At this Sunday’s Unitarian service, Rev. Jean Rowe will talk about the interconnection of all things — from quantum physics to ethics to compassion.

Quantum physics has changed the way we understand reality. It means that the interconnected web of existence is more than ecology. It’s the way things really, really operate in all spheres of existence. Reality is both wave and particle, energy and matter.

This has profound influence on ethics, and the way we should live. The whole of existence is interconnected. This means that Jung was correct in his use of “collective unconscious.” It’s real. It means that prayer, meditation, and deep intentions do matter.

It also means that a key word for approaching all of life is compassion for all things because we are all in this together. Self-compassion matters, and compassion for others matters. We don’t have to agree, but we need to learn to understand.

Jean grew up in Rochester, N.Y., near the Lake Ontario shore, active in Girl Scouts (her troop went to Europe when they were 16) and Methodist Youth Fellowship. She graduated from Tufts University and Andover Newton Theological School, both in the Boston area. She also did a sabbatical semester as a Merrill Fellow at Harvard Divinity School.

She was Religious Education Director in UU churches in Andover and Cambridge, Mass. After her ordination in Cambridge in 1981, she served as interim minister in Concord, N.H. Then she and her family moved to Little Rock, Ark. where she was minister of the UU church for more than nine years. She served as the first minister of a new congregation, Neshoba UU Church in Memphis, for 13 years until her retirement in 2005.

From 2006-2012 she was consulting minister for the Thermal Belt UU Church in Tryon, and regular guest preacher in Franklin, N.C. She is now the choir director for the Brevard UUs.

She is married to Lackey Rowe, a former civil rights lawyer in Mississippi, and enjoys hiking, gardening, reading, singing, Zumba and other exercise classes.

The Thermal Belt Unitarian Universalist Fellowship meets at 10:30 a.m. on the first and third Sundays of the month. Services are held at 835 N. Trade Street in Tryon.

The Fellowship welcomes all people of goodwill regardless of their spiritual path, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. Coffee, and fellowship are available after the service.  For more information about the fellowship call 828 513-0570 or visit the webpage at tbuuf.org.

– Submitted by Phil Nungesser