For the Celts, who lived during the Iron Age in what is now Ireland, Scotland, the U.K., Samhain (meaning literally, in modern Irish, “summer’s end”) marked the turning point in the year. It signaled a time where the end of a bountiful harvest met the start of a cold, dark winter. It also signaled a time where birth and life met death and rebirth. Many believed it was a time where the veil between this world and the afterworld was the thinnest and our ancestors came to be present with their descendants.

At a time when the U.S. was still a fledgling democracy and we were even more tenuous and fragile than we are today, Abraham Lincoln attempted to play a role in leading this democracy to a place where he asked us to appeal to ‘the better angels of our nature.’ What was he asking and what were the concerns he was responding to? And what do they have to do with today?

Our interconnection comes despite our differences. We’re beginning to all notice how a war in Ukraine can cause hunger throughout Europe; and gas shortages in other parts of the world. The pandemic taught us that we don’t need to know one another or agree to infect each other. It is time we proactively and positively employed our interconnection for cooperation rather than reactively braced for it on hindsight. In this service brought to us by leaders at the UUA, we will consider the single garment of destiny that binds us together.

This is part one of a 4 part sermon series on politics and democracy. This one speaks to Capitalism as a special element of democracy and how capitalism has positioned itself to be more important than almost everything else – including health and well being.

How do you put your UU values into practice? How can you use what you believe to make decisions about what you should and should not do? Voting. Problem Solving. Parenting. Relationships. Today we will talk about personal ethics–aligning values with behavior. #ethics. #values and behaviors

Sometimes singing an unfamiliar hymn in church can be really painful. Enough so, we may find ourselves looking ahead at the hymns scheduled to decide if we should attend on Sunday. There is an old Dutch proverb which says that ‘Trust walks in on foot and rides out on a horse.’ It’s true enough in that trust takes a long time to build. It is incremental – one good experience at a time. But since no one is perfect and, invariably, trust is tested, if not broken altogether, how is it that we choose to begin accepting new contributions to trust building after we already determined that accounting came up short?

Our annual in-gathering service – the Water Communion – is a mainstay of many (if not most) UU Congregations. This year we will look back on where it came from, how it changed, and reflect on what might be some of the most important aspects of the service to honor.

In 1968, Trappist Monk wrote Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander responding to some of the horrific events on the political landscape trying to examine what sense of accountability the good citizen had in failing to make a nation safe for its people. Today, we can look back 21 years and ask ourselves some of the same questions. And one of the questions that needs an answer is how the patriotism we initially responded with has impacted our democracy.

I’ve always been a bit of a worrier, but I eventually realized that my level of worry often went beyond reasonable caution. In this message, I will describe my journey of discovery that I had anxiety disorder, some of the effects it has had on my life, the medical factor that is probably behind my more than neurotypical level of anxiety, and what I have done about it.

Because of the rapid proliferation of technology and communication, traumatic events and acute personal reminders have become much more commonplace experiences. We’ve become conscious of what previous generations could only imagine. These difficult new experiences can startle and trigger anxiety and alarm rather than empathy and compassion. This is a sermon about what recent events have taught us about mental health and how to cultivate compassion instead of paralysis.