Music and Pets – Special Services!

We’ve got two special worship services coming up and I wanted to bring them to your attention. (And also ask about a specific element you might be interested in.) First, this Sunday is our annual Choir Sunday. This year, the theme is “Harmonies of the East: Exploring Asian Folk Songs.”...

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Are You a Subversive?

Last Sunday, I told the origin story of Renaissance Festivals in the United States. The first one, the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in California, came partially as a response to the Red Scare that blacklisted many people in the motion picture industry. Phyllis Patterson, a public school teacher, decided that her...

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Huzzah!

I grew up in the Houston area, close enough to the Texas Renaissance Festival that I had friends who worked there every fall. As a young pre-teen, I went with my big brother and his friends, feeling very cool in doing so. As I got older, there were different things...

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The Roseto Effect

Last November, preaching on the topic of “communal resilience,” I told the story of Roseto, Pennsylvania and what is now referred to among sociologists and medical doctors as “the Roseto Effect.” In the late 1880s, the town of Roseto Valfortore, Italy, was going through a period of poverty. Several young...

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A Tale of Two Skin Cancers

I don’t usually talk about your physical health, other than to urge everyone to stay hydrated. I focus my ministerial energies on mental, emotional, and spiritual health. But today, I am going to. (Content warning: heartbreak ahead. But this topic is too important.) My dad, in his later years, had...

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Awe, Wonder, and Unity

Did you get to see the eclipse? I gathered with others on the Live Oak labyrinth. We were hopeful, but realistic. The cloud cover looked pretty dense. But our hope was rewarded. The clouds opened up several times while the eclipse was happening, and when it went to totality, they...

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“Need a Boost”

As many of you know, my mother has been in the hospital recently. I was with her one day and she needed help repositioning herself to be more comfortable. Her nurse whipped out her communicator and said simply, “I need a boost.” Another nurse came in. They fashioned an extra...

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Rituals of Community

This Sunday, we’ll be doing two of the rituals of community. The first is our membership ceremony. This we do fairly regularly, as a way to welcome in new members, to share our enthusiasm that these members are now committed parts of our community, and to ritualize the change that...

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Are you our delegate?

This year, the annual gathering of Unitarian Universalist called General Assembly is entirely online, June 20-23. You can attend workshops, participate in worship services, and watch this year’s Ware Lecturer,  Julia Watts Belser. Most importantly, you can take part in the business of the General Assembly. As a democratic organization,...

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Baby/Child Dedication – Easter Sunday

Most religions have some type of ceremony to mark the arrival of a baby or child and express the commitment a community gives to the child and their parents – baptism, Bris, etc. For Unitarian Universalists, we have a dedication ceremony, usually done during a regular worship service. This ceremony...

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