Gathering for Sunday services in person and online, 10:15 am.
The human need for connection is undeniable. Yet for most of us, for the hundreds of thousands of years of human existence, those connections have arisen from, and been sustained by, proximity. How do we create community when physical closeness is so limited? Special Music: Margaret Davis, harp, and Kristoph Klover, acoustic guitar
The order of service is here.
Fifty-one years ago today, the people gathered at the Stonewall Inn had had one police raid too many, and they fought back. Many consider this the birth of the movement for LGBTQA+ rights in the United States, and to a large extent, around the world. Why did the shift happen then? If we must lean on the moral arc of the universe to bend it toward justice, what lessons does this particular justice movement have to teach us?
The order of service is here.
The Flower Communion is an annual service in which we each bring a flower, create an altar full of bouquets, and end by each taking away a flower that another person brought. Special Music: Yuri Liberzon, Classical Guitar
The order of service is here.
In a faraway land, almost 2,500 years before the United States was established, the prophet Jeremiah wept and admonished: “They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.” The myth of white supremacy is a mortal wound to our country. It has been bandaged and salved, but never treated like the danger it is. Perhaps the one hopeful aspect of this terrible week can be that we will at last recognize the nature of this wound–the correct diagnosis being crucial for healing, as any doctor knows. As a congregation, as Unitarian Universalists, we are called to be such healers.
Special music: Aaron Lington, saxophone, and Victoria Lington, piano; Julia Bullock, soprano, and Christian Rief, piano
The order of service is here.
50th Anniversary of the first Earth Day.
Also today, Violet Saena will speak in both services about Acterra, and the entire offering collection will be donated to them.
Order of Service bit.ly/uucpa_oos_20200419
Robert Frost’s famous poem is often interpreted as an exhortation to take “the road less travelled.” But a second look at the poem reveals a more complex lesson about how we deal with regret, how we tell our own stories, and what we might do the next time we face a fork in the road. It’s an appropriate guide for the time of self-examination marked by Judaism’s High Holidays. Special Music: Veronika Agranov Dafoe, piano
Today’s entire offering collection will be donated to South Bay Sanctuary Covenant.
“A word after a word after a word is Power.” This is a simple and true statement cut out of a wood panel and sits in the gathering room at Faithful Fools. Poetry has a central place in the life of the Fools. Not only are words power, they are empowering. Worship leaders will share their experiences through the power of their poetic words. Special Music: Larry Chin, jazz pianist
Many of us meet the Transcendentalists in literature classes. We think of Thoreau, Emerson, and Concord: of individualism and nature. Yet most Transcendentalists were Unitarian church people: activists for anti-slavery, women’s rights, and social reform. They developed and maintained spiritual friendships that transcended differences in social location, gender, class, ideology, and race – all because they recognized that my full flourishing as a human being is tied up with yours. Special Music: Jim Stevens, folk guitar
In our annual ritual of ingathering, we bring water from the places of our lives, and pour the many waters into a communal bowl in a ritual honoring variety and unity. Music:Veronika Agranov Dafoe, piano
WE RETURN TO TWO SERVICES TODAY (AT 9:30 AND 11 AM)!
“Friend” means so many things, from an acquaintance you allow to read your social media, to the person for whom you’d drop everything and travel a thousand miles if they needed someone. What does it mean to you to have a friend? To be a friend? And what are you doing to tend your friendships? Music: Ruth Huber, piano