September 9th marked the date we reached an official count of 1000 US military deaths as a result of the illegal and immoral war in Iraq. To not let this go unnoticed and unmourned, a small group of people gathered in front the UFL building and held a candlelight ceremony. see Candlelight page 2

The city of Longview will hold it's biannual City-Wide Clean-Up on October 23rd. Once again we will have the opportunity to show the world that the Unitarian Universalists are not only very neat people, they also do their fair share to keep the community clean!

see Clean-Up Crew page 3

Everyday we met at 9 for breakfast. From 10-2 we had four different one-on-ones where one Anglo was paired with one Spaniard. Sometimes they had to call you on the phone and you read a script, then asked them questions about it to check their comprehension. see Spain page 4

We lit our candles and wore signs which reminded passers-by that, along with the unnecessary deaths of 1000, mostly young, American military people, were the deaths of 6400 Iraqi people, made up mostly of children, women and men who belonged to no army and were merely civilians caught in the shock and awe and ugly horror of war. Some people would like to excuse these atrocities by saying that "Freedom is not free." But they always fail to acknowledge the correlation, "War costs more."

The easiest cost to measure is that of money. So far, just for us, it has cost 187 billion dollars. Luckily for those pushing this war, that number is hardly meaningful, and therefore, ignored by many. Most people can easily imagine and picture in their minds ten or twenty of something. And quite a few could easily count to one thousand. But that's about it. So if it is easy for you to picture ten of something, do you know how many tens it would take to made a billion? No human being can even count to 187 billion. If you lived 100 years and, never sleeping, said one number every minute you would only get to 52,560,000. And remember, money is the easiest to measure. How do you measure the value of a life? How do you measure the cost of damaged lives? How do you measure the cost of polluted water and the destruction of farm land? There will be no end to the costs of this war. They will reverberate through history in ways we are afraid to even try to imagine.

So, in the dark, with only small candles of light, we gathered and stood there together to mourn the dead and grapple with difficult truths. We hoped those little flames would help others see the cost of war and find within their hearts the courage to stand with us against the hatred, greed and deception of war. We stood there in silence, with light in our hands, and hoped that others will join us to abolish war and build peace.

When Jack Cargill gives his talk October 17th on Intolerant Monotheism, he will have with him his latest book, Mercenary of the Gods - Memoirs of a Greek in Service to Judah and Egypt. This book will be a treat for those who enjoy reading historical novels.

From the preface of Mercenary of the Gods :

The seventh and sixth centuries Before the Common Era constituted a period of intense change and excitement in the lands around the eastern Mediterranean....All these converging stimuli were encouraging new ideas, new points of view, new ways of thinking. Philosophy, science, and rationalism were a-borning, especially among the Ionian Greeks of western Asia Minor. [Meanwhile], in Judah after the fall of Israel, was being launched in this seventh-sixth century period a movement that would in its effects and impact dwarf all the accomplishments of [the] great powers....No period of human history could be more worthy of writing about than this one, the period in which, while empires rose and fell, both monotheism and rationalism were launched...

Book-signing will follow the program.

To page 2