Gathering for Sunday services in person and online, 10:15 am.
You don’t have to go to another country to experience culture shock, or learn a foreign language to practice cross-cultural communication. Opportunities abound right in your neighborhood . . . right in our congregation . . . And as many describe diversity as a threat, it’s a skill the world needs more than ever. Special Music: Melanie Clapies, violin
Taking a theme from the Broadway hit Hadestown, this Labor Day weekend we’ll look at some of the myths of prosperity, such as that it is a zero-sum game, where some must be desperately poor for others to thrive, even survive. Can we rediscover stories that help us to imagine another route to prosperity, or if not, invent some? Special Music: Ihang Lin, pianist
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
ALL CHURCH PICNIC TODAY AFTER THE SERVICE!
Together we celebrate the fruits of the harvest today, in preparation for Lammas or Lughnasadh, the Celtic holiday (August 1) when we give thanks for plans that have come to fruition and recognize the gifts that we receive and give. In a ritual of gratitude and promise, we will share the Lammas bread. Special Music: Veronika Agranov Dafoe, piano
In lieu of a sermon, Amy will answer as many of your questions as possible. Come to the service to submit them!
Special Music: The Aurora Singers
Summer Schedule Starts Today! There is only one service at 10:30 am.
Father’s Day gets short shrift. In schools, because end-of-year celebrations are underway; in many UU churches, because it’s their Flower Communion or there are no summer services; even marketers don’t know what to tell you to buy Dad except a tie, and he probably doesn’t like wearing them. And then there’s our discomfort with traditional ideas of fatherhood and masculinity, and our slowness to embrace new ones. All of which means fatherhood is in need of our tender loving care. Whether you’re a dad or not, have one or not, you’ll take something hopeful away from today’s service. Special Music: Broceliande, Celtic music trio
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
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
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