“Believing that fear makes us safer is heresy.” As many of you know, I spent last week in Washington DC with 19 of my Conference Minister colleagues.  We were there to engage in Advocacy particularly around the issues of immigration and LGBTQ+ inclusion.  There was a lot that happened during these few days and I know I will write at least once more about what happened. For this, I am going to focus on the happenings of last Wednesday, October 29 th .  That was our main day of action.  When we...

Standing Stones: Bravery, Not Just Welcome Rev. Derek A. Terry – Keynote for the New Hampshire Conference of the UCC (10/25/2025) Cincinnati has a women’s choir. Muse: Cincinnati Women’s Choir. A member of my church was a long time singer in the choir invited me to hear her choir sing. And I’ll be honest with you, I went begrudgingly. I’ve heard a lot of choirs in my life, and I thought, ‘Alright, this is going to be sweet — maybe a little corny.’ But I was wrong. It was powerful — deeply...

“You’ve got spunk” is a classic line spoken by newsroom editor Lou Grant to Mary Richards as she interviewed for a job at WJM-TV, channel 12, in Minneapolis. Mary Richards, star of the sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore show, takes this as a compliment. To which Lou Grant replies: “I hate spunk”. Mary got the job anyway. I just returned from the Maine Conference UCC’s Annual Meeting held at Pilgrim Lodge where instead of the 600 people who used to attend 20 years ago there were 174 of us. We...