Fair-Trade Chocolate Tastes Better!

Unitarian Universalist Service Committee Link

This is important: Chocolate is mentioned in our Covenant.

I got an email with Links to Video from the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee...



Among many things: the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee promotes Fair Trade... After you click on and watch the embedded video above you will see other videos you can watch too -- they are enlightening and interesting...

Kara Smith of UUSC writes:

I'm writing to share with you UUSC's new one-minute video promoting fair-trade chocolate. This video is part of UUSC's Choose Compassionate Consumption initiative to advance economic justice.

While we had fun making this entertaining video, we chose to focus on chocolate because the use of forced labor in cocoa production is a serious issue. For example, Hershey chocolate, with 42.5 percent of the market, is a leader on sales but not on human rights. Although they have recently made some strides to address these issues, they have lagged behind their competitors in ensuring that that child labor is not used and that workers’ rights are respected.

Spread the word about fair-trade chocolate: watch this video and share it with your friends by e-mailing it to them and posting it on social media.

As we work to widen the reach of our human-rights messages, I'm eager to hear your feedback.

Please Note: that be my first video embed. HA!!

How The Chalice Came to Be - Wholeheartedly, Yes!

I think it should be written in biblical verse...

And so it came to pass in the year 1941, an Austrian artist drew satirical pictures of an evil king Adolf Hitler of the Nazis and knew that he must flee for his life. The cartoonist fled from Paris France to Lisbon Portugal by way of South of France and Spain where he saw a group saving others who like him were attempting to escape the Nazis.

And Hans Deutch said...

"There is something that urges me to tell you... how much I admire your utter self denial [and] readiness to serve, to sacrifice all, your time, your health, your well being, to help, help, help.

I am not what you may actually call a believer. But if your kind of life is the profession of your faith — as it is, I feel sure — then religion, ceasing to be magic and mysticism, becomes confession to practical philosophy and — what is more —to active, really useful social work. And this religion — with or without a heading —is one to which even a 'godless' fellow like myself can say wholeheartedly, Yes!"

Reverend Charles Joy who was the leader of the Unitarian Service Committee asked Hans to draw a symbol of their faith. The Service Committee was new, founded in Boston to assist Unitarians and Jews who needed to escape Nazi persecution. Reverend Joy oversaw a secret network of couriers and agents. A symbol was needed for identification in their work.

And Hans drew a Chalice.

Reverend Charles Joy wrote...

"a chalice with a flame, the kind of chalice which the Greeks and Romans put on their altars. The holy oil burning in it is a symbol of helpfulness and sacrifice.... This was in the mind of the artist. The fact, however, that it remotely suggests a cross was not in his mind, but to me this also has its merit. We do not limit our work to Christians. Indeed, at the present moment, our work is nine-tenths for the Jews, yet we do stem from the Christian tradition, and the cross does symbolize Christianity and its central theme of sacrificial love."

I excerpted and paraphrased this from the uua pamphlet on line...

The UU Flaming Chalice Story

It's Officially Over!!

The christmas tree has been taken down and put out for recycle. The holiday wreath awaits the same fate. The menorah was put away and the candles melted and bent over from sitting on the mantle. Martin Luther King day and Chinese New Year have come and gone. The Super Bowl and with it the football season have been completed.

I stop thinking about
the epiphany celebrations...

and how i missed the santa swimming race in Barcelona again...
















Or how if Santa Claus got a ticket for speeding he'd pay the ticket and cover our national debt...













And now it's Charles Dicken's 200th Birthday.