Wooster UU bldg

Our church plans to visit this Unitarian Universalist church in Wooster, OH to get some vision for making our buidling more "green."
http://www.uufwc.org/

Service for Darfur

Global Day for Darfur Interfaith Prayer Service

Thursday, April 26th, 7:00 pm

at Temple Israel on Merriman Road

 

will begin with live videocast from NY with Elie Wiesel and followedy by the prayer service

receive the witness

 Fairlawn West community...

 

I have turned off much of the media coverage of the Virginia Tech killings.  I am appalled at the push they are on to assign blame and to pry into the lives of a people who are in shock and initial grief.  Where is the boundary between news coverage and voyeurism!?

 

The witness is from pieces of news I have heard from the Virginia Tech community itself.  As in the time of grief for any of us, we need to give space.  But what we are hearing from that community is a focus on being a community for one another.  Not feeding the frenzy of the profit seeking news media (and possibly a voyeuristic portion of the wider world.)

 

In a time when there are comments about how young people today are not cut from the same cloth of their elders...notice how the students of VT and of a wider circle via the internet are more focused on the present, the love, the community and the healing.  That is the witness to others of us.  God is speaking.

 

Grace and peace,

David Loar

colleges

Kate and I visited colleges Mon thru Thurs of this week. She has come to some decision. Her top three for applying are:
Elizabethtown College (PA)
College of Wooster (OH)
Heidelberg College (OH)

Also, she plans to apply to:
Beloit College (WI)
Dickinson College (PA)
Grinnell College (IA)

We started visiting almost exactly a year ago. We may visit yet two colleges close by - Muskingum and Otterbein. But the six above are pretty much fixed. (We have also visited: Allegheny, Hiram, Kenyon, Transylvania, Denison, Goshen, Elmhurst, Carleton, Macalester, Goucher, Ursinus, and Juniata. The last two she liked, but their music depts weren't strong enough for her interests.)

I really liked Elizabethtown. Its culture and style was a good mix of typical college kids with great community, good social justice and wider world perspective. Christian faith expression has a variety of outlets. The music dept and the political science/international affairs depts came across very good. Service is a major piece of campus life. Kate loved it. So did I. We agree!

debate on Jesus resurrection

The debate going on these days about Jesus and particularly his resurrection, I think, is going on in the wrong context. The quote we focused around at Fairlawn West UCC yesterday (Easter) was this from Frederick Buechner, "The earliest reference to the Resurrection is Saint Paul's and he makes no mention of an empty tomb at all. But the fact of the matter is that in a way it hardly matters how the body of Jesus came to be missing because in the last analysis what convinced the people that he had risen from the dead was not the absence of his corpse but his living presence. And so it has been ever since."

Loars Easter 2007

Here is our annual family Easter picture for 2007. Molly, Martha, Kate and David.

colleges and Wicked

We were in the Chicago area last weekend. Visited with my daughter Beloit College and Elmhurst College. We saw the musical "Wicked" which is fabulous. It is the story behind the witches in the Wizard of Oz. Went to Sunday morning worship at Willow Creek Church which left my teenage daughters feeling unfufilled. Visited the Bahai House of Worship and drove around Northwestern Univ and Univ of Chicago campuses.

Next week my daughter and I visit Goucher College in Baltimore, Ursinus College north of Philadelphia, and Elizabethtown College east of Harrisburg. Then the visits are done!