Harvest Sunday at Union Chapel: Manor Farm to be celebrated

Union Chapel in the Grove will host Harvest Sunday on Aug. 27, celebrating Sylvester Manor Educational Farm. Reverend Galen Guengerich, of All Souls Unitarian Church in Manhattan, will preach. His sermon is titled “Working On A World.” Sylvester Manor staff will contribute to the annual service.

Sylvester 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 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 educational farm, the 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.

Reverend Guengerich has led Union Chapel’s Harvest Sunday for many years, designing a program especially for the service. Just before the service, he reflected on some of the best advice he ever received. A mentor 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.”

Reverend Guengerich is senior minister of All Souls Unitarian Church, an historic congregation located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the 10th person to hold this position in the congregation’s 203-year history. He has served as a minister of All Souls for 30 years, the last 16 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 Affiliate Medical Professor, 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 in Mashomack Preserve.

All are welcome for Harvest Sunday on Aug. 27 at 10:30 a.m. outdoors in our shady grove for our second-to-last service of the summer with Reverend Guengerich. 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 Sept. 3, will be Poetry Sunday.