There are seasons in life and in the world where exhaustion penetrates to our very bones, where hope feels as scraggly and rare as life in the driest desert. How do we renew our hope, and renew our souls, in these dry times?

What are you looking for, and how can you find it? This week, we’ll take a look at spiritual practices, and the practice of practice itself.

The world can feel so disorienting and lonely sometimes. Our culture encourages us to be obsessed with ourselves and with our divisions, and yet what truly feeds our souls is when we lift our eyes to something larger, and when we connect across difference. What gives us the courage to find belonging for ourselves and offer it to each other?

On Mother’s Day this year, we’ll make space for the myriad ways there are to be a mother, have a mother, and experience motherhood. By sharing the pulpit with voices from congregational leadership, we can stretch our understandings of what it means to do “motherhood.” This Sunday we’ll share our offertory plate with Black Mamas Bailout part of the Philly Community Bail Fund.

We are a Living Tradition. For several years, our denomination has been reviewing the language of our core principles. Join us this Sunday to reflect on how the new 7 values speak to our shared faith before they are voted on in June!

This week, as Jews in our congregation and around the world celebrate Pesach, or Passover, what can we learn from ancient stories of liberation that will strengthen our own ability to fight oppression today?

“We find ourselves harnessed to institutions and an economy that relentlessly ask, “What more can we take from the Earth?” In order for balance to occur, we cannot keep taking without replenishing” writes Robin Wall Kimmerer. What might indigenous ways of knowing teach us about how to be in right relationship with each other and with the earth?

Philosophers and poets from Lao Tzu to Wendell Berry to Ani Difranco remind us that what doesn’t bend will break, that water will eventually wear down rock. When we long to grasp with brittle fingers for the power to control the circumstances around us, how can we instead lean into the power of fluidity?

This weekend we reflect on the ancient Christian story of Easter, a time of Love breaking through hopelessness, grief, and oppression. In these times when we so desperately need Love to break through in our world, what meaning might we find in ancient holiday? All are invited to wear festive Easter hats, whether to the Sanctuary or to zoom!

In a world that is ripe with both suffering and beauty, how does one choose where to place our faith? Do we put it into the celebratory joy of being alive or into the courageous witness of inequity and pain? In this service, we’ll explore how Unitarian Universalism helps us navigate these choices.

So much of American life is built to make things more convenient for us – frozen meals, zoom meetings, hands-free mode on our cell phones. But something is lost in all that time and effort saved. Might the inconveniences of life carry alongside them some of the greatest blessings?

We gather this Sunday, led by Rev. Abbey Tennis (our Lead Minister), Rev. Sana Saeed (our Affiliated Community Minister who is both UU and Muslim), and Lisa Schilansky (a UU and Jewish member currently completing her Ministerial Internship), to reflect on how our UU faith and multireligious belongings call us to respond to the crisis in the Middle East. How can our rituals help build resilience in times of crisis?