Posts with the tag “unitarian-universalist-sermon”
A Delightful New Year - January 5, 2020
by FPUU Admin on January 8th, 2020
With the news of fires raging in Australia and the assassination of General Soleimani in Iraq, I wondered if a sermon on keeping Christmas in our hearts was still what I needed to say to today, still what you might need to hear. But I think it is. For the Christmas spirit Scrooge found, the Christmas spirit we need to hold onto, isn’t about jollity and games and feasting, though those may be par... Read More
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From Stone to Fruit - Sunday October 1, 2017
by FPUU Admin on October 1st, 2017
Four generations coming home at the end of a day of subsistence farming, moving boulders, bringing in dirt, building up soil, planting trees to hold it there against the washes of rainstorms, cultivating vines, and finally harvesting the fruit. Four generations. The generation who began that work would never even see the vines, much less taste the wine, and yet they had the vision to take on this ... Read More
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Who Has Seen the Wind? - Sunday June 4, 2017
by FPUU Admin on June 4th, 2017
So much to take in. How to make sense of it all? President Trump’swithdrawal of the US from the Paris Climate agreement; investigations into tieswith Russia; proposed cuts on funding for Medicaid, food stamps, programs forpeople with disabilities, and education; renewed attempts to ban people frompredominantly Muslim countries; Russia’s role in our election and our government;erosion of trust with... Read More
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Be the Light - December 11, 2016
by FPUU Admin on December 11th, 2016
"One of the things I love about our Unitarian Universalist tradition is that we don’t shift the weight or the light to someone else. From our roots in early Christianity we have proclaimed that Jesus was not God but a human being, and that his good news was not that he had made things right with God for all people in all times but that he taught and lived a model of how humankind could make thing... Read More
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Who Is the Other? - October 23, 2016
by FPUU Admin on October 23rd, 2016
How often do you do that – look at someone else and judge them in a waythat bolsters you? I found myself doing it in a yoga class this week... Continue reading:... Read More
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When the Canoe Overturns - October 16, 2016
by FPUU Admin on October 16th, 2016
Every year in June, the church I served in Maine goes canoeing for a daydown the Saco River. I came to love this trip and miss it every spring, but I didn’talways look forward to it with pleasure. In the pictures taken in my first year inSaco, I’m easy to pick out. I’m the one in the life jacket.Seeing me so apprehensive, my congregation assumed I couldn’t swim.But in fact I swim just fine and I l... Read More
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Who Tells the Story? - October 2, 2016
by FPUU Admin on October 2nd, 2016
Why am I telling you all this about a long-ago king of a far-off land? What do his life and possible crimes have to do with ours? As we think about Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, when the books of life lie open and deeds of goodness and wrong-doing recorded, when people think about their lives and the stories they want to leave behind, and as we do all that in the setting of this election yea... Read More
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Dredging Up Soil from the Bed of Mystery - September 25, 2016
by FPUU Admin on September 25th, 2016
“Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” That is the 7th principle in the covenant of the Unitarian Universalist Association, of which our congregation is a member church. “The interdependent web of all existence.” That phrase is used a lot in our congregations to describe our understanding of the deep connection which ties all life together. In a few words... Read More
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From "Gilligan's Island" to Amazing Grace - February 7, 2016
by FPUU Admin on February 11th, 2016
In our faith community, we may not live day after day together without running water or electricity amid falling coconuts and palm trees, but we do gather Sunday after Sunday (and often other days too) with people we wouldn’t otherwise know. Read the whole sermon here:... Read More
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A Human-Sized Miracle - December 13, 2015
by FPUU Admin on December 13th, 2015
But the Hanukkah story tells us that it is up to us not to let the light go out. For the miracle to happen, for God, the power of Light and Life, to flow in the world, we must act, even if it’s just to clear away some garbage. Read the full sermon here: ... Read More
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Thoughtful Endings - November 8, 2015
by FPUU Admin on November 22nd, 2015
Over Thanksgiving, after the turkey and pies are finished, after you’vediscussed the relative merits of Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, Hillary Clintonand Bernie Sanders, and the Patriots’ chance of making Super Bowl 50, I invite youto have “The Conversation.” Make sure that the people you love have the space tosay what they need to say. Make sure you have the chance to say what you need tosay. Make... Read More
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Choose Your Mask - Sunday October 25, 2015
by FPUU Admin on November 22nd, 2015
Imagine what it was like for the first people who realized they could react differently to death on All Hallows’ Eve. Instead of hiding in fear, they could look Death in the face, or more exactly, wearing masks, they could look through the face of Death. What might it have been like walking those empty streets, feeling immune to the threat of the real returned dead who would have assumed you wer... Read More
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What?? Me Worry?? - October 4, 2015
by FPUU Admin on October 4th, 2015
"When we stop worrying, stop feeling that we are responsible and in charge, we are freed to work with others to make change, to help those in need, and to take the joy which comes. " .. Read the whole sermon here:... Read More
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What Binds Us? - September 27, 2015
by FPUU Admin on September 27th, 2015
Saying our covenant together Sunday after Sunday re-commits us to staying in relation with one another, to working out our differences, and being open to all the invitations to grow in love which come to us as individuals and as a larger whole. This covenant lived out will change each of us and change our church in ways we can’t always imagine, which we can’t always control, and which aren’t alwa... Read More
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Turning to Peace - A Sermon for Yom Kippur - Sept. 20, 2015
by FPUU Admin on September 23rd, 2015
Forgiveness gives us power to transform ourselves and our world. How might your forgiving someone who has hurt you open you to larger life? How might it open the heart of the other person? Read the whole sermon here:... Read More
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Hearing Each Other into Speech - May 24, 2015
by FPUU Admin on June 1st, 2015
The voice of the holy doesn’t just thunder down from Mt. Sinai. It doesn’t just speak through the voices of clergy or gurus or Zen masters. The voice of the holy is within each of us, waiting to be spoken, waiting to be heard. Read the whole sermon here:... Read More
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For Love of this World - May 17, 2015
by FPUU Admin on June 1st, 2015
All this good came from Rachel Carson’s deep love of the earth. That love flowed into study, and that study, combined with her beautiful prose, flowed into action which then influenced others to act. But it all came from her love of this world. Read the whole sermon here:... Read More
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An Extravagance of Roses - May 3, 2015
by FPUU Admin on June 1st, 2015
To go beyond the normal bounds in our gifts to ourselves, to those we love, and to the world at large is never a bad or wasteful thing if our extravagance overflows from love and joy. Instead of silencing that exuberance, we might do better silencing the voices which would have us see joy and duty as opposed. For they are not opposed. It is our duty to nurture joy, Read the whole sermon here:... Read More
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What Love Looks Like - Palm Sunday March 29, 2015
by FPUU Admin on April 1st, 2015
Perhaps a fitting tribute on this Palm Sunday would be for us to focus on those issues which brought Jesus and his followers into the street – income inequality, care for the weak, especially children, and stewardship of the land. Read the whole sermon here:... Read More
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How to Balance an Egg and a Life: A Sermon for the Vernal Equinox - March 22, 2015
by FPUU Admin on March 24th, 2015
Does this feel like your life sometimes? You are trying to find balance – balance between work and family, balance between doing and being, balance between mind and heart, balance between striving and accepting. Just for a moment – at 11 a.m. on a Sunday morning perhaps – it feels like you can hold it all together, but by 9 a.m. on Monday or perhaps even 9 p.m. on Sunday, you’ve lost it. And no... Read More
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Umami - March 1, 2015
by FPUU Admin on March 3rd, 2015
Could umami be the taste of spirituality? Read the whole sermon here:... Read More
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Will You Be a Valentine? - Feb. 8, 2015
by FPUU Admin on February 11th, 2015
Valentine’s Day celebrates a man who had compassion for others, for people who didn’t share his circumstances but whose suffering he felt. It celebrates a man who was willing to risk his life to help further love in the world. Read the whole sermon here:... Read More
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The Twelfth Man and Next Man Up - A Sermon for Super Bowl Sunday, February 1, 2015
by FPUU Admin on February 1st, 2015
What might be the church able to learn from this American tradition, particularly, given the two teams in tonight’s Super Bowl, from Seattle’s 12th Man and the Patriots’ philosophy of Next Man Up? Read the whole sermon here:... Read More
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To Live Deliberately - January 25, 2015
by FPUU Admin on February 1st, 2015
Henry David Thoreau didn’t go to Walden to sit silently in meditation. He needed the solitude so that he wouldn’t be distracted from the world. Thoreau lived deep by paying attention. Read the entire sermon here:... Read More
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What Would Dr. King Do?
by FPUU Admin on February 1st, 2015
The killing last week of cartoonists, journalists, police, and hostages in Paris, and the following discussions of journalistic freedom made me wonder “WWDKD” or “What Would Doctor King Do?” To read the whole sermon, click here:... Read More
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Will You Join the Dance? - January 4, 2015
by FPUU Admin on January 7th, 2015
“There is only the dance.” Where are you in this dance of life? How are you dancing? At this season when we look backwards at the year just finished and forward at the year to come, I invite you to play with this metaphor of the dance. How did you dance in 2014? Were there invitations you turned down? Entrances you missed? Places you stumbled? Hands you could have grasped, but didn’t? To ... Read More
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Rodney Hine's Veterans' Day Sermon - Nov. 9, 2014
by FPUU Admin on November 22nd, 2014
This sacrifice to defend our families, country and its constitution is amazingly selfless. I am in awe of the men and women who take this challenge. To read the whole sermon, click here:... Read More
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Hats, Cats, and Cauldrons - A Sermon for Halloween
by FPUU Admin on October 29th, 2014
We may not blame misfortune on witches any more or even, with changing gender norms, focus our fears on women, but we do still look for answers to the question “why?” when bad things happen, and we still may try to blame others. To read the whole sermon, click here:... Read More
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Dancing in Time with the Universe - September 21, 2014
by FPUU Admin on September 23rd, 2014
What will you do to open up time? To read the whole sermon, click here.... Read More
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A Subversive Sabbath - September 14, 2014
by FPUU Admin on September 23rd, 2014
The Sabbath is not just a personal observance; it is a political act, for it provides for the health of all creation, not just the health of individuals. To read more, click here.... Read More
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The Many Languages of Love - June 8, 2014
by FPUU Admin on June 16th, 2014
It is up to us, the church, to speak in the languages others need to hear, not up to them to translate what we say. (Read the whole sermon here.)... Read More
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When Lawyers Hear Stories - a sermon by the Rev. Ms. Anne Robertson, March 31, 2019Weekly What's Happening - April 3, 2019In Debt to Life - April 7, 2019Weekly What's Happening - April 10, 2019Weekly What's Happening - April 17, 2019We Are the Parade - Easter Sunday April 21, 2019Weekly What's Happening April 24 - May 4
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