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by Robin McNallie April 12, 2015 , via Wikimedia Commons” href=“http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ARalph_Waldo_Emerson_ca1857_retouched.jpg”> The title of my presentation this morning, The Lengthened Shadow, is taken from Emerson’s most-quoted essay, “Self-Reliance, in which he states that “an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man. Not given to understatement, Emerson here was simply stressing that every institution owes a boundless debt to the individual

By Rev. Kirk Ballin April 5, 2015 Responsive Reading #628 “Rolling Away the Stone - Campbell Reading # 593 “Liberation Is Costly - Tutu Reading: “Our current crisis requires transformation. It’s less about changing a few individual behaviors and more about imagining radical new ways of living. Our current paradigm assumes the expendability of some people and species in service to the dominant culture. In it, we willingly forgo human health and even human and non-human life

by Tom Endress March 15, 2015 Readings: Transcendentalism- Webster’s New World College Dictionary- 1) any of various philosophies that propose to discover the nature of reality by investigating the process of thought rather than the objects of sense experience. 2) by extension, the philosophical ideas of Emerson and some other 19 th century New Englanders, based on a search for reality though spiritual intuition. Listen and see if you can guess who wrote the following: “On

by Linda A. Dove January 18, 2015 Introduction I grew up in the Anglican Church. For me, its doctrines were a source of puzzlement, skepticism, and anguish ”about my sin ”my inability to have faith. Finally, I rejected Christianity. And, with the baby, I threw out the bath-water; I turned away from all religion. How many of you had similar experience? In my 30’s I began to search again. I felt that “holy longing to understand life’s mysteries. I wanted meaning and purpose;

by Kevin J. Zimmerman December 28, 2014 I learned at last, as I came to be about seventeen, that my father was an entire freethinker, as much as I am now. It shocked me much, because he never taught me anything, allowed me to pick up religion from any one around me, and then scolded me because I embraced beliefs which he knew must condemn him. I think this neglect to be honest with children is a terrible evil. I have lost years of thought, and wandered wide and done such unwi