When I was a teenager at the (then called) Unitarian Church of Augusta (Georgia), I would sometimes skulk off to the church office during coffee hour to read the UUA Directory. I was just a sponge for information. (This is how I first learned that there were Christians in the UUA, though I wasn’t one then, and there existed self-determined Universalists.) The directories in those days also included service times, presumably so if you were out of town over a Sunday, you would know what time to arrive.
I thought about those old directories when I was thinking about practical responses to the national overconsumption of petroleum. Wouldn’t it be a good idea for Unitarian Universalists — and other church-goers, for my ecumenical visitors — to have a schedule for those congregations that are transit-accessible? Say, are within a pedestrian-friendly half-mile of a service point (bus stop, subway station) with Sunday service frequent enough that a rider wouldn’t have to wait more than a half-hour (perhaps taking in another cup of coffee, or dropping into a class as a pleasant way to wait) for a ride.
It would send a good, practical message to whom we are speaking, and that we take our ethics practically and collectively. (And not just in a “hey, hey, ho, ho” kind of way.) It would be a good entre to reaching to New Urbanists. And then there’s parking . . .
Just a thought.
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