Our ministry theme for February is embodying resilience. Last week Stacy, Paula and Heather offered insights into what creates resilience in the natural world. Their message: diverse, connected, interdependent communities are resilient. We learned about mycelium, the vast fungal networks that carry nutrients and water, break down decaying matter, and even aid in tree-to-tree communication in the midst of threats. We learned about the role seed banks play in sustaining forest

An early lyric sheet for “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” published by Philadelphia: Supervisory Committee for Recruiting Colored Regiments, c. 1863. We’ve sung through various iterations of the late 18 th -century American camp meeting song “Say, Brothers Will You Meet Us?” Just prior to the Civil War, federal soldiers in Massachusetts set the explicitly abolitionist lyrics of John Brown’s Body” to the same tune. Then, as the story goes the poet, author, abolitionist, p

Our ministry theme for January is practicing resistance . I’m not surprised our friends at Soul Matters (the independent UU resource hub that provides materials for our monthly themes) landed on this theme at this time. As we have named many times over the past year, the administration in Washington, DC has engaged in many authoritarian actions, e.g., abducting and deporting people without due process, deploying federal troops to US cities, cutting the social safety net to pa

I want to share the words the choir just sang. The piece is “Where the Light Begins” by the choral composer Susan Labarr. The words are a slightly adapted excerpt from a longer poem titled “Where the Light Begins,” [1]  by the Rev. Jan Richardson, an artist, writer and Methodist minister. The poem is from Rev. Richardson’s 2015 collection, Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons. [2] About the light she says:   Perhaps it does not begin. Perhaps it is always. Pe

In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die / And where you invest your love, you invest your life / Awake my soul / Awake my soul / Awake my soul – w ords from the British folk-rock band Mumford and Sons. [1]  I’m not deeply familiar with their music. My colleague, the Rev. Carolyn Patierno, mentioned back in October she was using the song in a worship service. I liked it, so I asked Jenn (Richards) if she could play it for us this morning. She already knew the

Photo of King's Chapel from a recent UUSE Affirmation class trip to Boston I’m about to take you on a whirlwind tour of 1,840 years of Unitarian, Universalist, and Unitarian Universalist history. (I’ll be covering, on average, about 92 years every minute of this sermon). Please know everything I say is a generalization, and I am leaving out many important people, events, and trends. I’m offering primarily a theological history—Unitarian and Universalist are, after all, theol

Our November ministry theme is nurturing gratitude , which aligns very obviously with the Thanksgiving holiday later this month; though for me, it’s not the holiday that gives us the theme. For me it’s all the features of autumn—changing, falling leaves, dropping temperatures, decreasing daylight hours, increasing darkness—and perhaps most importantly, the conclusion of the growing season in these northern latitudes—the harvest, the reaping, the preparations for winter—all of

Part I: “What a Free Faith Invites”           I began my October newsletter column with this question: “How do I engage in constructive dialogue with people who think, feel, believe and act radically differently than I do?” I’ve been encountering various versions of this question throughout my career; and as our nation’s cultural, political, economic and religious polarization continues to deepen, I seem to encounter it multiple times every day. So many unrelated conversation

The oak burl chalice on the world map table in the chapel at UUSE Over the last decade I’ve become a fan of the Drive-By Truckers , a...

UUSE's Oak Burl Chalice, on the globe table in the garden level chapel We are in the midst of launching our congregational year. I am...

It’s been over a month since more than 3,000 Unitarian Universalists from nearly 600 congregations, 48 states and a number of countries...

Nadia Sims is the Poet Laureate for the Town of Manchester. Currently, the poet is focused on spreading her message of grace across CT,...

Calliope the mouse, after speaking with Jaime the baby               Our ministry theme for May is imagination . I want to tell a story,...

The choir sang “In the Morning, Joy,” by the American composer Mark Hayes. This piece is an adaptation of Psalm 30 in the Hebrew...

Grace I begin with a heart felt thank you  to Mary Bopp and all the musicians who’ve brought us “Amazing Grace” in so many variations...

Rev. Josh's first drum kit (now collecting dust in the basement) Our March ministry theme is trust. This morning I want to share lessons...

There’s a reading in our hymnal by the Rev. Mark Morrison-Reed which tells us “the central task of the religious community is to unveil...

Over the last week of November, a story on social media caught my attention. The Rev. Ben Boswell, the white, senior minister of Myers...

“Welcome home, gather ‘round / All ye refugees, come in” – words from the Christian singer-songwriter, Sandra McCracken. I suspect she’s...

Our spiritual lives mirror the changing seasons.             Our spiritual lives take cues from the changes between seasons and the...