Those Unacknowledged Legislators, by Rev. Dr. Kelly Murphy Mason, Guest Minister, worship service January 26, 2025

Rev. Dr. Kelly Murphy Mason, Guest Minister, preaching

Worship service given January 26, 2025
Prayer by David Whitford, Worship Associate
https://firstparish.info/

First Parish
A liberal religious community, welcoming to all
First gathered 1739

An important part of the history of these United States is the poetry that our fellow Americans have written about it. What do their poems have to tell us about our country now? If it is true that poets serve as “the unacknowledged legislators of the world”, what national norms are they writing (or righting) for us today? Which of their verses might we need to know by heart?

The Rev. Dr. Kelly Murphy Mason currently serves as Community Minister for Spiritual Direction at Arlington Street Church; she also teaches in the apprenticeship program at the Phoenix Center for Spiritual Direction and works as a book reviewer for Presence, the quarterly journal of Spiritual Directors International. In 2022, she convened the Spirituality & Flourishing Interest Group in the Harvard Flourishing Network and today acts as its Co-Chair. For more than a decade now, she has blogged at TheReverendDr.com on the topic of “what heals us in our souls.”
Offering and Giving First

The Giving First program donates 50% of the non-pledge offering each month to a charitable organization that we feel is consistent with Unitarian Universalist principles. The program began in November 2009, and First Parish has donated over $200,000 to more than 70 organizations. For January 2025, the Giving First recipient is Women’s Lunch Place. Women’s Lunch Place is a day shelter community in Boston for women experiencing poverty and homelessness. Trained staff and volunteers provide hundreds of women with two nutritious means a day, clean clothes and a fresh shower with a spirit of healing, hope and dignity. Advocates help guests with issues such as fleeing domestic violence, immigration status, housing, and increasing income. When you donate to Women’s Lunch Place you make a difference in the lives of vulnerable women.

The remaining half of your offering supports the life and work of this Parish. To donate using your smartphone, you may text “fpuu” to 73256. Then follow the directions in the texts you receive.

About our Lead Minister: Rev. Marta Flanagan began her ministry as our twentieth called minister at First Parish in the fall of 2009. She is a genuine and forthright preacher. In conversation she is direct and engaging. She speaks of prayer with as much ease as she laughs at human foibles. We call her “Marta.” Marta is a religious liberal, a theist, a feminist, and a lover of the woods. As a student of American history at Smith College she was captivated by the stories of social reformers who were motivated and sustained by their faith. That led her to consider the ministry and to study at Harvard Divinity School from where she was graduated in 1986. She was the first woman minister in the city of Salem, Massachusetts, serving at the First Universalist Church there (1987-1997). She served in a co-ministry at South Church (Unitarian Universalist) in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, (1997-2005) from where she is minister emerita. Marta served as interim minister in Montpelier, Vermont (2008-2009). She is trained as a spiritual director. For three years she lived in the Vermont woods practicing voluntary simplicity and the spiritual life. Marta enjoys the vitality of First Parish and our strong sense of community. She celebrates the yearning for depth and the desire to make a difference in the world that she finds here.