Salina’s Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 901 Beatrice, is featuring a series of services based on national monthly themes for UU fellowships across the country.
Most recent was the theme of “Belonging.” How do we determine where we belong and who our neighbors are? The fellowship follows regular worship elements and focuses on spiritual insights into the human condition.
The public is invited to the services.
The 10:30 a.m. service on Sunday features local artist and activist Priti Cox. Cox will present a service on Salina’s own Sidewalk Museum of Congress (SMoC) located outside First District Representative Roger Marshall’s office.
This has been a regular event through much of September and October. It goes against the grain of comfortable spaces of art and interaction. SMoC is an anti-status-quo palette of dissent against establishment politics and allied mainstream media. And for that matter, against elite museum spaces.
It has attempted to be an “audience harvester.” It engages bypassers and participants to present a real world, as opposed to one based on “alternative facts.”
SMoC communicates through everything that enters its space including chalk, music, seeds, poetry, and Representative Roger Marshall’s window display.
It suggests to its audience these questions: “What does it mean to be a Palestinian child, or a Kashmiri mother, or a Puerto Rican living under Israeli, Indian and U.S. Occupation respectively?” It tries to individualize struggles like these and communicate via intricate details, not fashionable soundbites. Says presenter Cox, “The truth is in the details.”
The Nov. 10 service presents John Stoesz, an advocate for Native American Reparations and a living example of self-devotion to rectifying the injustices they have suffered. In 2013, Stoesz pedaled his recumbent tricycle 2,000 miles through 40 Minnesota counties to raise awareness about efforts to return Dakota land to its rightful owners.
The Nov. 17 service features Maribel Panuco, advocate for immigrants and provider of immigration services through Saint Francis Ministries.