Kiado Cruz & Sustainable Farming in Mexico

Sustainable Agriculture and Social Justice: Cultivating Peace, One Garden at a Time


Thursday, October 21  7:00 PM
Moakley Center Auditorium
Señor Cruz will speak on sustainable agriculture as well as the community organizing that has been instrumental in the current autonomous movements in Oaxaca and Chiapas, southern Mexico. He will also address questions about the effects of U.S. trade policies and increasing privatization that have been damaging to Mexico, and about related migration issues.

With this presentation, Witness for Peace New England and the partners at Bridgewater State aim to enrich the cross-borders dialogue between those who are creating and supporting local food systems and local economies; engaging in education reform; advocating for immigration reform; and/or promoting fair and just international trade, both in Latin America and in the U.S.

Co-Sponsored by: The Anthropology Department, The Sociology Department, The Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, and The Center for Sustainability

Raina Terry Story

Photo: Emily J. Reynolds

The Brockton Enterprise reporter Maria Papadopoulos recently wrote about Raina Terry's October 10 presentation during our morning worship service. The service -- entitled "Raina's Dream" -- was dedicated to promoting racial equality, acceptance, and justice. Raina is a Bridgewater teen who spoke of the isolation and taunting she experienced as the only African American student in her middle-school class in Bridgewater. Her hope is to promote a better future for other children growing up in this community, and vision shared by First Parish and its First Principle Project.

Rebecca Hyman of the Bridgewater Independent also covered this story, in an article entitled Raina's Dream, and had written about Raina's case in a 2009 article entitled Through Raina's Eyes.

Note: Because the Enterprise permits anonymous comments on its online news stories, the reader comments below this story include affirmations and reasonable questions, but also some offensive remarks.

Guatemala atrocity

The Joys and Concerns portion of our service this morning included mention of atrocities committed by the United States in Guatemala. I had already begun to write something about this on my Environmental Geography blog, since that blog also covers the geography of Latin America. The reference was to unethical medical experiments conducted by the U.S. National Institutes of Health in Guatemala the 1940s. My article is entitled Beyond Tuskegee, because of the connections to that better-known atrocity closer to home.

Nicaragua discussion

Following the fall of the Samoza dictatorship, many U.S. volunteers went to Nicaragua to work alongside the people of that country. Sally Lockwood -- now a librarian at Cornell -- was one of those volunteers. On Thursday, September 23, she will be speaking about her experiences and about her brief acquaintance with fellow volunteer Ben Linder,  who was working on a small hydroelectric plant in the North when he was killed by U.S.-backed contras.

Sally will be a guest speaker in my Geography of Latin America class at 9:30 a.m. Thursday. The class meets in room 332 of the Science Building at Bridgewater State University. Please let me (James Hayes-Bohanan) know if you have any questions about this event.

World Peace Prayer Society

First Parish has hosted its sixth annual Celebration of Peace with a 24-hour observation on the weekend closest to the International Day of Peace. The event has brought together many members of the church and the wider community, including students, faculty, and staff of Bridgewater State University.

The conclusion of the 24-hour event is the sharing of a simple prayer for peace around the peace pole which we have erected on the School Street side of the church property. That pole, bearing the message "May Peace Prevail on Earth" in more than a dozen languages, is one of many thousands of its kind that have been erected throughout the world.

According to the World Peace Prayer Society, the poles:

Symbolize the oneness of humanity and our common wish for a world at peace

Remind us to think, speak and act in the spirit of peace and harmony

Stand as a silent visual for peace to prevail on earth

The Peace Pole at First Parish is one of more than 200,000 found throughout the world.

Atacama and the camanchaca

First Parish began its church year with the traditional Water Communion, in which members and friends pour water representing summer travels into a common vessel. The collected water is used in rituals throughout the coming year. Nothing is universal to all UU congregations, but the Water Communion comes close; it is anticipated throughout the summer by UUs of all ages.

AtacamaPhoto.com

In keeping with the water theme, Rev. Ed Hardy delivered a sermon about the preciousness of water, and began with a geographic explanation of how something so essential could be both abundant and scarce at the same time. Though 70 percent of the Earth's surface is covered with water, most of it is not available for direct human use. As Rev. Ed noted, 97 percent of the planet's water is salty (as the oceans gradually accumulate salt from the continents, and never give any back) and a further 2 percent is in the form of ice.

This is not to say that the water in oceans and ice caps is not useful; in both forms, water helps to regulate the climate through a complex set of processes of energy and material circulation. Climate change and the melting of ice will not help with the supply of fresh water, by the way, as melting glaciers and ice sheets become ocean water.

Rev. Ed also correctly pointed out that the 1 percent of the Earth's water that is both fresh and liquid is poorly distributed with respect to human needs. As an example, he mentioned the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, the driest place on Earth. The average rainfall is just a millimeter per year (we get 1200 times more rain on average), and in some parts rainfall is measured in years between events, rather than annual totals. In some places, rain has never been recorded by humans.

The Atacama serves as a reminder of the importance of geography and of the extreme variability of conditions on the planet. It also provides a number of intriguing examples of how things are not always as we would expect them to be. In the case of the Atacama, what is most fascinating is the adaptability of both humans -- one million of whom live there -- and its plants and animals. In the Atacama, the best examples of human ingenuity are really just humans having the wisdom to mimic natural adaptations. National Geographic's  The Driest Place on Earth describes how both humans and plants capture the moisture of the region's abundant fog, known as the camanchaca. After all, this place may be the driest on the planet, but it is adjacent to the largest ocean!

Dead Man Walking Author to Speak in Duxbury

Sister Helen Prejean, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Dead Man Walking will speak at First Parish Church Unitarian Universalist Duxbury on Saturday September 18.  Sr. Helen’s talk is free and open to the public.


Sr. Helen’s talk will begin at 4:00.  The church is located at 842 Tremont St. (Route 3A) Duxbury (781-934-6532). Copies of Sr. Helens’ books will be available for purchase at a reception following her talk and Sr. Helen will be available to autograph copies for those who are interested. 
Having dedicated her life to the poor of New Orleans, Sister Helen began her prison ministry in 1981 when she became pen pals with Patrick Sonnier, the convicted killer of two teenagers, sentenced to die in the electric chair of Louisiana's Angola State Prison. At Sonnier’s invitation, she visited him as his spiritual advisor. 
 
Sr. Helen achieved national prominence with the 1993 publication of Dead Man 
Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States. The 
book was number one on the New York Times Best Seller List for 31 weeks. It also 
was an international best seller and has been translated into ten different 
languages.  In 1996, the book was developed into a motion picture starring Susan 
Sarandon as Sister Helen and Sean Penn as a death row inmate.

First Parish Church Duxbury is planning other events focused on raising public 
awareness of the death penalty.  On Friday, September 10, the movie Dead Man 
Walking will be shown in the Church’s Harvey Assembly Hall and on Friday and in 
October there will be a potluck supper followed by a discussion of the movie, 
Sr. Helen’s talk and the death penalty.  Both are open to the public.

Peace Vigil -- September 18-19

As we have since 2005, First Parish Church will join with other community members to recognize U.N. International Peace Day, with a 24-hour vigil on the weekend closest to the U.N. commemoration.

This year's vigil will begin at 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, September 18 with activities and a procession around the Town Common. It will conclude with a many-languages Peace Pole ceremony from 12:45 to 1:00 on Sunday the 19th. The complete schedule includes many opportunities for dialog, music, poetry, crafts, food, and sharing of a common commitment to peace.

Learn more about the Peace Pole movement from the World Peace Prayer Society and find out about other commemorations on the Day of Peace site. For questions about the Bridgewater vigil, contact the church office or Betty Gilson.

Partner Church Discussion

For our informal Sunday service on August 14, I will be leading a discussion of the Partner Church Program. It has been six years since our pilgrimage to Haranglab, and many who have joined the church since then might not be aware of what our weekly candle for the partner church is all about. This program is a reminder of what we have done, and an opportunity to discuss benefits and difficulties of the partnership, and how it might be continued.

More information is available from the Partner Church Council and on the web page I created for the 2004 trip. The slide show presented Sunday morning will be available on my web page.

A search of Google Maps suggests that although the world has many Bridgewaters, there is only one Haranglab, in Mures County, Romania. Use the link below to explore Haranglab's surroundings.

View Larger Map

Abby Recommends UUs

Pam and I make a daily habit of reading the column "Dear Abby." As we read yesterday's letter from "New Mom in Arkansas," we knew where Abby might be headed with her answer, and we are pleased to report that we were correct. As Abby would say, read on:

DEAR ABBY: I recently had a child and would like to join a church for the community, moral messages and the music. I grew up going to one and got a lot out of it. 

However, exploration throughout my 20s made me realize that I didn't believe what was being taught. I tried hard to accept the doctrines, but truthfully, I doubt I ever will. Would it be dishonest to start attending again? -- NEW MOM IN ARKANSAS

DEAR NEW MOM: Many people consider themselves to be more "spiritual" than "religious." And I'm willing to bet that in many congregations there is a range in the intensity of belief among the attendees. I encourage you to select a denomination with which you feel most comfortable. Some -- like the Unitarian Universalist faith (www.uua.org) -- have no dogma or creed and support their members in following their own spiritual paths.

Incidentally, some of my own advice regarding plastics was recently featured in the column.