Feeding the Spirit on the Feast Day of Consumption: Living into our Gifts
Friday, November 23 • 10:00 a.m.
Service followed by optional reflection discussion.
Unity Church’s fifth annual “Black Friday at Church” offers an opportunity to launch the Advent and Christmas season with spiritual renewal, fellowship, and good cheer, instead of habitual consumerism. Sometimes called “the holiest of shopping days,” Black Friday is no longer just a feast day of consumption. This year we explore meanings of abundance and doing more with what we have with our theme Living into our Gifts.

Join fellow Unity Church members, families, and neighbors on the Friday morning after Thanksgiving (Black Friday in the consumer world) in a worship service featuring cultural critique, spiritual depth, conversation, children’s participation, wonderful music, and some fun. Our service will include special guest speaker, James Farrell, Professor of History, American Studies, Environmental Studies and American Conversations at St. Olaf College. Professor Farrell is an interdisciplinary scholar whose teaching has included courses on Environmental History, the Mall of America, Nuclear Weapons and American Culture, Walt Disney’s America, Consuming College Culture, and Campus Ecology.

After the service, we’ll share fellowship in the Parish Hall and, for those who would like, an opportunity to join in a reflective conversation about the service, what Advent might look like from a Unitarian Universalist perspective, the opportunities to be found in the Christmas season, and how we might make changes in our own lives. Activities for children and families, and child care will be provided.

We invite you to share your thoughts in advance of the service so that we may include some of them in the Collage of Voices in the service. If the Black Friday theme evokes a response, or if the words Living into our Gifts bring to mind a story of being called to do “something bigger” with one’s gifts, please share your thoughts in writing with us. E-mail your writing to Jim Foti at jim@unityunitarian.org by November 5.