When asked to submit an artifact for an exhibit called “Stranger Than Kindness,” musician Warren Ellis offered a piece of gum once chewed by Nina Simone. Ellis had taken the gum off Simone’s piano after a 1999 concert, wrapped it in her concert towel, and in the ensuing decades the gum transformed from an odd memento into holy relic. Inspired by Ellis’s book “Nina Simone’s Gum,” this Sunday we explore the stories of objects, the meaning of relics, and what constitutes the holy.
 

Joseph Bednarik is a publisher at Copper Canyon Press in Port Townsend, member of Quimper UU Fellowship, and frequent speaker at KUUF.