rev abbey

Separate Fires Kindling One Flame

Human community is messy, and yet we need one other for more than we can ever fully grasp. As we celebrate our 230-year legacy as a congregation, how will we choose to carry forward our inheritance of working together across difference for spiritually deep lives and greater justice in the world?

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rev abbey

Flourishing

How can the history and culture of the LGBTQIA+ movements help us all to get in touch with our inherent worth, joy, and power to resist oppression? Join us Sunday to reflect, receive a glitter blessing, and for all who wish, to head together to the Pride festival afterwards!

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john hedges

Music Sunday

Music held us together through COVID lockdown, pulling us together when we were apart. This year’s Music Sunday was inspired these songs brought us collective joy in those dark days. This annual service is led by our Music Director, John B Hedges and features our wide array of talented music ensembles! View the full collection of songs from Sunday.

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When the Well Is Dry

There are seasons when we reach for what has always sustained us — prayer, community, meaning, hope — and come up empty. The practices that once filled us feel hollow. The certainties we relied on have cracked. And the spring rain becomes flood waters.

Every tradition has a name for this. The Psalmist cried it. Rumi’s reed flute wept it. The Buddhist teacher points to it as the ache at the heart of being human.

Rev. Christe will explore: what is the water table beneath the dry season? What holds when our usual sources fail us?

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rev abbey

Here Comes the Shame

Most of us have a loved one who has wrestled with addiction, or we have wrestled ourselves. And yet we continue to hide where this medical condition shows up in our lives, letting the shame around addiction isolate us and cut us off from the tools that can bring healing. How can we move away from shame and deepen our capacity for transformative love?

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rev abbey

Look Up

As children, we explore the world with an inherent sense of curiosity and awe. Responsibilities descend onto our shoulders as we get older, however, and it can be hard to find time for anything other than keeping our heads down and getting through our duties of work and caregiving. How can we reclaim simple pleasures of joy and wonder?

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rev abbey

The Next Buddha May Be a Sangha

Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh taught that the next Buddha may not take the form of an individual, but rather arise as a community. In a sea of flawed figureheads and imperfect communities, how do we build the soul-relationships that can lead to spiritual awakening and justice in our world?

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At the Starting Gate

This Sunday we explore what it means to awaken curiosity again — not as a pleasant spiritual quality, but as a practice with real consequences. What does it look like to meet the world with beginner’s mind? To shift from the clenched posture of anxiety into the open posture of wonder? To love the questions themselves, even when the answers aren’t coming?

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rev abbey

Choosing Earth

There is a cognitive shift astronauts experience when viewing the earth from space, writes space philosopher Frank White, which results in a bone-deep awareness of the miracle and fragility of our planet and our connections to one another and all life. As we near Earth day, how do we cultivate this kind of spiritual experience from our place on this beautiful blue boat home?

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rev abbey

Circle for Release

All humankind is bound together in interdependence, and yet our system of crime and punishment in this country neither centers the healing and repair of victims nor the rehabilitation of perpetrators. What would a system of public safety look like if we truly valued everyone’s wholeness and all of our connections with one another?

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rev abbey

Rising Again

This weekend we reflect on the ancient Christian Easter story of the rising again of life in the midst of hopelessness, grief, and oppression. When we so desperately need possibility to arise again in our lives and world, what meaning might we find in old stories?

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rev abbey

Loving Food, Loving Our Bodies

Food means so much to us – it nourishes our bodies and brings us pleasure, we treasure the special recipes from our cultures and our families, we feed each other to show we care. Yet diet culture runs rampant in our society, and most of us are taught that something is wrong with how we look, and food is to blame. Join us this Sunday to reflect on how we can build a more joyful, more mindful, more loving relationship with our bodies and what we eat.

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