Union Chapel in the Grove hosts Harvest Sunday on August 27, celebrating Sylvester Manor. The Rev. Galen Guengerich of All Souls Unitarian Church in Manhattan will preach on “Working On A World.” Sylvester Manor staff will contribute to the annual service.
The Manor, which once encompassed all of Shelter Island, was originally a Native American hunting, fishing, and farming ground. From 1652 to 2006, it was home to 11 generations of its original European settler family. The Sylvester family acquired the property to be a provisioning plantation for their sugar interests in Barbados. Enslaved Africans and their descendants worked the property, along with indentured Native Americans and Free People of Color.
As it evolved through the generations to reflect America’s changing cultural mores, the Manor became smaller, with portions given or sold away from the family as the Shelter Island community grew. The 235-acre core contains remnants of its earliest days, including an Afro-Indigenous Burial Ground (now undergoing study) and a memorial to Quakers who were given refuge.
Today, the Manor teaches young farmers about sustainable agriculture while providing fresh produce for the Island community. And it runs educational and cultural programming based on the history and heritage of the three cultures that came together here. Learn more at sylvestermanor.org.
About the Rev. Galen Guengerich
Guengerich has led Union Chapel’s Harvest Sunday for many years, designing a program especially for the service.
Reflecting on some of the best advice he’s ever received, he recalled how a mentor once told him: “Life is long, and the world is small.”
“She was making the point that our words and actions don’t get left behind,” he said. “Rather, they circle around and eventually meet us somewhere in the future — often in ways we could never imagine or predict. When they do, we will be grateful if they reflect well on us rather than badly.”
Guengerich is the senior minister of All Souls Unitarian Church, a historic congregation located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He’s the tenth person to hold this position in the congregation’s 203-year history. He’s served as a minister of All Souls for 30 years, the last 16 as senior minister.
Educated at Franklin and Marshall College (BA, 1982), he earned his Master of Divinity degree at the Princeton Theological Seminary in 1985 and a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 2004.
He is the author of “God Revised: How Religion Must Evolve in a Scientific Age” and “The Way of Gratitude: A New Spirituality for Today.”
Guengerich has also written opinion pieces for Reuters, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, TIME magazine, Huffington Post, and other media and appeared on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.”
He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and leads the “Humanities in a Conflict Zone” initiative at Tel Aviv University, and served on the boards of Interfaith Alliance, Dads and Daughters, Unitarian Universalist Service, and New York City Audubon Society.
He lives in Manhattan and on Shelter Island with his wife, Holly Atkinson, MD, who teaches at the CUNY School of Medicine. Their daughter, Zoe, lives in Washington with her husband, Connor Dowd. Galen and Holly enjoy sailing out of Dering Harbor and hiking on trails at Sylvester Manor and in Mashomack Preserve.
Additional details about Harvest Sunday
Join us for Harvest Sunday on August 27 at 10:30 am outdoors in our shady grove for our second-to-last service of the summer with Reverend Guengerich.
The service will take place outside, weather permitting, so please bring a chair. In case of rain, the service will move indoors. A reception catered by STARS Café follows.
Our commemorative book, “All Are Welcome:150 Years of Shelter Island’s Union Chapel in the Grove,” by Carrie Cooperider, is available for purchase after the service. It’s also available at Finley’s Fiction or by contacting Trustee Kathy Dinkel.
Next week: Poetry Sunday on September 3 is the final service of Union Chapel’s summer season
JoAnn Kirkland assists the trustees of Union Chapel in the Grove
