Rev. Frank Hall Services Archive

Reading: The Nicest Gifts I Ever Got, Clarke Dewey Wells During this season of gift giving, a good exercise is to make a list of the best gifts we ever got. That will tell us what is important, for ourselves and for people we want to give gifts to. While I remember a Daniel Boon […]

Each of us sees the world through a unique set of eyes – our own. The way we view the world is influenced by many things, including the family in which we were raised, the language we speak with its various nuances, religious teaching, our circle of friends, and so forth. I see the world […]

I want to talk about the transcendentalists — the folks in and around the Boston area who got together to talk about their ideas about religion and spirituality in the 1830’s through the 1860’s. Most of them were Unitarians, several were Unitarian ministers. All of them were abolitionists — they influenced the movement to end […]

Time is Too Precious to Waste” November 2, 2008 Opening Reading:  The Summer Day, Mary Oliver Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean- the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my […]

Last spring someone in one of my classes handed me a fragment of Stanley Kunitz’s marvelous poem, The Layers. That’s how I discovered Stanley Kunitz. Don’t get me wrong — I had his book of collected poems on my shelf for a few years. It was a Christmas gift that I had opened on Christmas […]

The mythology in Genesis says that God created Adam and Eve and, “They were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” Then, the story says, they ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and, “their eyes were opened and they knew that they were […]

  Some years ago I came across a little piece written by Jim Klobuchar, columnist with the Minneapolis Star.  He titled it: ‘They Crossed a Street Together.’ “Six-thirty is not a bad time to be walking the city street. It reveals more to the stroller when it is quiet, because it gives him room and […]

This is a special day on my annual calendar: September 14  was my father’s birthday – he was born 94 years ago today; he passed away 22 years ago. Today is my granddaughter Hannah’s 18th birthday – we had a service of dedication for her in this sanctuary. Today is my daughter Sue and her […]

One of my favorite hymns, Rank by Rank, closes with the line:  “…guard we well the crown they won; what they dreamed be ours to do, hope their hopes, and seal them true.” It’s easy to take our freedoms for granted, so it’s good to be reminded that those freedoms, including religious freedom, didn’t come […]

Preface: In his address to the graduating class of  Harvard Divinity School in 1838 Emerson complained about poor or uninspired preaching.  Then he offered the young ministers some reassurance.  He said, “I am not unaware that when we preach unworthily it is not always quite in vain; there is a good ear in some that […]