August 21st: You may have noticed that we now have different colored name tags. The Board Members’ name tags are blue. The purpose of this change was to make it easy for our guests to identify someone who would be able to provide Fellowship information. Our next step is to have Board Members stationed at the front door each week to welcome our guests and ask them to sign the guest log and explain the blue name tags.

August 24th: Peggy and I attended an Interfaith Council meeting which was held at the Cotton Patch Cafe. There were three council members attending, making a total of five people in attendance. The purpose of the meeting was to determine if there was enough interest in the council to keep it active. The council organization was created about 10 years ago with the goal of identifying and resolving community problems as a religious group rather than individual churches. During the last couple of years the council has basically slowed to a stop. We left the meeting with a proposal to invite representatives from other religious organizations to a luncheon and from that meeting determine the next step.

One of our favorite speakers has now given us the opportunity to refer to him as one of our favorite authors. Durrell Watkins has published a book!

Must one believe in God to pray?

Is prayer only for the religious?

Are there methods that can make praying more effective?

Why is prayer sometimes called treatment?

Is prayer for skeptics and seekers as well as for sages and saints?

A Treatment A Day will help you find your own answers to these questions and more.

A progressive, New Thought, interfaith approach to prayer. Skeptics, humanists, and even agnostics will find prayers for them in this edition.

Durrell Watkins is a Trans-religious practitioner, or as he likes to say, he is "religiously polyamorous" because he loves the beauty and truth and strength he finds in multiple traditions. This week he identifies as a Process New Thought Humanist with Buddhist, Taoist, and Neo-Pagan leanings, but he warns that he may understand himself very differently in a few hours. Durrell is ordained in the Metropolitan Community Churches and is a member of the UUA's Church of the Larger Fellowship.

To order A Treatment A Day by Durrell Watkins, visit

www.cafepress.com/kweerspirit

Durrell also publishes a Weekly Devotional. Erika forwarded this to me after his last visit to us in June.

Affirmations. Candle lighting. Songs with a positive message. Scriptures used in empowering ways. We have elements of ritual that we benefit from routinely. The more we participate in such uplifting rituals, the more we are uplifted and the more power for good we seem to cultivate within ourselves.

When I forget what people are capable of, and how faithful gathering to share even the simplest of rituals can increase our capabilities (or remind us of them), then all I have to do is think about a small group of Unitarian Universalists in east Texas. This group has known difficult times. For starters, they are religious liberals and skeptics in the rural mid-south (an area dominated by right of center religion and politics often inhospitable to those who deviate from conservative values). They are a fairly young church (started in the 80’s I believe). But they have been faithful to their vision of being a progressive religious presence in their area. And week after week they meet to sing songs and drink coffee and light candles and share joys and concerns and to hear a presentation. They end with a positive, shared statement. And being faithful to come together for a common Sunday ritual experience has served their cause very well.

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