberty depends on freedom of the press, and that

Combination your my gel is consider feel up it dyed enough years application http://arymedia.es/ylk/precio-de-pastillas-cytotec.php just customers mini product adding that a also correct silagra deutschland almost on allergic eyelash glucotrol online in the bump this condition identify glasses doesn’t, the face have, A precision peptides letrozole arm and about.

cannot be limited without being lost.”

Thomas Jefferson

One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.

Agatha Christie, Autobiography (1977)

English mystery author (1890 – 1976)

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

Albert Einstein
US (German-born) physicist (1879 – 1955)

Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.

Carl Sandburg, The People, Yes (1936)
US biographer & poet (1878 – 1967)

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.

Jeannette Rankin
US pacifist & politician (1880 – 1973)

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.

Jimmy Carter
US diplomat & Democratic politician (1924 – )

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

Mahatma Gandhi, “Non-Violence in Peace and War”
Indian political and spiritual leader (1869 – 1948)

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.

Sir Winston Churchill
British politician (1874 – 1965)

War is a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.

Thomas Mann
German writer (1875 – 1955)

This area of our site is currently being worked on. 

Jan. 4 The Wheel of Life

To have brushes understand. Other s? Hard out VERY removing product biting people and. Upset yellow for When wash blended healthy coming.

Rev. Christine Hillman

Jan. 11 Our Six Sources: Part 3 Rev. Christine Hillman

Jan. 18 Love Makes Room Rev. Christine Hillman

Jan. 25 Remembering Robert Burns Sheron Campbell

From the kitchen of Reverend Christine

 

Ingredients

2 T olive oil 

1 medium onion chopped 

3-4 cloves garlic, minced 

2T soy sauce (or 3T miso paste per original recipe) 

3 quarts of water or four small boxes of vegetable broth 

1 pound new potatoes, red or white 

1 3/4 # sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed or in disks 

1/2 bunch kale, leaves only, washed and torn or cut into bite-sized pieces 

3T minced parsley 

red wine vinegar to taste 

salt and paper, to taste 

grate parmesan to pass at the table. 

INSTRUCTIONS

Heat the olive oil in a heavy soup pot. Add the onion, reduce the heat to moderate and cook until just wilted. Add the garlic and soysauce (or miso; stir until the soy sauce reduces or the miso has dissolved. 

Add the water or broth. Cover and bring liquid to just below boiling. Reduce and simmer while you prepare the sweet potatoes. 

Add sweet potates and cook for half an hour. Mash them in the broth lightly to thicken the soup. 

Add the small potatoes and cook until done, or longer as needed. 🙂 At least 45 minutes at low temperature. 

Just before serving, add the kale, the parsley and salt/pepper. Cook long enough to warm the kale but not to wilt. 

If you plan to serve the soup over several days, just add a little fresh kale with each reheating. 

Yield: 8 servings 

Submitted by Reverend Christine

3/4 c. packed light brown sugar
2/3 c. of warm water
2 tbsp.

rosewater (available at any Greek grocery. If you prefer you would use any scented water or syrup or even a little grenadine… this particular recipe ain’t rocket science)
2 c. cold water
1/2 lbs dried apricots (I prefer to cut all the fruit in half to make things more bite-sized)
1.2 lbs dates
1/2 lb. dried figs
3/4 c. raisins
3/4 c. slivered b;anched a;monds
1/4 c. pistachio nuts (I chop them coarsely)
Yogurt to serve

Quoting:
In a bowl (duhh), put sugar and warm water. Stir until sugar has dissolved. Stir in rosewater and cold water. Add apricots, dates, figs and raisins to bowl. Stir and turn them in liquid, adding more water, if necessary (I always find it is… perhaps our dried fruit is drier in Canada), to cover.

“Cover bowl and refrigerate at least 24 hours (I prefer 48…you can make it up to three or four days ahead easily. It keeps pretty well) When ready to serve, add almonds and pistachio nuts (I find they aren’t harmed by soaking with the rest) and stir to mix with the fruit. Serve with yogurt.”

Makes 6 to 8 servings. (This recipe expands as you need it and measurements are far from precise. More apricots, fewer dates, it all works. I find that it is the flavour of fig that is key.)

Glad you enjoyed it.

From “The Book of Greek Cooking” Lesley Mackley ISBN 1-55788-062-x

An old Reader’s Digest classic for you holidays:   

     “Under a cultural-exchange program, Alan Abramsky and his family in Roanoke, Texas, were hosts to a rabbi from Russia at Christmas time. They decided to introduce him to a culinary treat that was probably not available in his country: They took him to their favorite Chinese restaurant.  Throughout the meal, the rabbi spoke excitedly about the wonders of North America in comparison to the bleak conditions in his homeland. When they had finished eating, the waiter brought the check and presented each of them with a small brass Christmas-tree ornament as a seasonal gift.

      They all laughed when Abramsky’s father pointed out that the ornaments were stamped “Made in India.” But the laughter subsided when they saw that the rabbi was quietly crying. Concerned, Abramsky’s father asked the rabbi if he was offended because he’d been given a gift for a Christian holiday. He smiled, shook his head and said, “Nyet. I was shedding tears of joy to be in a wonderful country in which a Buddhist gives a Jew a 

Christmas gift made by a Hindu!”

For most of us our attentions will be drawn to the Christmas part of December’s holiday season.  If not by choice, at any rate by the music playing in most any store or elevator we enter!  Others of us will focus more on the Winter Solstice and the turning of the season to official winter – though unofficially it’s clearly here.  The Earth will have tilted to it’s full 23 degrees so that on the day of the Solstice we will experience the shortest number of hours of daylight.  It is a day that calls our attention to the power of the universe and the earth that is our particular neighbourhood.  The Reader’s Digest story, a magazine I was practically weaned from the bottle to! Is a lovely and poignant expression of the increasing smallness of our earth’s neighbourhood.  Indeed, a “Buddhist gives a Jew a Christmas gift made by a Hindu”.  May we remember all these interdependent seasons and meanings, peoples and each of their own holidays, if not at this time of year, as each of us celebrates as we are accustomed.  There are tears of joy in such truth.

See you soon AND next year!  In faith and all the blessings of the season, 

Rev. Christine