About Us

First Sunday Speakers

June, 2004

by Joanna Henderson

It was the perfect stroke of luck.  It was a gift that fell into my lap without warning or  work on my part.  The year was 1955.  I was a teenager.  The place was Nashua. For months I had desperately wanted to be part of AUY - American Unitarian Youth - the youth group of all Unitarian churches in this country at that time.  AUY was THE  place to be on Fridays nights. It was the gathering spot.   It was hot and  It was  cool.   Most of my friends  belonged to AUY.  They were Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Methodist and Lutheran .  They were welcomed and they took part in all of AUY’s social and spiritual activities.

But not me.  Our family were Congregationalists and no amount of begging, pleading and cajoling would persuade my Mother  to let me go.  Oh please, please, please I whined.  But she was sure that I ‘d be corrupted by what she called all Unitarians,  “that  band of drugstore cowboys”.

And then came the piece of luck, the gift. It was an announcement by the Nashua Public Library that they would be lengthening their Friday night hours.  That library sat cheek by jowl to the Unitarian church and I was about to pull off the biggest scam of my young life .

On the first Friday night of the new library hours I danced out the door,  swinging my green book bag heavy  with homework.  “ I’m off to the library to study”  I sang out to the household.  Hopping on my bike I balanced the book bag on my handle bars and sped off before anybody could ask questions.  And you know where I was going.

AUY turned out to be everything I knew it was going to be.  I loved it!  And my scam worked.  At least for a while.  And then I got caught.  My mother in the process of interrogating me said,” Oh why, why, why? Why do you want to go there every Friday night?”   The only thing I could think of to say was “Because it’s so wonderful and so much fun.”  And my mother in her best Calvinist voice said, "Yes, that’s all those Unitarians do, is have fun.”

So later,  when I went off to college I decided to start attending the Unitarian Church in Burlington, Vermont.  That was the first Unitarian church I joined and I felt very daring breaking with my Congregationalist roots.  Between that church  and this one here in Concord  and spanning  over forty  years, there have been five other  Unitarian or UU churches in my life. After Burlington, there was the Unitarian church in Palo Alto, California where we gathered on the Sunday after President Kennedy’s assassination and heard words that helped us get through that sad and difficult time.

  A move to southern California brought us to  the Santa Monica UU church  where I sang “We shall overcome” for the first time when our minister and 40 congregants came back from the March on Selma.  Next came the UU Fellowship in Norwich, Vermont which is thriving today but was on the brink of closing when our family joined.  I ran the Sunday school in that tiny church and spent what seemed like hundreds of hours in meetings trying to figure out how to keep the place alive with only 20 families. Then there was a brief flirtation with Emerson’s church in Concord, MA but it was far too Christian for our taste so we quickly moved on to the Bedford, MA church whose part time minister was  Jack Mendelssohn, newly retired as president of the UUA.  He was a powerhouse of a preacher but our lay-led services on his off -Sundays showed me what a talented and creative congregation can put forth when called upon.

And my last  church before coming here in 1995 was the UU Fellowship in Andover, NH at Proctor Academy.  Another small struggling congregation often  without even a part time minister.  I can remember more than one Sunday there when I greeted at the door, passed the collection plate , took part in the service then dashed out to make coffee.   And others did the same.

All of these churches or Fellowships were very different but shared so much.  And each have made an impact on my life and an imprint on my memory.

It was  the perfect stroke of luck.  It was a gift that fell into my lap  And I will be eternally grateful not only to that Nashua church but to the Nashua Public Library which unwittingly  helped  to start me on a new spiritual journey. A journey begun on a black Raleigh bicycle.