Author: UUPF Communications

By Sunday, Thanksgiving will be well over but our giving of thanks cannot be.

Gratitude isn’t just a nice idea or a word to put on pillows and profile photos, it is critical to having peace in our present circumstances, to clarifying what matters to us, and to propelling us into the good work of being human in difficult days.

Let’s cultivate gratitude together and watch the way it changes us and the world around us.

Sunday November 13^th is World Kindness Day. Join us as Reverend Becky offers stories about how simple kindness to one’s self and to others boomerangs and literally keeps humanity going!

Americans have always been in transition and seem to thrive on change.  At the same time, our culture holds some values that can get in the way of the normal pattern of letting go and starting again.  This morning we reflect on how to make life changes more grace-filled.

We’re all worried about it. Tuesday, November 8th is the place our minds and hearts are fixed on, because it represents more than just politics. It is about our individual and collective values, convictions, and dreams. Right now our energies are understandably directed and our hopes pinned to this singular Tuesday. But what if things don’t go our way? What if the news is bad? Where will hope be on that Wednesday morning, if the worst- case scenario plays out? Let’s talk about it.

There are many concepts and teachings from the Judaic faith tradition offering wisdom and truth amidst the breaking and remaking world. Jewish mysticism is here to inspire us and contemplate our role in the healing and restoration of humanity and our hurting planet.

 Interfaith and Interspiritual Minister Reverend Becky will lead us to discover secrets and ideas that might just help us persevere and even thrive during these uncertain and ever-changing times.

To live here is to lose something.

Every single human being is moving through this life while mourning a letting go: of someone they loved, their old story about God, their former image of country, the earlier mythology of their family, their belief in the goodness of people, the disconnection of a treasured relationship, of their sense of optimism about the future.

The loss here is universal. If we lean hard into this truth, we can trace the source of our trauma, we can courageously face our own Read more

What happens after we die?

We all live with this fundamental question hovering in the periphery of our minds.

A fortunate few of us find absolute answers in our theology, others in Science.
Most of us however, live somewhere in between, with far more mystery than certainty. What if there was something in between: a way of being rooted in the here and now, while still courting our better angels?
Whether we think we go to Heaven, Hell, or the dirt when we die, can we find holy common ground now?

A Reverent Reverend: The Currency of Community and a Path to Interfaith Ministry with Reverend Rebecca Jaine Suzik

Rebecca Jaine Suzik has been a member of UU PEACE Fellowship for the past decade and currently serves as the Religious Youth Director. Joining and serving our lay-led Fellowship prompted her realization and calling as an Interfaith and Interspiritual Minister. Last month she became ordained after completing an intensive interfaith and interspiritual seminary Read more

In the words of Rev. Claudia M. Frost: “Wouldn’t you like to know the secret of life? Would it make a difference in the choices you make and how you live your life? Join us for this worship service and I will share the secret as it is known to me.”

We usually think that our progress internally and in the world comes from what we do: from our activity, movement, and performance. Our efforts do matter, but sometimes the real renovation happens in the temporary ceasing, in the waiting, in the rests between the notes of our doing. There is wisdom in the pauses of our lives. Let’s spend some time there.

Human hands will catch us when we are born and will care for us when we die.  In this service, we will consider the amazing and terrible capacities of human hands throughout our lifespan

June is internationally recognized as the LGBTQ+ Pride month. This Sunday, let’s examine the connotations of the word ‘pride’; revisit and commemorate the ongoing human struggle for equality and inclusion; and find things in our own lives of which we can be proud.

Our culture has largely succumbed to the individualistic set of responses to the gift of life, easily forgetting questions of the common good.  Progressive religion, at its best, seeks to bind us to the whole, to one another through our covenants with one another, and to multi-generational thriving.  What does it mean to gather together, to be a “congregation” and to approach religious community as a way of learning to balance giving and receiving?

This Sunday marks Juneteenth, commemorating the day in 1865 when all slaves in this nation were declared unequivocally free, two-and-a-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. One hundred and fifty-seven years later, the question is, “Why aren’t we all free yet—and what can we do about it?”

These are hazardous days for human hearts. The wear and tear on our humanity is not normal. We are not built for this relentless urgency, this scale of grief. The risk is that we succumb to it all and stop caring altogether and we can’t afford to do that now. It’s important to protect our hearts so they can remain pliable enough to still break for the world so that we can be agents of healing—but how do we do that? We do it together.

Resilience is not easy.  Starting over is never simple, and yet it is the work that leads back to life.