Two weeks ago on Memorial Day weekend, my husband and I signed up for yet another hike with the Atlanta Outdoor Club.
It’s so hot
the Jehovah’s witnesses
have given up
after 30 years
our house looks like
an unweeded garden
The heart of my vocational life is to bear authentic and courageous witness.
Rev. Marti Keller has served as a Unitarian Universalist minister for more than 25 years, most recently as co-transition minister for the UU Church of Jacksonville, Florida in 2019-2020. Just previously she was the consulting minister for the Auburn UU Fellowship in Alabama through July 2019 and an independent consultant on congregational ministry. She has been both a parish and community minister, serving congregations in the Mid-South since 1998. She has been a guest speaker in many pulpits, including Dublin, Ireland, and San Miguel De Allende, Mexico.
Rev. Keller is spending more time researching, reflecting on and writing essays and immersion journalism, having spent the first 20 years of her professional life as a reporter and editor (graduate in journalism from University of California at Berkeley.)
She is also a published poet with Red Wool Socks and Dark Chocolate: A Life in Three Lines (Matrika Press, 2020), Thinking in Haiku (CreateSpace, 2017), Prickly Pear (Farm House Press, 2009), and South/West (Shakespeare's Sisters Press, 2013). She is the co-editor, with Leah Hart-Landsberg, of Jewish Voices in Unitarian Universalism (Skinner House, 2014). She is also an author and editor of Faith of UU Jews, part of the welcoming pamphlet library of the Unitarian Universalist Association.
Rev. Marti Keller is available to perform weddings. For those who are interested in the kind of services that reflect their own spirituality and religious beliefs, who want to avoid patriarchal and sexist words and symbols, who want to celebrate rather than solemnize their commitment, Unitarian Universalist services are ideal.
Rev. Keller is available for both live pulpit appearances and virtual, depending on the current community level of COVID infection. [More About Marti]
Red Wool Socks and Dark Chocolate: A Life in Three Lines, in its attention to the objects and experiences in one's everyday life, affirms the sentiment that haiku and haiku-like short verses can find their inspiration beyond the realms of nature and seasonal themes. Informed by marvelous examples given at the North America haiku conference, this chapbook features culturally appropriate observations and reflections. This expansive approach to these brief, immediate verses offers a satisfying interlude between the ordinary and the sacred.
It’s so hot
the Jehovah’s witnesses
have given up
after 30 years
our house looks like
an unweeded garden
© Marti Keller
Note: Robert Frost wrote the arguably most popular poem in American history “The Road Not Taken” in 1915 while in England. His walks with a botanist/literary editor friend is said to have inspired him.
Because I do not wear my thick
Black corrective glasses in the field
I never choose divergent roads
Saying YES or saying NO to
Better places for spotting rare or not so rare native plants.
My eyes focus downward to avoid
Tripping on fifty or a hundred year roots.
No decisive moves, no changing directions, one path to another.
Randomly the yellow lady slippers, fire pinks, cardinal flowers
Choose me.
Two weeks ago on Memorial Day weekend, my husband and I signed up for yet another hike with the Atlanta Outdoor Club.