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Services start at 10:30 a.m.
Our services are also available live via Zoom. Please send a request to [email protected] for the link.
Sept. 1, 2024
Speaker – Lynn Donelson (Don) Wright
Biography:
Don Wright and his wife Jeanne live in Dunnellon, FL and have been members of NCUU since 2010. Don retired in 2007 from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William and Mary, where he was a professor specializing in physical and geological oceanography. Prior to moving to Virginia in 1982, Don was on the faculty of the University of Sydney, Australia. Don received his PhD from LSU in 1970. From the time of his retirement until September 2021, he continued to work part time as Director of Coastal and Environmental Research for the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA), a non-profit consortium of 60 universities. Most of this work focused on promoting collaborative programs to predict and communicate understandings of climate change and its impacts on coastal communities.
Topic: ‘Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Always our being is descending into us from we know not whence’. Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘The Over-Soul’
Eastern mystics, most indigenous cultures, and American transcendentalists have long believed in the unity and interconnectedness of all things in the cosmos. These beliefs have been underpinned by non-verbal spiritual epiphanies experienced by many individuals from a variety of backgrounds. Recent advances in quantum physics are considered by several Nobel Prize winners to be involved in consciousness and possibly cosmic awareness.
Sunday, Sept. 8, 2024
Erin Powers
Biography:
Erin Powers (they/them) is a religious educator and aspirant for Unitarian Universalist ministry. They find inspiration in our interconnections with the greater living world and work to build community wherever they are.
Topic: Lessons from Lichen
Lichen challenges our popular conceptions of the natural world. What can Unitarian Universalists learn from lichen to help us be an ever-evolving force for good in this world?
Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024
Speaker – Kimberly Belew
Biography:
Kim Belew is an award-winning songwriter, a national speaker, and an activist. A survivor of sex trafficking as a child, Kim has made it her purpose to educate and give voice to help eradicate this industry. She gave a TEDx Talk about this issue in 2021. Kim is the part-time spiritual leader of New Thought Unity in Cincinnati and travels the country sharing messages of inspiration and authentic living. www.kimbelew.com
Topic: Love From the Inside Out
In this service Kimberly will discuss the importance of spiritual community and creating a safe space for all while also sharing how many may have felt less than safe, loved and welcome in community in the past. She will share the importance of working together in community through healing and love to be good stewards in the world.
Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024
Speaker – Art Jones
Biography:
Art Jones has been cleaning up our water ways here along the Nature Coast since 2003. He started a movement that endures to this day and is continuing to grow and be copied in other areas of Florida. With his One Rake at a Time project, thousands of people have gotten involved in volunteering to help remove invasive weeds and algae from the fresh water springs.
Topic: Looking Beneath the Water
Many of our springs look beautiful when we are standing on the shore, but diving in and looking deeper at the bottom, big problems have developed. The sandy bottoms are now covered in muck and the native plants are disappearing and invasive Hydrilla and Lyngbya algae are taking over.
This is also our Annual Water Service which is a Unitarian Universalist tradition where people bring water from their summer travels to add in a communal bowl as part of the service. The combined water is symbolic of our shared faith coming from many different sources.
Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024
Speaker – Don Wright
Biography:
Don Wright and his wife Jeanne live in Dunnellon, FL and have been members of NCUU since 2010. Don retired in 2007 from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William and Mary, where he was a professor specializing in physical and geological oceanography. Prior to moving to Virginia in 1982, Don was on the faculty of the University of Sydney, Australia. Don received his PhD from LSU in 1970. From the time of his retirement until September 2021, he continued to work part time as Director of Coastal and Environmental Research for the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA), a non-profit consortium of 60 universities. Most of this work focused on promoting collaborative programs to predict and communicate understandings of climate change and its impacts on coastal communities.
Topic: Navigating our “Blue Boat Home” to a Safe Harbor
Our life-supporting earth is a rare and fragile gem in a vast cosmic “sea” that, according to today’s cosmologists, spans 92 billion light years and contains about 2 trillion galaxies of varying size, each of which is occupied by hundreds of billion stars. The probability that intelligent life exists somewhere out there in that immense and mysterious domain is high, but our scientists have not yet found evidence of other planets capable of supporting the kind of life that we humans understand. However, we do know what we must do to ensure that the unique “blue boat home”, on which we now live and “surf the cosmos”, endures to benefit future generations. Combating and adapting to climate change is paramount.
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