I left on a long-planned vacation to London after our anniversary party, so I didn’t get the chance to say “thank you” for the wonderful anniversary party. 10 years we’ve been together! Thank you to the Ministerial Search Team that brought me here 10 years ago, and organized this year’s...
There is new energy, enthusiasm, and excitement at Live Oak, and we need help spreading the invitation for others to come check us out. We need some very specific people to join the Marketing Team. Please let Becky Gregory – president@liveoakuu.org – know if you can help: Management: We need...
Every September, we change the liturgy. I like that it keeps things fresh and is a guard against certain things becoming tin gods that we can never change. But even more than that, it allows us to use more materials – e.g. last year we used the historic UU “Blake...
Many people chuckled in amazement at the presidential debate when one candidate repeated a couple of conspiracy theories considered by most experts to be “really out there.” But in this time of artificial intelligence, deep fakes, hired “trolls,” and news media being directed by adversarial foreign governments, what are some...
“I don’t even know who I AM anymore!” I laughed to my best friend. She’s known me for more than twenty years. There’s a conversation I’ve seen on Facebook before where people ask, “What could I say that would indicate someone was trying to impersonate me?” and then you answer...
Saturday, at 2:00, we will join with First UU Austin at their church to do one of our sacred duties as a congregation: we will ordain our former intern, Carrie Holley-Hurt. In our tradition, only a congregation can ordain a minister. Not the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), or the Ministerial...
Action Items for this Sunday: Bring a dish to share. And bring your calendar to fill out. I will confess, one of my favorite things about church community life is the traditional potluck. We have some excellent chefs in our congregation, and there’s just something about “breaking bread” together, isn’t...
Like most people who went to standard public school in the United States, this time of year feels more like the beginning of a new year than January. As Joe says in You’ve Got Mail on the topic of fall: “It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would...
Holy Spirit, that we call by many names, or no name, but who calls each of us, and all people, “beloved,” we come together today in anguish. We are a temporary congregation, with different beliefs about the nature and existence of God, and how it is that justice and mercy...
On June 16, we held our annual “Question Box” service. Those present were invited to submit questions and I answered as many as I could in the amount of time given. There were many great questions left, so I’ll be answering them in today’s and upcoming columns. Question: I was...