You can connect with our UU faith and represent FRS from home at General Assembly–the largest gathering of UU’s! We can send several delegates, and you can be one, participating online, June 20-24. As a delegate, you can be involved in discussions around the business meetings (Friday, 9-noon and Saturday, 4:30-5:30pm PST), and attend several events and workshops. Here are the links you need:
Offsite participation
https://www.uua.org/ga/off-site/registrants/live-workshops
Registration page
https://www.uua.org/ga/registration
Schedule
https://www.uua.org/sites/live-new.uua.org/files/2019_grid.pdf
Church funding is available for the $185 delegate registration fee. To apply for funding or become a delegate, contact Lea Pearson leapearson@mac.com or Forrest Speck, forrest.speck@gmail.com
Delegates are approved at the Annual Congregational Meeting on June 9.
Other opportunities to participate in General Assembly from afar:
See Reverend Rebecca honored at The Service of the Living Tradition on Thursday, June 20.
She will walk in the procession and be honored onstage for receiving her final fellowship as our minister. The Service of the Living Tradition is always a powerful service and you can livestream it at home at https://www.uua.org/ga/off-site, 10-11:30pm EDT, or watch the recording later. Ministers “walk”, or are recognized, 3 times throughout the course of their ministry. The first time is when they receive preliminary fellowship (Reverend Rebecca’s 2 ½ yr service as the interim minister at First Parish in Brookline); the second time on receiving final fellowship (now), and the third at their retirement from ministry (as Rev. Harold Babcock did 3 years ago). Being in final fellowship means among other things that FRS can have ministerial interns. We celebrate with Rev. Rebecca as she walks at this year’s General Assembly. Rev. Lindi Ramsden, Director of Partnerships and Emerging Programs at Starr King School for the Ministry, will deliver the sermon at the 2019 Service of the Living Tradition.
Watch the annual Ware Lecture.
Always a profound and deeply moving talk, this year’s Ware Lecture will be given by Richard Blanco. Selected by President Obama as the fifth inaugural poet in U.S. history, Richard Blanco is the youngest and the first Latino, immigrant, and gay person to serve in such a role. Born in Madrid to Cuban exile parents and raised in Miami, the negotiation of cultural identity characterizes his three collections of poetry: City of a Hundred Fires, which received the Agnes Starrett Poetry Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press; Directions to The Beach of the Dead, recipient of the Beyond Margins Award from the PEN American Center; and Looking for The Gulf Motel, recipient of the Paterson Poetry Prize and the Thom Gunn Award. He has also authored the memoirs For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet’s Journey and The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood, winner of a Lambda Literary Award.
His inaugural poem “One Today” was published as a children’s book, in collaboration with renowned illustrator Dav Pilkey. His latest book, Boundaries, a collaboration with photographer Jacob Hessler, challenges the physical and psychological dividing lines that shadow the United States. A new book of poems, How to Love a Country, is forthcoming from Beacon Press in April 2019.
Blanco has written occasional poems for the re-opening of the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, Freedom to Marry, the Tech Awards of Silicon Valley, and the Boston Strong benefit concert following the Boston Marathon bombings. He is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and has received numerous honorary doctorates. He has taught at Georgetown University, American University, and Wesleyan University. He serves as the first Education Ambassador for The Academy of American Poets.
The 2019 Ware Lecture is Friday, June 21, 7:30pm PDT at the Spokane Convention Center. It will be streamed live on https://www.uua.org/ga/off-site at 10:30pm EDT, or you can watch the recording later.