We gathered for our Annual Candlelit Christmas Eve service, filled with lessons and carols.

“I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day” wrote artist Vincent Van Gogh. In this sometimes-difficult season of the longest nights, of winter, and of Solstice, how might we find new vitality and deeper dimension in our lives?

This Sunday, we will look at some Holiday traditions and Light as a physical element and iconic symbol found in major religious traditions. What is your relationship to Light and Darkness as days become shorter and nights get longer?

When political crises descend or holidays arrive, the feelings of loneliness or helplessness can overwhelm or immobilize us. And yet, as Rev. Wayne Arnason reminds us, we know that deep down, there is another truth: we are not alone. We gather this Sunday to ground ourselves in our connectedness.

Around the world and throughout time, there have been people whose lives are lived in the in-between spaces and the both/and places of their cultures, including transgender and non-binary people. As we face a political climate where so many of our core values are at risk, what can we learn about survival and resistance from those who have always lived at the overlaps and the edges?
* note: following the Time for All Ages in this service, and in our Transgender Day of Remembrance and Resilience Vigil after service, there will be mention of death by suicide.

In times of grief and rage, times we feel helpless or hopeless, times when our values feel publicly cut down and our identities publicly under threat, how do we endure? Regardless of who sits in our elected offices, the work to restore our souls and build a world awakened to love and justice always rests in our hands. Join us this Sunday as we look to find a way forward together.

Let us gather to honor our dead, our martyrs, our saints and celebrate our ancestors throughout space+time. Death is as sacred as birth and the only unavoidable experience for living beings. Why is death so increasingly banalized and natural death inadmissible instead of being honored?

“Not for ourselves alone are we born” wrote Marcus Tullius Cicero over 2050 years ago. When we gather together in community, our imprint on the world becomes magnified beyond our comprehension. What does it mean to put ourselves in service of something much greater than our own lives?

In a country of nearly 350 million people, it can often feel like our individual voice, or our individual vote, does not matter. Yet the power in democracy is not in 350 million isolated voices, nor even in the offices of elected officials; it is in ‘small groups of thoughtful, committed citizens’ working together persistently to change the world. How will we use our power?

How can our liberatory practices within the context of community and personal spiritual disciplines evoke lightness within our beingness?

Maxine Hong Kingston writes “When we are born, we have curses and gifts from our parents and ancestors [that] come from way back” that shape our lives far more than we can ever fully know. As Jews in our community and around the world prepare for Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, how might we reconcile with what we have received from generations past? What covenant might we make with the future?

What does (S)pirit mean to you?
What comes up for you when you read or hear this word in our UU context?
How would you explain the idea of (s)pirit to a child?