UU World staff will be presenting three workshops at the 2008 General Assembly in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Facebook, YouTube, Podcasting, Second Life: Exploring New Media

Thursday, June 26, 3:15-4:30 pm
Friday, June 27, 1:30-2:45 pm

Are you mystified by the explosion of new media and new avenues for connections and communication? Wondering how or if you or your congregation can use them? Join us for a primer and discussion of the new Internet, and find out how to make creative use of them!

Speakers

• The Rev. Christine Robinson, senior minister of First Unitarian Church of Albuquerque, N.Mex., which uses new media technologies to support its Branch Ministry program.
• Kenneth Sutton, managing editor of UU World and a member of the Church of the Larger Fellowship.

The Letter and the Spirit

Friday, June 27, 3:15-4:30 pm

How do written words forward our spiritual growth? Can our religious concerns inform and infuse our written communication? How do we reach an audience beyond current UUs? UU authors and editors will reflect on these questions and more.

Speakers

• The Rev. Victoria Safford, minister of White Bear UU Church in Mahtomedi, Minn., and author of Walking Toward Morning: Meditations (Skinner House, 2003).
• Jeffrey Lockwood, professor of natural sciences and humanities at the University of Wyoming, a member of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Laramie, Wyoming, and the author of many books including Prairie Soul (Skinner House, 2004).
• Kenneth Sutton, managing editor of UU World and a member of the Church of the Larger Fellowship.

Special Event: Writing Workshop with Jeffrey Lockwood

Saturday, June 28, 1:30-4:30 pm
Hyatt Pier 66 Hotel
Limited to 20 participants; $50 registration fee.

The Pushcart Prize-winning author of Grasshopper Dreaming and Prairie Soul (Skinner House) will present a three-hour writing workshop in one of the conference hotels.

In the spiritual writing workshop we will explore various forms through which writers probe the ultimate, perennial questions of human existence:

• Who am I?
• What is moral?
• How can I be truly happy?
• What is the purpose of my life?
• What do suffering and death mean?
• What is my relationship to and responsibility for other beings?

Two concepts will motivate our efforts:

Words: What do we mean by terms such as birth, compassion, death, evil, faith, forgiveness, God, holy, ritual, sacred, sin, soul, suffering, truth, and worship?

Beliefs: Which we might take as being thoughts upon which we are willing to act—and which must be understood backwards in terms of origins and lived forward in terms of applications.

My operating assumption is that a workshop is about working, which means writing (not just having me prattle on about what one might write if one were to actually write something). We’ll try lots of short experiments (parables, poems, prayers, flash fiction, etc.) that are intended to plant substantive seeds for your later cultivation. With a spirit of playfulness there should be lots of opportunities to hit upon (and undoubtedly miss, for writing includes plenty of failure!) connections between the infinitesimal and the infinite, the particular and the universal, the mundane and the sacred.

About the speakers