The
Musings of Reverend Catherine Harrington
July,
2010 
We’ve had a rich and full year at People’s Church! This is the end of my sixth year as your minister and it’s gone by so fast I can hardly believe it. I want you to know that I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished and of the dedication and love of the members and friends of this congregation. I am grateful to all of you for your hard work, support, and for the love you show to this church and for the way in which you care for one another. Every year when I go to General Assembly and swap stories with my colleagues, I’ve been able to say that I truly love my congregation. The hardest part of being in Ludington is the isolation from collegial support and civilization, but I’ve been able to balance that with my work with the UU Heartland District Board and Murder Victim’s Families for Reconciliation.
I’m always delighted to return home to sleepy Ludington (which is not so sleepy this weekend!)
The Age of Aquarius auction was a record fund raiser, we had a record stewardship campaign for the second year in a row, and our attendance and membership have been steady and rising even in the dead of winter. We were able to increase our office administrator’s hours from ten to twenty this past year and she has been a tremendous asset to me and to the work of this church.
We continue to share our space with the Buddhists twice a week and with COVE once a week. We hosted Hospitality INC for a week in January and rallied for a second week at short notice in April.
The grand tradition of First Friday Films has continued faithfully this past year, but on a sad note, we lost its founder, our good friend and loyal member, David Nixon. He is sorely missed but not forgotten. The Adult RE Committee has a line-up of movies picked out for the next six months that would make David very proud. Mark Steigenga, from the Ludington Daily News, plans to do a story about our David Nixon Film Series on July 2. Watch for a brochure, too.
Guest speakers included Vail Weller, Barbara Gadon (former ministers at People’s Church), Lev Raphael; pulpit swap with the Reverend James Friesner last August that was SO MUCH FUN!; Stephanie Wagner from the Great Start Initiative; Dave Hall did a wonderful sermon on agnosticism followed by Lou’s sermon on atheism, followed by Marge Graham’s sermon for the Vernal Equinox; Ed Dennison and Jim Hopson joined me in the pulpit on Evolution Sunday; Dave Koskey presented a sermon on the power of prayer; Grayson Atha spoke twice to help us kick off our Welcoming Congregation’s Program; and more recently, the folks from PFLAG in Manistee, and Jay Littel; Michael Dowd and his wife Connie Barlow spent over one month at the Dennison’s cottage on Lake Hamlin and in gratitude offered their wisdom and talent for a Sunday service.
Special thanks to Kent Gage for over 12 years of service as the chair of the Finance Committee as he takes a sabbatical for a while. Thank you, Kent.
The board has worked hard to accomplish its goals and yesterday’s Searching for the Future workshop is the culmination of a tremendous amount of hard work. Over forty people participated fully by contributing with honesty, conviction, and realistic optimism. The work they accomplished will serve as a guide toward People’s Church - a Welcoming Congregation, living out it’s full potential in the lives of its members and friends and in our community and even the wider world. The west shore of Michigan needs us.
I am tremendously grateful to all of our board members and especially to our board president, George Dila. His leadership has been critical this year and I appreciate his willingness to meet every week with Carol Marshall and me. (That takes more than a little courage.....).
In faith and love,
Cathy
Were I to teach a course on God
I would begin with a plate of persimmons —
The sweet, crisp kind, the ones more
Orange than red: the hard, squat Fuyus
I eat each November morning on hot
Wheat cereal with almonds.
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I would slice the persimmons gently
Across their fat centers, then hold them out.
See the star shape? I would
Offer them, so all might wonder.
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Straight down their middles
So the threads of each stem
Trace wispily down to that rounded
Place where dark seeds lie, tear-shaped
And wet in white, firm flesh.
I would hold those halves
Silently forward, their bottoms smooth
In the curves of my palms.
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I would teach God with plates of pomegranates,
Both before they were opened and after.
I would bring wet washcloths.
We would bury our faces and eat:
All that luminescent purple-red,
Those clear-bright kernels fitted in tight rows
On small and tumbling hills—
And all that juice, so easily broken, sweet
And puckery all at once. We would say nothing.
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With plates of fruit, a knife;
Many washcloths. With my eyes
Very large; my mouth mostly silent,
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