Our UU tradition encourages lifelong spiritual growth, even including that encouragement among the seven principles. But just what does spiritual growth look like? If you described how you have grown spiritually since becoming a UU, what would your description say? This service reflects what we might mean when we speak of spiritual growth and how that shapes our choices, as individuals and as congregations.

I think of religion as a word of orientation. I don’t think of it as a boxed set of beliefs. And Unitarian Universalism is the religious tradition and community that best orients and informs my life journey and spiritual practice. I’ll introduce a simple organizing understanding I use to give it more form and help guide me on my way. My hopes are that it might also speak to you.

It goes by different names. Depending on the culture and the people and the period of time in which they found themselves, it’s been called ‘the journey.’ Or ‘the path.’ Or ‘the way.’ But what they all have in common is a spiritual awakening. An alignment to bring their head and their heart and their soul in sync with everything else around them. Sometimes, to find it, it’s necessary to go and walk the right path. Sometimes, however, the right path comes to walk with you.

In 2020, Gov. Gavin Newsome and the California State Senate and Assembly helped create a Task Force to study the issue of Reparations. It’s premise has been to acknowledge and address the systemic inequities experienced by African Americans exacted by 160 years of slavery on today’s political, legal, financial, cultural, environmental, social standing and rights. We are blessed to welcome Donald Tamaki, one of the 9 members of the task force to explain its work.

Sometimes, we feel called to go prove a point. We are captured by a conviction that someone needs to be taught a lesson. So we summon our courage and strap on our suit of righteousness indignation and are surprised when people turn away and fail to appreciate our brilliance and wisdom!! The world, right now, is in a battle for the hearts and minds of society. If our goal is to influence people, it is love – not indignation – that will prove to be the better tool. This is a service about the war of disinformation we are currently in and what we need to win.

In this year’s annual ingathering service, we’re going to invite the beloved non-humans in our household to recognize and celebrate the thing that all living things need more than anything else: Water. Plan to bring your pet to church and we will explore how our animals help us to be more loving and humane.

As described in the book, ”The Song of the Cell,” our own human cells evolved from single celled organisms that were capable of living independently. Over evolutionary history, our cells determined that the benefits of interdependence resulted in better survival. Although we as individuals can survive to some degree in isolation, we do better together. The Encouragement Committee has a role in helping each Individual feel connected to the others.

Think about those times when someone has seen the flaming chalice pin or necklace you’re wearing and asked, ‘oh… UU… what’s that? What do you say? How do you explain this church? These people? This history? This way of being religious – WITHOUT – telling them everything we’re NOT? Come to this service if you want to hear how we claim this faith tradition with excitement and pride! QUESTION: What is Unitarian Universalism?

What is it about change that makes us feel so terrified to face and yet so terrific to have experienced. Something happens at our core that feels existentially vulnerable when we release control on certainty. Sometimes fear of change is so powerful we will foresake everything in order to avoid facing it. The relationship we forge with change will determine our circumstance, our company, our politics and our legacy. In this service we will finally ask the question, ‘what’s so good about change?’