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Archived Events and News Previously Posted on the CMA Website in or for FEBRUARY 2005An Evening with Cheryl RichardsonGlenview Community Church and Pilgrim Congregational Church of Oak Park are co-hosting a lecture and book signing on February 22 as the only Chicago stop on Cheryl Richardson’s national book tour. The Unmistakable Touch of Grace: An Evening with Cheryl Richardson In her most personal work yet, Cheryl Richardson shows us how to identify and embrace the transformative power of grace. In The Unmistakable Touch of Grace Cheryl takes readers on a personal journey showing how grace leads us to the exact events, experiences, and people we need at exactly the right time in our lives. Cheryl Richardson is the author of New York Times bestsellers: Take Time for Your Life, Life Makeovers, and Stand Up for Your Life. Her work has been covered widely in the media including The Today Show, Good Morning America, The New York Times, and O, The Oprah Magazine. Cheryl led the Lifestyle Makeover Series on the Oprah Winfrey Show and accompanied Ms. Winfrey on the Live Your Best Life nationwide tour. Join us on Tuesday, February 22, 2005, from 7 to 10 PM, at Glenview Community Church, 1000 Elm St, Glenview, IL. Tickets $35. For additional information or tickets go to www.gccucc.org or call 708-848-5866. Slavery and the Making of AmericaOn February 9th and 16th PBS aired a four part series entitled Slavery and the Making of America, produced by Dante James, and narrated by Morgan Freeman. Dante is an incredible filmmaker who has produced many award winning films, among them biographies on Marian Anderson and A. Philip Randolph. He worked with the late great filmmaker Henry Hampton at Blackside and was the executive producer of Hampton's last series This Far By Faith: African American Spiritual Journeys. Slavery and the Making of America tells the story of slavery from the point of view of the enslaved. The series recognizes the strength, humanity and dignity of the enslaved and redefines them as pro-active freedom fighters not passive victims. It is essential to pass this email on to friends and family and encourage them to watch. If we can create a large audience for this important series PBS will be forced to produce and air more programs that address the African-American experience. There are also two web sites for the series: The 4 part program has been released on DVD and is now available from online merchants and in local stores. ALSO: the companion volume to the epic PBS series Slavery and the Making of America by James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton offers a richly illustrated, vividly written history that illuminates the human side of this inhumane institution, presenting it largely through stories of the slaves themselves. Readers will discover a wide ranging and sharply nuanced look at American slavery, from the first Africans brought to British colonies in the early seventeenth century to the end of Reconstruction. Along the way, readers meet extraordinary individuals, enslaved and free, whose contributions to the building of America are only now beginning to be appreciated. With more than one hundred illustrations, Slavery and the Making of America is a gripping account of the struggles of African Americans against the iniquity of slavery. Published by Oxford University Press, the book is available from book stores and online booksellers. Read the TELEVISION REVIEW from the Chicago Tribune: 'Slavery' takes scholarly look at ugly history By Sid Smith Tribune arts critic Published February 9, 2005 In the case of slavery, reparation has various forms. There's the financial kind, which remains controversial. But there's also the reparation that comes from a more accurate understanding through arresting scholarship. That's one message from the superb "Slavery and the Making of America" (9-11 p.m. Wednesday, WTTW-Ch. 11) an ultimately addictive four-part documentary from PBS on the ugliest chapter of American history. Too often, treatments of slavery focus on its final days leading to the Civil War. In fact, this awesomely evil institution was an integral part of our nation's socio-economic makeup from the early 17th Century, helping to build America's economic strength while simultaneously creating a tragic paradox that undermined all-important principles of freedom. Flush with meticulous scholarship, the series devotes roughly half of its total length to slavery in the 1600s and 1700s. The second pair of installments, airing at 9 p.m. next Wednesday, focuses with some overlap on the period from 1800 through Reconstruction. We're all familiar with slavery in the South, but in these early years, it flourished in New England and the Northeast as well, in colonies such as Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. Among the more unforgettable slave characters who emerge is Titus, who renamed himself Colonel Tye and joined with the British, who offered slaves freedom if they fought against the American Revolution. Because the colonists read such documents as the Declaration of Independence out loud on street corners, even illiterate slaves began to absorb our early beliefs in human dignity -- and then fight for it. A feisty slave named Mum Bett went to court, winning her freedom and leading to the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts in 1783. Somewhat later, David Walker, a freeborn Southern black man, moved to Boston and, in 1829, penned his "Appeal to the Colored Citizen of the World," a searing document warning that "blood will flow." After his death in his own doorway, possibly by assassination, a black woman adherent, Mariah Stuart, took up the cause and lectured smalls groups of men and women in public, the first American woman to do so. Both Walker and Stuart are early proponents of black nationalism and pride. Stuart, who labeled herself a warrior and a martyr, is an early feminist as well. Though it made her unpopular, she chastised black men for lacking manhood in their subservience. Straightforward, restrained and blunt in its scholarship, "Slavery" breaks its academic monotony with convincing, imagistic re-creations of slave life, visual dramatizations that feature unflinching depictions of torture and cruelty, including this 18th Century, four-part plan for early runaways: First-time offenders are whipped, second-timers are branded, third-timers lose an ear and four-time runaway males are castrated. Connected by Morgan Freeman's able, eloquent narration, the re-enactments are interspersed with talking-head commentary by two dozen scholarly experts, among them James Horton of George Washington University and Nell Painter of Princeton University, credited with some of the more up-to-date research on the topic. The documentary also features a wealth of period illustrations, some of them detailing the grotesque, medieval tortures employed to keep slaves in check. The dramatic re-enactments, while successfully conjuring up earlier eras, are mostly mute, an atmospheric evocation of slave habits and settings rather than completed, spoken scenes of fictional drama. There are also scenes of early cultural breakthroughs, images of musicians strumming banjos around a campfire, precursors of a lavish wing of modern American culture. Even during the more familiar events of Nat Turner's rebellion (1831) comes the extraordinary, less-celebrated tale of Harriet Jacobs, preyed on by her lascivious master, escaping only to live in a tiny attic in her free grandmother's shack. Dwelling in a space so inhospitable, she writes in her diary, that mosquitoes elected not to visit, Jacobs survives for years, enduring psychotic hallucinations, but eventually glimpsing the growth of her children, whom she must spy on in secret through a hole she bored through the wooden wall -- an unforgettably heartbreaking image. "Her psychic strength reflects that of all enslaved women," says Deborah Gray White of Rutgers University, articulating a theme for the entire series. "Slavery demanded a different kind of womanhood." Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 19: GOD IS STILL SPEAKING TRAINING EVENT CMA will sponsor another God Is Still Speaking training event on Saturday, February 19 from 9:30 am - 11:30 am at the CMA Office at 332 S. Michigan Avenue, Suite 510, Chicago; Please call Bertha at CMA at 312-939-5918, ext 3859, to register. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 19: ORDINATION OF ALICE HARPER JONES Alice Joy Harper Jones is to be ordained to the Christian ministry on Saturday, February 19, 2005 at 1:00 pm at Trinity United Church of Christ, 400 W 95th St, Chicago (773-962-5650). SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 19: ALL CONFERENCE WOMEN'S LENTEN PRAYER BREAKFAST Women Traveling with Jesus: Then, Now and Tomorrow will be the theme of an all-Conference Women’s Prayer Breakfast held in each Association on Saturday morning February 19th, beginning with 9:00 am Registration. In CMA, this Prayer Breakfast will be at the Westchester Community Church, 1840 Westchester Blvd, Westchester, IL (the "landlord" congregation for the Illinois Conference office). The church is easily reached near Cermak (22nd St) and Mannheim Rd (Rt 45). There is plenty of parking and the building is handicap accessible. For a map and directions CLICK HERE. Please mark your calendars and come...come to hear stories, to sing and break bread together, to be one in the spirit of prayer, and to enjoy our time together during Lent...during Women’s Month in the UCC! Requested donation of $3.00 to cover costs of breakfast; a free will donation will be taken during the service which will be given to a mission program serving women that is selected in each Association. For information, call Dorothy Dill at (708) 755-5347. Watch the CMA email and web-site for a flyer and pre-registration information. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 17: CMA Youth Ministry Network Meeting NOTE: The date in the last email reminder notice for the next Youth Ministry Network meeting erroneously said the next meeting would be on February 24. That was incorrect. The next YMN meeting will be on Thursday, February 17 as originally scheduled from 10:00 am - 12:00 noon at Northfield Community Church, 400 Wagner Rd, Northfield (847-446-3070). Our host will be Mary Beth Cross. Get Directions Here. Please RSVP to Mary Beth at 847-446-0837 or by email at: mcross@ctschicago.edu (Posted thru 2/9/05) What a difference 40 days can makeUCC Still Speaking Initiative Cleveland, Ohio God has been good to us. In the grace of this moment, we are forever changed. Reports are coming in from around the nation and it is clear that the Stillspeaking movement is alive and well. Let us work, play, and pray together as the winds of the spirit blow among us. We are in the process of analyzing the information we have. Here are a few facts and anecdotes: We have had an impressive number of web visits in December: I am reviewing all the comments received via email during the month of December. So far, I have gone through a lot of Kleenex reading 1,000 of the 2,172 comments made via www.stillspeaking.com. So far, comments are running 92.1 percent positive. Of the 7.9 percent negative responses: - 3.5 percent were people who disagree theologically with a church welcoming homosexual persons; - 1.7 percent were clearly UCC persons who did not support the campaign; - .9 percent (less than 1 percent) focused on perceived ecumenical issues. - The remaining 1.8 percent were miscellaneous negative comments There are hopeful signs of increasingly engaged members of local churches . . . What's next? We are asking many hard questions during the next 2 to 4 weeks. What can we do to help? Remind everyone that Stillspeaking is not over. We are just getting started! The Initiative will run through 2007. Working together, we can fund commercials and actions over the next months and years. We will need your help as we joyfully raise money and participation, and each does our part to nurture this spirit of re-birth that is growing among us. You can also share your stories with us. Send only stories that we can share with others. Write to us at stillspeaking@ucc.org and put "Story (Your Church's Name)" in the subject line. |
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