We have come to the end of another church year. I would like to thank all of you who have worked so hard and given so much to make it a successful and meaningful one. I hope that we have all experienced some growth of our inner spiritual resources along the way, and that our church has given some help and inspiration along the journey of life.

In spite of the inevitable ups and downs of church life, I continue to believe that the goal to build up the beloved community is worth the effort. While I am looking forward to my summer vacation, I also look forward to re-gathering with all of you in the fall as we continue this important work.

Elsewhere in this Steeple Biweekly you can find information about UU summer services and about my summer schedule. I wish each and every one of you a relaxing and renewing summer, with gentle breezes and warm sunny days. May we be brought together safely at the summer's end!

I leave you with this little prayer by the Rev. Dr. Ralph Helverson, recently deceased former minister of the First Parish UU in Cambridge:

May I have peace, the quiet serenity born of right thinking.
May I have happy memories, the holy feeling of things well done.
May I have beauty, the inner harmony of part with part.
And may I never forget that I belong to my day, and that life has much more to teach me.

PS: Perhaps there is hope for this troubled world yet: the recent vote in the Massachusetts legislature to keep a constitutional ban on gay marriage off the ballot in November feels like a real triumph for good and right. It is certainly a triumph for civil rights. To the many gay and lesbian couples who have been married in this church since May 17, 2004, I say congratulations and thank you for your courage. And to the rest of us, I say "change is possible." Thanks be to the Spirit of Life!

For the week of June 17 by Barbara Burnim in loving memory of her father, Joseph A. O'Neill.

For the week of July 1 by the Raschke family in loving memory of Wilhelm L. Raschke, our beloved Opa and Vati.

For the week of July 8 by Betty Gillette in memory of her parents, Russell and Rachel Gillette.

For the week of July 15 by Alan and Sharon Jette in honor of the 60th wedding anniversary of Carl and Sophie Jette.

For the week of July 22 by Amy Fleisher and Kurt Mullen in memory of Kurt's brother, Jay Mullen.

The church is on Route 88, just past Applecrest Farms: take Route 95 North to Route 107 East to Route 1 North. Go through Seabrook to Hampton Falls. Turn left on Route 88 at the center of Hampton Falls. Go about 3 miles down Route 88 to the church just past Applecrest on the right. Parking is in the rear of the building.

Also note that the annual Bake Sale is Saturday, August 25, 10 a.m. to 12 noon, at the Hampton Falls church.

Weeders and trimmers
Needed - summertime gardeners for some weeding and trimming.

If you can fill either need, please call the church office at (978) 465-0602 x401.

Dear Friends:

On behalf of the women and children served by the Turning Point, Inc.'s Division of Family Services, thank you for your generous contribution of $740.50 to our Children's Campership Fund. Your continued support for the children in our programs is greatly appreciated. Whether we have needed Santa's helpers or camp sponsors, your congregation has always gone above and beyond what we could have hoped for or expected. We could not give our children a fun camp experience without the thoughtful support of individuals, organizations or businesses in our community- we are deeply grateful.

Thank you again for your support.

Sincerely, Wendy Weise, M.S., Assistant Coordinator/Children's Services Coordinator, Division of Family Services

from the Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF)
June 14, 2007

Dear Rev. Babcock.

On behalf of the CLE, thank you for allowing us to be the beneficiary of your congregation's largesse! The First Religious Society's most wonderful gift of $755.25 was received on June 9, 2007. We so appreciate the support of your congregation. You know first hand how operationally, the CLF's scope and programs reach to the far corners of the world. Financially, we are a church like any other. Your contributions help to preserve our mission and programs.

We are glad of your commitment to this congregation that never gathers, that lives all over the world, and that fits no mold. Thank you for supporting our efforts to connect, seek, share and grow within Unitarian Universalism.

With thanks, Lisa P. Kielt, Development Director

from the Greater Newburyport/Bura Alliance
To the Unitarian Universalist Church - The Greater Newburyport/Bura Alliance is extremely grateful for your contribution of the Parish Hall for our fundraising dinner dance on June 2. It was a very big success, and location was not the least of it. Thank you!!

Sincerely yours,

Johanna Hammond for GN/BA

I think Luke understood something at age ten that a lot of us struggle to understand now. How can an ant, a crawling little bug that might bite, have as much worth as us? Why should we feel sorry if we step on one? It's just a bug after all. But everything on this world, bug or human, has a place that it fits into. The one ant I accidentally step on may have been an important part of its ant colony. It could have been a builder of great ant passageways, a master of ant architecture. It could have been a father or a mother of many ant babies that will grow up and serve the colony. Did it deserve to die? No. Should I have an ant funeral? Well, that might be overkill. But I shouldn't feel so nonchalant about killing something, even if it was an accident. An ant has as much inherent worth and dignity as I do.

One might ask what I mean when I say worth and dignity. I mean that all lives are equal and important. There is a balance on earth created by the ebb and flow of existence. For every creature that dies, another is born in its place. Even if they are completely different and lead different lives, they are of the same value to the world. If at the same time I die, an ant is born, then the earth is in balance. If our whole species dies, then there will surely be another to take our place. And as humans, we have to learn to be okay with that reality, that we are not the most important or special creatures in the world. In truth, I have as much worth as ant. There are billions of humans on earth just as there are billions, maybe more, ants as well. I won't step on an ant simply because I wouldn't like getting stepped on either.

Natalie McClung: When I first volunteered to find a reading on our topic, the inherent worth and dignity of all human beings, I was expecting and perfectly willing to put in a lot of time and effort to find one that fit the subject perfectly. What I was not expecting, however, was to spend hours on end sifting through never-ending internet articles and a multitude of books and papers looking for a reading that after a while I had convinced myself was not there. But after a very long search, I found an eleven-page excerpt from E.O. Wilson's Human Nature; that was rejected by my fellow youth groupers after the first two and a half pages. But I can't blame them, I have to say, the whole thing was one major tongue twister, and though we liked what Wilson was conveying in his paper, I realize that it will just have to wait for a different time to be read and recognized by this congregation.

The reading that I did find is by a fellow UU, the reverend David Pyle. He wrote this sermon for a Martin Luther King Jr. day service, and it focuses on the dream of Dr. King, He calls his sermon " the Dream of Inherent Worth and Dignity;" I've excerpted several passages from his sermon.

Martin Luther King described his dream in regards to the battlefront of his day, racial equality… but we Unitarian Universalists take it one step further in the first principle of our foundational covenant, "the inherent worth and dignity of every person." Thomas Jefferson immortalized it in that covenant of defiance, the Declaration of Independence when he said "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." No nation, no society, and no culture in the history of the human Rrce has ever set this standard as their ideal. In over 3,000 years of recorded human history, and probably even further back than that, all societies have been founded on the belief that not all people are created equal. In societies that have consisted of mostly one ethnicity, birth into social classes or economic standing has been commonly used to say who was of greater value and who was not. In multi-cultural and multi-ethnic societies, such cultural and ethnic differences have almost always been used as the primary set of barriers between our inherent equality.

Often, I think in today's world we forget what a radical concept it is which we have, both as a denomination and as a nation, set for ourselves as our ideal. The inherent worth and dignity of all has never been tried before. And yet, it is the foundation of who we are as a people. I put forth the proposition today that those who deny the inherent worth and dignity of all, in truth then deny what it means to be an American. We can, and indeed should use marches and protests to raise public awareness. We should continue to fight for the rights of all people under the law. And I do not mean simply on the issue of racial equality. Our dream, our vision of the inherent worth and dignity of all people spans race, religious creed, sexual orientation, economic standing, and gender. But such actions are indeed only half the fight.

I was at a Darfur rally not to long ago; we were there to raise awareness about the injustices that were happening to the people of that region. But there were people there, counter demonstrators, who believed that they were the ones being discriminated against: they believed that our rally was propaganda, and supporting slanderous lies being told about their people. Who is to say if they are wrong, aren't they worth the same as you or me, just because they are on the wrong side of the so called line does that make them worth less. This is where we enter the grey. Should someone's worth and dignity go unrecognized because of what they were taught and what they believe to be true? Most people say no; but would you recognize the worth and dignity of a murderer or a child rapist the same way as you would recognize a great humanitarian? How does one answer that question? Is that not the same as the difference between a male and a female, or two people of different races, or religions? There must be a difference though, between the people of the Sudan and the people who actually carry out these horrendous deeds; right, but then again does defending these deeds make them just as bad? Our youth group leader Becky said that these same people have been at almost every Darfur rally that she has been to, so, that must mean that they very adamantly believe in what they are saying, so much so that they would disrupt a moment of silence that was to honor the over 450,000 civilians that been killed. Even if you don't believe what is being said wouldn't you still want to honor the dead?

Authors write about this all of the time: they thrive on the inequalities and injustices of the human race, to give life and a better plot line to their character.

Instead of a character being accepted into society just the way they are and telling the story of their happy life, many stories are created to parallel their readers life, even if the novel takes place in some made-up land. And by parallel I mean tell the story of their character's trials and tribulations, we all have them, so why shouldn't they? It makes the story meatier and, for those who are vegetarians, more stuffed with vegetables.

Before I end I would like to leave you with some questions to really think about. They just might inspire you to do something to change the way different people are thought of in society. Is a baby born with a genetic mutation worth the same as a normal baby? Is a man worth the same as a woman? Or is an old timer worth the same as a youth? These questions go on forever. How do we answer them and live by them fairly but at the same time have justice in our society? Can there ever be justice for everyone, or would some see a new justice as revenge for inequality? Boy, and people say the Seven Wonders of the World are confusing! But you should all be proud, proud, that, through my endless searching, I discovered that the majority of readings on the inherent worth and dignity were by UUs. You all should be proud that we UUs as a whole are etching out our mark on the world. Because we all have a recognized worth, together we should be able to help those whose worth and dignity have gone unrecognized and turn our mark into something more, that will be remembered and appreciated by all those we touch.

• Donate books, books, and more books to the FRS offices from 9:00 to 12:00 noon weekdays starting on Monday, June 18.
• Volunteer to help with book sale setup and sales (and get a first look at the collection). Sales shifts will be two hours long, but many people like to work more than one shift during the sale. Call the office to volunteer.
• Start putting aside money for the excellent purchases available to you.