February 1 Order of Service

The Order of Service for the Unitarian Church, Davenport
Sunday, February 1
The Four Chaplains: On Diversity and Its Uses


The reading which I love best is the scriptures of the several nations, though it happens that I am better acquainted with those of the Hindus, the Chinese, and the Persians, than of the Hebrews, which I have come to last. Give me one of these bibles, and you have silenced me for a while.
Henry David Thoreau

I do not prefer one religion or philosophy to another. I have no sympathy with bigotry and ignorance which make transient and partial and puerile distinctions between one man’s faith or form of faith and another’s—as Christians and heathens. I pray to be delivered from narrowness, partiality, exaggeration, bigotry. To the philosopher all sects, all nations, are alike. I like Brahma, Hari, Buddha, the Great Spirit, as well as God.
Henry David Thoreau

I am convinced that what is life denying, what is repressive and false, will be known as such, and people, who are basically good, will follow a new way. Let us be some of those who step out and lead the way, who dare to be the Light that blesses the world, that all the earth may be fair, and all her people one.
Marilyn Sewall

Prelude

Board Welcome

Opening Words:
If God Invited You to a Party
Hafiz

Opening Hymn: 209: O Come, You Longing Thirsty Souls

Chalice Lighting #458

Children’s Time
Singing the Children Out

Offering
Joys and Sorrows
Silence
Response: 159: This is My Song

Special Music

Reading
Sermon: The Four Chaplains: On Diversity and Its Uses

Response: Hymn 401 Kum ba Yah
Extinguishing the Chalice
Benediction
Postlude

Someone writing in the New York Times has seen an echo between the first part of Elizabeth Alexander's inaugral poem and a poem, Passersby, by Carl Sandburg.


The early lines of Alexander’s poem (”Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise.”) echo, whether consciously or not, a poem from Carl Sandburg’s Chicago Poems (1916). I reread it and found it especially apt for this day:
PASSERS-BY

Out of your many faces
Flash memories to me
Now at the day end
Away from the sidewalks
Where your shoe soles traveled
And your voices rose and blent
To form the city’s afternoon roar
Hindering an old silence.

Passers-by,
I remember lean ones among you,
Throats in the clutch of a hope,
Lips written over with strivings,
Mouths that kiss only for love.
Records of great wishes slept with,
Held long
And prayed and toiled for. .
Yes,Written onYour mouths
And your throatsI read them
When you passed by.

Iraq Memorial, Unitarian Church, Davenport

Today's QC Times publishes this story on the Iraq War Memorial at the Unitarian Church in Davenport.


Iraq war memorial opens at church


By Mary Louise Speer Sunday, January 18, 2009

Elizabeth Russell of Rock Island gazed at the names of fallen U.S. soldiers displayed in the “Arrival at Dover” war memorial.

One name stood out to her, Lance Cpl. Jesus Suarez del Solar, who died early in the Iraq war.

The exhibit honors soldiers who have died since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

It opened to the public Saturday at Unitarian Church, Davenport.

“I guess I would liken it to going to the Vietnam Wall memorial,” Russell said. “Seeing all those names. Seeing all those lives that were lost, and the families that lost them.”

Russell met Suarez del Solar’s father while on the “Wheels of Justice” bus tour in California and listened to his story about becoming an activist voice in the war debate.

“You walk past, you can’t take in the names of everyone. You wonder about the families they left behind,” she reflected. “I think the memory of these people demands from us the question: What do we do to honor their lives.”

Artist Jay Strickland of Rock Island hopes the work helps viewers better understand the meaning of the 4,227 U.S. soldiers who have, as of Saturday, died there since the invasion began in March 2003. The display is arranged in chronological order.

“I wanted people to see the totality of the fatalities that were coming back,” he said.

Each name also has a brief description of how that individual died, whether in combat or on duty, from injuries sustained from IED’s or while being treated in medical facilities for their injuries.

Strickland still has more names to add to the list but the ceiling-high display of names, flag-etched caskets and hanging crane mobile is on display through Feb. 1.

Strickland has a background in photography and he’s created other art pieces to illustrate the genocide in Darfur, Sudan.

The memorial’s name was inspired by the fact that bodies brought back for burial travel through the Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

U.S. policy prohibits photos from being taken of the flag-draped caskets at Dover. The tiny coffins are visual reminders of how many fallen warriors have traveled through Dover, Strickland said.

“I don’t have a friend or family member who died there,” he said. “But they all died for me.”

The city desk can be contacted at (563) 383-2450 or newsroom@qctimes.com.

© Copyright 2009, The Quad-City Times, Davenport, IA

Obama Poem, former Quad Cities Poet Laureate

In today's Quad Cities Times, a poem from former Quad Cities Poet Laureate and staunch Republican Dick Stahl. It is a beautiful, gracious, generous piece.


Dear Barack Obama
By Dick Stahl
I have a hope today.

I hope America turns ‘greener’ by the hour.

I hope America catches her wind
and sings electric.

I hope America shows the gasoline engine only in museums.

I hope Americans travel abroad
with respect from
all countries.

I hope Americans
redefine presidential leadership from
your character and personal integrity.

I hope Americans anticipate you writing your own words
and speaking inyour own voice.

I hope all Americans enjoy affordable
health care.

I hope America
cheers the wintering bald eagles on the Upper Mississippi River and applauds
its national symbol
visiting the working spine of our country.

I hope Americans
trim down, toughen up and exercise sound mind and body.

I hope America’s national debt drops
to zero.

I hope the American family learns from
the love of the
Obama family.

I hope all Americans make education
a life-long quest.

I hope Made in
America means
Made in the Obama Administration.

I hope Americans
visit the memory of Presidents Washington and Lincoln with you.

I hope you partner with Congress to move this country forward.

I hope America
discovers your new oratory as ‘A New Birth of Freedom.’

I hope America
springs with you
into the Twenty-First Century on
January 20, 2009.

I have a hope today.

Dick Stahl

Bob Motz has seen lots of amazing wildlife in a lifetime of observing nature — giant tortoises on the Galapagos Islands, millions of monarch butterflies in the mountains of Mexico and lions in Tanzania, Africa.

But he experienced a “first” last month, right outside the windows of his Rock Island home: a cardinal that is half-male, half-female, he says. The bird’s male side is bright red and the female side is a buff brown.

This anomaly occurred during cell division in the bird’s early embryonic stage when the sex chromosomes did not separate properly to the cells, explains Motz, who taught biology at Rock Island High School for 36 years.

The result is what’s called a “gynandromorph,” a creature with half-male, half-female characteristics.Motz has never seen anything like it and neither have other Quad-City area bird watchers/experts.“It’s very unusual,” says Kelly McKay, a Hampton, Ill., field biologist and Quad-City bird expert. “I’ve never seen it.”“It’s a real mix-up of nature,” adds Mary Lou Petersen, another birder and longtime member of the Quad-City Audubon Society.

It is not unheard of, though. Motz has a photo of a gynandromorphy butterfly that he uses in the genetics class he teaches in the College for Kids program at Black Hawk College. These creatures typically are sterile and cannot reproduce, he says.

The unusual cardinal was first spotted in December when Motz and two friends — Jim Frink and his wife, Betty — were sitting around his dining room table. “Jim was facing the window and he saw it first,” Motz recalls. ” ‘He said, ‘Bob, quick, look!’”The bird was in a hawthorn tree, eating some of its fruit, and has continued to hang around since then, Motz adds.