Red Barn Rockland

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES for Peter Tufts Richardson

PREPARATION

My childhood was spent in numerous towns in the northeast as my father was a civil engineer. Summers from age four onwards were often in Rockland, Maine, where I now live. Childhood I recall as largely happy. It was passed in reading, stamp collecting, roaming through woods and shores, learning family lore, avoiding organized sports and resisting mass education. Chores were a major theme, house painting, wood sawing and splitting, keeping the car clean, often delayed by long meditation sessions in the bath tub. In my youth music was my refuge with cello and sousaphone. I had to take high school more seriously to get into college but as it turned out I was interviewed by an education professor and we spent most of our time discussing Whitehead's Aims of Education. I did 'ace' plane geometry but have since learned many of the axioms are untrue. I took no religion courses in college (Tufts) but enjoyed history, philosophy, education and the society of several friends. At last in my senior year I overrode persistent self-doubts and applied to theological school (St. Lawrence). By now I had learned that you must use schools for the education you desire or they will use you. My preparation at Tufts and St. Lawrence was in the service of becoming a world citizen and claiming my global religious inheritance.

MINISTRY

I was ordained to the Ministry of Religion in 1965 by the congregation of the First Universalist Church of Kent, Ohio, with Kenneth Patton preaching the ordination sermon. I learned much here and in the next two congregations in Midland-Odessa, TX, and Needham, MA. At a low ebb I took a one year self-imposed sabbatical in 1975. Reentry led to a 16 year ministry in Kennebunk, ME, followed by 10 years in Andover, MA. After about 1200 sermons it was time to "retire." Religious community accentuates the love of life with celebration and support. The minister's contribution is to bring poetry and perspective to this worship and relationship. With strategic attention the congregation becomes a humane leaven in its community and a center of vision for a world in painful transition.

THEMES

Unitarian Universalist congregations reflect our increasingly multi-faith society. With intentionality we may become in microcosm what we expect of the world. Affirming our global humanity precedes all other loyalties, before nation state, ethnicity, ideology or any parochial claim. Critical for this process is support for individual spiritual development, a passion for human freedom and an emergence of genuine global consciousness. My involvement with psychological type, historical studies, various theories of human consciousness and relationship all serve this purpose, to help us become capable of a ministry to planetary humanity.

PUBLICATIONS

First published was Meditations In A Maine Meeting House in 1986, 52 poem/prayers written for worship in Kennebunk, ME. In 1987 at the celebration of the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution I grew restive over the evangelical and fundamentalist claim that the Founding Fathers carried Bibles under their elbows as they gathered at the Constitutional Convention. Many leaders were Deists, some were Unitarians and a few were Universalists. I wrote Spiritual Founders of Our Constitution featuring Washington, Mayhew, Chauncy, Hancock, Adams, Lathrop, Knox, Allen, Paine, Franklin, Rush Priestley, Jefferson and Madison around the principles: liberty, independence, reason, character, openness and pluralism. These are now out of print. Likewise there are many dozens of printed sermon titles and over 700 published photographs out there in attics and libraries hopefully still ministering to the human condition.

The remaining 5 publications are in print: The Boston Religion, Exploring Unitarian Universalist Identity, Four Spiritualities, Growing Your Spirituality, and Archetype of the Spirit.

MEMBERSHIPS

Currently I am president of MAPT (Maine Association for Psychological Type), an affiliate of APT (Association for Psychological Type, www.aptinternational.org and have given presentations at biennial APT conferences in Boston, Phoenix, Minneapolis and next July in Baltimore. I am membership secretary of the U.S. Chapter of IARF (International Association for Religious Freedom), the world's oldest multi-faith organization (www.iarf.net). More locally I am a member of the U.U. Historical Society (www.uua.org/uuhs/), the Rockland Historical Society, am historian of the Kalloch Family Reunion Association (kalloch.org/) and Minister Emeritus of the U.U. Congregation in Andover, MA (www.uuandover.org).