Frances Moore Lappe continues to help us reverse the spiral of despair. Her most recent book is Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity, and Courage in a World Gone Mad, awarded the Nautilus Gold/“Best in Small Press” award. In June 2008, that book and Diet for a Small Planet were designated as must-reads for the next U.S. president (by Barbara Kingsolver and Michael Pollan, respectively) in The New York Times Sunday Book Review. Preview the first chapter and more of  Getting a Grip 2!  This revised edition will be available in stores March 2010.

Restoring Margaret Fuller’s place in history, literature, and memory.

A special project of UUWA and UU Women & Religion Metro District

You are invited to Margaret Fuller’s 200th birthday party and celebrations organized for the Margaret Fuller 2010 Bicentennial and the “Follow the Footsteps of Margaret Fuller” tours in New York City, Boston-Cambridge-Concord, and Rome-Rieti-Florence. These unique, one-of-a-kind events are a special project of UU Women’s Association and UU Women & Religion-Metro District, funded in part by The Fund for Unitarian Universalism. Do not feel guilty if you’ve never heard of Margaret Fuller. Born in 1810, her thoughts are as alive today as over a century ago. A woman of brains and heart, she was labeled genius by some, was ridiculed by others. World famous in the 1840s, she has largely been forgotten in history. She was:

• First American to write a book about equality for women
• First American war correspondent / served under combat conditions
• First woman foreign correspondent
• First woman journalist on Horace Greeley’s New York Daily Tribune
• First woman literary critic / set literary standards
• First editor, The Dial magazine
• First to organize paid "Conversations" for women (educational "rap sessions")
• First woman to enter Harvard Library for research purposes - a giant step since colleges were closed to women.

In addition, Margaret Fuller served as director of an Italian hospital that treated the war wounded during the Italian Revolution of 1848-9 – this predates the work of Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton.

Among the major events of the Bicentennial are dramatic stage presentations entitled “A Medley for Margaret Fuller,” “Men, Women, and Margaret Fuller,” and “O Excellent Friend!” with original scripts by Fuller scholar/author/actor Laurie James.  The New York City one-day walking tour “Follow the Footsteps of Margaret Fuller” will feature actors characterized as Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson and his wife, Lidian, Henry David Thoreau, Horace Greeley, Julia Ward Howe, Lydia Maria Child, Edgar Allen Poe, and other friends, and will culminate in a restaurant with skits and songs.

The tour to Italy will highlight sixth generation Roman researcher/writer Mario Bannoni as one of the guides as well as spotlight commemorative plaque presentations, wine tastings, seminars, a visit to Fuller’s lodging in Rome, and even a stay in the Florence hotel where Fuller lived. The Calendar of Events provides details.

Contact: Laurie James, Initiator and Project Director
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www.margaretfuller.info

An Asante proverb from Africa says, “I am because we are and we are because I am.”  I ask myself who is in my “we circle”?  How far does my circle reach out?  Does it make me a trans-nationalist?  There’s so much to unite us as part of the human species.  Since the International UU Women’s Convocation a year ago, my membership in IALRW, International Association of Liberal Religious Women, has become more precious.

As I look around me, I see, in growing numbers and ways, people seeking community.  I bet you see this trend, too.  I’m not surprised at this when I look inside myself and feel the warm fuzzies and support that I find in several of my communities.  To me this trend is evidence of a positive meme breaking through into modern human evolution.  This natural occurrence of a meme is like the genes we pass on to new generations.

Memes are ideas that, spontaneously, find their time to come into a critical mass of human consciousness.  A meme breaks through from many sources over the same time period.  They click “out of those patterns of thought, habit, and emotion woven into our minds by the people and events around us,” say Win Wenger and Richard Poe in The Einstein Factor, a book about the “genius meme.”

When I find my still point within, then open my awareness to receive insights through the perception of my right brain taking the lead, I can intuit how to find meaningful living. That’s how the insights from memes work. If the time is right, memes travel from mind to mind like a virus.  In WOMUUNWEB’s last issue, (Summer/Fall) I quoted what Angela Sorby said about this phenomenon in Bird Skin Coat, “…key messages transmit themselves sans messenger.”  (The article was next to a Cakes For the Queen of Heaven’s goddess picture and entitled “Sending Out Breakthrough Vibes.”)

Recently, I received from a friend a book review by another friend, Karen Kullgren, that, to me, describes the kind of community building found in participating in the Cakes… course.  The book, A Hidden Wholeness:  The Journey Toward an Undivided Life by Parker J. Palmer, was recently re-printed in paperback (2009) by Josey-Bass.  It’s about how “circles of trust” are critical to our survival and growth as spiritual beings and contributing members of society.

This flow toward a more mature consciousness becomes a ministry when in a circle of trust “that invites people to become more of themselves, more whole, as we give witness to a vision of a world transformed by our care,” as Marjorie Bowens Wheatley described what  ministry is in 2005 (just before her death.)  May we all find such beneficent kinship in such meaningful community. 

This is a curriculum for women who are entering or have passed through menopause. With the image of the triple spiral labyrinth to guide their progress, participants will share the stories and photographs from of each of the decades of their lives as they move into the center of the labyrinth to discover their inner wisdom and out again as they explore ways to share this wisdom with the world. Each circle includes poetry, story, art, music and dance to help women connect to the profound meaning of this life passage. Participants are invited to recall and record memories of their lives in WOW (Women of Wisdom) books. The curriculum concludes with a croning celebration as participants celebrate their new status and name themselves crone, queen, elder, or grandmother. The resource section includes sample decade stories, resources for songs and music for use with the curriculum, and a list of recommended books for crones. The curriculum, which includes a CD for easy distribution of handouts to participants, can be ordered through the UU W&R online store.