Union Chapel in the Grove celebrates Sylvester Manor Harvest Sunday with The Rev. Galen Guengerich of All Souls Unitarian Church in Manhattan as featured speaker.
His sermon for the Sunday, August 28 service is entitled “The Point of Dawning.” Colin Van Tuyl will play the trumpet. Weather permitting, the service will take place outdoors.
Guengerich said he’s been thinking about anniversaries and their importance, as Union Chapel celebrates its 150th this summer. All Souls recently celebrated its 200th anniversary as a congregation several years ago. And, Sylvester Manor, which dates from 1652, is approaching its 375th annivesary.
“Birthdays give us a reason each year to celebrate milestones in the lives of people we love,” he said. “Wedding anniversaries give us an opportunity each year to recall and renew commitments we have made. When significant institutions in our lives mark anniversaries, it reminds us that the values we cherish and the ideals we pursue will extend beyond our individual lives and lifetimes only as they become embodied in institutions.”
About Sylvester Manor
Sylvester Manor, which once encompassed all of Shelter Island, was originally Native American hunting, fishing, and farming grounds. 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 the family’s sugar interests in Barbados. Enslaved Africans and their descendants worked the property, along with indentured Native Americans, according to the Manor’s website.
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 and a memorial to Quakers who were given refuge.
Now a nonprofit, Sylvester Manor teaches young farmers about sustainable agriculture while providing fresh produce for the Island community. And, it runs educational and cultural programming based around the history and heritage of the three cultures that came together here.
About The Rev. Galen Guengerich
Guengerich is senior minister of All Souls Unitarian Church, a historic Upper East Side congregation. He’s the tenth person to hold this position in the congregation’s 203-year history. He has served as a minister of All Souls for 29 years, the last 15 as senior minister.
He was educated at Franklin and Marshall College (BA, 1982), Princeton Theological Seminary (MDiv, 1985) and the University of Chicago (PhD, 2004).
Reverend Guengerich is the author of God Revised: How Religion Must Evolve in a Scientific Age and The Way of Gratitude: A New Spirituality for Today. He has written opinion pieces for Reuters, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, TIME magazine, Huffington Post, and other media. He also has 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 Board of Directors of Interfaith Alliance and on the boards of Dads and Daughters, the Unitarian Universalist Service, and the New York City Audubon Society.
He lives in Manhattan and on Shelter Island with his wife, Holly Atkinson, MD, who is an Affiliate Medical Professor in the Department of Clinical Medicine at the CUNY School of Medicine. Their daughter, Zoe, lives in Washington D.C. with her husband, Connor Dowd. Galen and Holly enjoy sailing out of Dering Harbor and hiking on trails at Sylvester Manor and Mashomack Preserve.
Harvest Sunday service
Trumpeter Colin Van Tuyl is a lifelong resident of Greenport and director of the Greenport Band. He also performs with the Riverhead No-Doubt-World-Famous Monday Night Band, Big Band East, and the East End Brass Quintet.
He plays in pit bands for local musicals and is a member of the Orient Congregational Church Choir and Bell Choir.
Join us for Harvest Sunday on August 28 at 10:30 AM outdoors in our shady grove for our second-to-last service of the summer. Please bring a chair.
In case of rain, the service will move indoors. A reception, catered by STARS Café, will follow the service.
Next week: Our Closing Service on September 4 will be Poetry Sunday.
Our commemorative book, “All Are Welcome:150 years of Shelter Island’s Union Chapel in the Grove,” by Carrie Cooperider, is available after the service or at Finley’s Fiction.
JoAnn Kirkland assists the trustees of Union Chapel in the Grove. To learn more about the historic chapel, visit the nonprofit’s website, www.unionchapelinthegrove.org/.
