31 Dec

Posted at 11:10h in Upcoming Events

Sunday Services

10:00am: Live Zoom Worship/ 10:30am: Live Zoom Fellowship

The Worship Service will also be live streamed on Channing’s YouTube channel:   YOUTUBE Channing Memorial Church Newport RI and will be available for viewing afterwards. 

10:45am: Channing Chimes Play, listen from Touro Park (masked and socially distanced)

January 3: Re-storying Our Lives

Rev. Bill Zelazny

Bill has been interested in the phenomenon of how we tell our life stories and how that telling shapes who we believe we are.  On this first Sunday of a new year Bill will explore the idea that how we arrange the plot points of our life into a narrative shapes who are.

Fun First Sunday! New Year’s Eve is a relatively few hours past, but we can still mark the start of a new year with a bit of silliness. Bill invites everyone on put on their New Year’s hat or bring out the noise maker for a few minutes during the service to show off the New Year’s spirit.

January 10: Coming Home

Anna Smith

Anna Smith and her husband, Jake, have returned to Newport and Channing after having been away on an adventure for seven years. Anna will be sharing with us  her definition to the word “home”, and what it means for them to “come home.”

 Anna Smith is an artist. Her life has been her canvas — she has been an interior designer and a residential builder.  She is a Reiki Master-teacher and always, a volunteer.  For the past seven years Anna and her husband of 61 years, Jake, have been traveling the world.                 

 This Sunday is the Margit Baum Committee’s annual drive to collect nonperishable protein. Your donations this year will go to support Coexion Latina. Suggestions for contributions include (but are not limited to) beans, canned stews, soups, boxed macaroni and cheese, Spam, peanut butter, canned tuna, nuts, etc. We encourage you to use your imagination. Any other food donations would certainly be appreciated as well. Please drop off items on the porch of Channing house the morning of Sunday, January 10th, or earlier in the week.

January 17: Hope – Love – Faith

Mrs. Victoria Johnson 

This Sunday, Mrs. Victoria Johnson will be our guest presenter. She describes her talk this way:  “I will speak through the building of the Middle Passage Port Marker memorial, to the need to honor all who arrived in our fair city 400 years ago — Native Americans, Africans, Jews, Irish  Italians. With a few moments of thought I will try to describe our virtues and vices through Hope, Love and Faith.  It is time for us to all work together to be One Newport.”

Mrs. Johnson is a well-known community leader in Newport. In 1996 she became the first Black high school principal in Rhode Island.  Currently she is the Co- Chair of Newport Middle Passage Port Marker Project.   She is a member of the Newport Community Baptist Church and is a diligent advocate of justice for Black people in Newport and the country with her membership in the Newport and national NAACP.

January 24: The Liberal and Conservative Mind-set

Rev. Bill Zelazny

This country is divided along a fault line of liberal and conservative political and social philosophies.  Understanding these two belief systems is a pretty tall order, but this Sunday, four days after the inauguration of the 46th President of the United States, Bill will tackle this project by looking at the moral and philosophical foundations of what has become in modern times diametrically opposed viewpoints.

 

January 31: From Where Does Hope Spring?

 Rev. Dr. Nina D. Grey

Our January 31 service arrives as we are nearing Groundhog Day, Feb. 2, and, as in the classic movie Groundhog Day, we are experiencing an ever-repeating sameness. We suffer even if we aren’t sick from Covid. Friends, family, and others we know may have gotten sick, and some may have died. Alone in my apartment I sometimes feel lonely or afraid. You might too. We miss our old lives and we worry about our nation. And even with the hope of the vaccines and a new administration, there is a lot we do not know about our future. This Sunday, in this hard time, we ask “What does or might sustain us? What are or can be the sources of our hope? From where does hope spring?

Rev. Nina Grey is the Minister Emerita for the First Unitarian Society of Chicago where she had served as the senior minister from 1999 to 2011.  She went on to serve the Unitarian Fellowship of Boseman, MT from which she retired in 2016.  Prior to Chicago, she served churches in Keene, NH and Philadelphia, PA (Germantown).  In retirement, Rev. Grey is active in various social justice initiatives to include climate issues and voting rights. Dr. Grey received her M.Div from Andover Newton Theological School and DMin from McCormick Theological Seminary.