Podcast: Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto Sermons and Reflections

Roads Not Taken

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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.

Poetry: Saying it Like it Is

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“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

Spiritual Friendship and Social Action

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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

An Invitation to Action

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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

Deep Love

“Side with Love.” This rallying cry and campaign has been a marker of Unitarian Universalism for years, ever evolving to respond to the injustices in our world. But what does it *really* mean to side with love? What does it ask of us, as people of faith, to be and do in a world where hate and fear feel abundant? Special Music: Ruth Huber, piano

You, The Religious Educator

Our Children’s Religious Education (RE) year draws to a close, but exploration and expansion of our spiritual selves does not pause in summer. It isn’t carried out just in the classroom, either, or just by our RE teachers. Springboarding from some of their wisdom, we’ll discover how each of us not only can be a religious educator but is already. Music: Mary Gospe, vocalist/guitar

Land of Amnesia, Land of Memory

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As a country that venerates change, youth, progress, and the future, it’s no wonder we are often uncomfortable facing the past–especially the passages that do us little credit. Even as we mark Memorial Day, we praise an attitude of “Never apologize, never explain.” Today we look to a different model for integrating the past into the present: ironically, in a country that has sometimes been the United States’s bitter enemy. Special music: Veronika Agranov-Dafoe, piano

Coming of Age 

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As young people at UUCPA come of age, they spend several months together in reflection on the questions adult UUs grapple with, meet with mentors from the congregation, and articulate their own beliefs in a credo project. They will share their credos and lead the service today. Music: Yuri Liberzon, classical guitar

Flower Communion Intergenerational Service

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For our annual Flower Communion, we each bring a flower (or several), fill vases and baskets with them, and after blessing the flowers and each other, choose a flower that someone else brought and bring it home. (There will be plenty of extras for those who didn’t know or forgot–a living example of abundance!) It’s a beauty-filled, joy-filled intergenerational service built around a ritual that has been practiced in Unitarian Universalist churches since the 1920s. Music: Sarah Kirton, Scandinavian music