Speaker: Rev. Greg Ward

Love After Love

There is a wise prophecy of a UU mentor who said that churches – even the really good ones – would, eventually, break our hearts. Hearing it for the first time seemed almost sacrilegious. It suggested that the institution based on faith that we dedicated ourselves to could be the very thing to challenge our … Continue reading Love After Love

God is Betting on Us – Part I – For the Love of the Game

This sermon trilogy opens one hundred and four years ago, when eight Chicago White Sox players were permanently banned from baseball for desecrating the sport’s sacred code: they bet on the game. More accurately, they received payoffs to throw the 1919 World Series, allowing the gambling syndicate to profit. The incident cast a stain on … Continue reading God is Betting on Us – Part I – For the Love of the Game

Juneteenth

How does singing African American Spirituals help us understand the systemic oppression built into this country and the convoluted path that African Americans had to navigate to find their way to freedom? The Zoom link and Order of Service will be provided at mpuuc.org/zoom.

Flower Communion

200 Years ago, New England Unitarians – who were yet to marvel before the miracle of air conditioning, would close their churches and all migrate to the Cape where it was cooler. This was because most early Unitarian ministers were also university professors who didn’t teach classes in the summer. This is the history behind … Continue reading Flower Communion

A Stroke of Insight

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is a Harvard-trained neuro anatomist. In 1996 she experienced a severe hemorrhage (AVM) in the left hemisphere of her brain causing her to lose the ability to walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life. She put what she learned from that experience in her book, My Stroke of … Continue reading A Stroke of Insight

A 36 Hour Crash Course on Immigration Oppression

In the summer of 2010, when SB1070 – the controversial anti-immigration (‘Show me your papers’) law, UUs descended upon the city of Phoenix to challenge Sherriff Joe Arpaio’s immigration sweeps. What we learned in two days helps make sense of decades of racism in policing, detention and immigration systems. At a time when these issues … Continue reading A 36 Hour Crash Course on Immigration Oppression

Action Sunday

Bryon Stevenson and other activists working to end oppression say that the most effective way to address any particular type of oppression – whether it is racial prejudice or bias against LGBTQIA persons, or immigrants – is through proximity. In other words, when we actually spend time with them. When we know their story, it … Continue reading Action Sunday

When We Walk By

MPUUC recently took a courageous and caring first step into being an advocate for every person living without permanent housing in Fremont. Building on that, this service attempts to explore what our response to the housing crisis in this country would be if we treated the issue NOT from a perspective paternalism where we see … Continue reading When We Walk By