Thoreau Woods Unitarian Universalist Church

Rev. Adam Robinson - A Few Thoughts About Grace
Feb 2, 2020
10:30 am - 11:30 am

My dear friend, Reverend Gretchen Weis, gave me a book as a thankyou gift for leading the laying on of hands and blessing at her installation. The title of that book is Pastrix: the Cranky Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint.

The book is a collection of stories about journey of faith that brought the author, Nadia Bolz-Weber, to be a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).

In one chapter titled “Thanks,ELCA!” she describes how she became a Lutheran. Part of that journey was attending adult confirmation classes led by Pastor Ross.

He described grace in that class. From that Nadia breaks it down to 5 bullet points. The first sentence of each bullet points is:

• God’s grace is a gift freely given to us.
• No one is climbing a spiritual ladder.
• We are simultaneously sinner and saint, 100 percent of both, all the time.
• The Bible is not God.
• The movement in our relationship to God is always from God to us.

I would like to take some time to look at each of those bullet points and tell you how I understand them.  We can translate them by looking at them through the lens of how each of us experiences grace in our lives.

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Shake Russell and Michael Hearne - Songwriter Swap!
Feb 15, 2020
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

For more than three decades, Texas singer-songwriter Shake Russell has been entertaining audiences throughout the region with his unique, Americana style of folk-rock. A prolific songwriter, Shake has written or co-written hundreds of melodies. Through the years, Shake’s songs and albums have frequented the Billboard charts, with many, including “Deep in the West,” “You’ve Got a Lover,” “Put Yourself in My Shoes,” “One More Payment,” and “Our Kind of Love” being recorded by such distinguished artists as Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter, Ricky Skaggs, Clint Black, and Carolyn Dawn Johnson. Ricky Skagg’s hit recording of “You’ve Got a Lover” has appeared on three of Ricky’s albums. In 1983 Shake was commissioned by the Texas State University in San Marcos to write a song ,”River of Innocence”. for a documentary filmed and produced by the university. In 1986, Shake was asked by longtime friend Bruce Bryant, creative producer at Houston television station KTRK, to compose a theme song commemorating the Texas sesquicentennial. He obliged and wrote the regional favorite, “Traveling Texas.”

Michael Hearne’s destiny has been tangled in wire and wood since he first laid his hands on a guitar at the age of seven. With a natural ear for harmony and an aptitude for picking, it wasn’t long before a young Michael Hearne was a fixture at parties and local events in his childhood hometown of Dallas. By the age of sixteen he had honed his skills on the guitar and, without a doubt in his mind about his destiny, he hit the road as a touring musician.

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