I'm a Unitarian Universalist minister, writer, and (for awhile) broadcaster. Beginning this Fall, I'm delighted to serve as Minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Manchester, NH.
During the 2008-09 program year I served as Interim Minister at First Unitarian Church, Orlando. During the previous year I served Unity Church, a UU congregation in North Easton, Massachusetts.
Until April 2006 I served for four years as minister of a congregation in Northampton, in western Massachusetts. Until the summer of 2002 I lived for nine years in the Chicago suburb Oak Park and served Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation, the congregation whose home was designed by an early member, Frank Lloyd Wright, and built between 1905 and 1909. I've also served the Unitarian Church in Bangor, Maine; and on the staff of the Unitarian Universalist Association headquarters in Boston.
During the first six months of 2001 I enjoyed six months in the UK, divided between Aberdeen, Scotland and London, where, on sabbatical leave, I served British Unitarian congregations. I love to return and visit.
That's my 1846 barn behind me in the photo. It's in Westhampton, in the foothills of the Berkshires. The town has no streetlights: the night sky is a magnificent spectacle. But during the two Interim years I had to rent it out. Now I'm back here, and it seems a sacred place. Half-time, I'll be serving the UU congregation in Manchester, New Hampshire. I hope to spend the rest of my time teaching and preaching an evolutionary spirituality, a new kind of enlightment for our times. Meanwhile, I'm preparing a book I've worked on for years. Now, the fairly arduous task of finding a publisher. It's called Magnificent Journey: Religion as Either a Lock on the Past, or an Engine of Evolution. It's about an evolutionary spirituality, a new quality of consciousness beyond ego for a time when the old myths can no longer serve us, when human greed has taken us to the brink of catastrophic ecological collapse. Drawing on my own life story as a former fundamentalist and as a gay man in a society held captive by outmoded religion, I show that transformation is possible, that the energies of life itself are available to us in this crisis.
I've drawn incalculable benefit from time spent at EnlightenNext, in Lenox and Boston in Massachusetts, and in London. The community of people centered there and the evolutionary teaching of founder Andrew Cohen, and of Ken Wilber, have opened a new dimension for me. Immediately I recognized here a splendid unfolding of what many others — Emerson and the Transcendentalists, Aurobindo, and many more — have understood and developed. No one more than Unitarian Universalists should find here both magnificent stimulus and vital company on our journey.
For two years I produced an hour-long weekly broadcast, called Spirit, on Valley Free Radio, WXOJ-LP, in Northampton — and served on the station's board. Sometimes I think of returning to that wonderful, intrepid station but for now, I won't be broadcasting any new programs. You can still hear many previous broadcasts at the podcasting at the left.
Use the navigation panel on the right to explore the site.
Future events with Jay
Sunday, Sept. 12 & 19 at 10 a.m.
Preaching at The Unitarian Universalist Church
669 Union Street, Manchester, NH
Sept. 12: "This is the Day of the World's Birth," for Rosh Hashana
Sept. 19: "A World Without Guilt?" for Yom Kippur
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New audio files
from course in
Oak Park below!
Listen to
previous sessions!
(1-3 are new):
Selected quotes cited in the course
Emerson's Divinity School Address
Theodore Parker's Experience as a Minister
Parker's Address on the Betrayal and Death of Daniel Webster
Excerpt, Rev Samuel Johnson's "Transcendentalism" (1865, 1874)
Jay Deacon's General Assembly address, "Transcendentalism, Abolitionism, and the Unitarian Association"
Andrew Cohen: The New Enlightenment
Dialog: Ken Wilber & Andrew Cohen on Integral Post-Metaphysics and the Myth of the Given
Andrew Cohen on Meditation as Portal to the Fourth Dimension
Links
UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST SITES
UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST ASSOCIATION
UNITARIANS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST SERVICE COMMITTEE
INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
EVOLUTIONARY SPIRITUALITY SITES
ENLIGHTENNEXT MAGAZINE
(FORMERLY WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT?)
JEFF CARRIERA'S EVOLUTIONARY PHILOSOPHY BLOG
KEN WILBER'S INTEGRAL INSTITUTE
TRANSCENDENTALISM
EMERSON SOCIETY COLLECTION AT THOREAU INSTITUTE
HARVARD SQUARE LIBRARY (UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST HISTORY)
CLIMATE EMERGENCY
NATIONAL GAY & LESBIAN TASK FORCE
GET INFORMED