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
Look everywhere around you at this moment and you will see – everywhere – things are in a precarious place of absolute destruction and change. Things we thought would be everlasting – like laws that protect the vulnerable and guarantees of human rights – are suddenly being questioned if not eliminated. We are in great … Continue reading The Essential, Ordinary Wisdom of Resurrection
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
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
Historian, writer and theologian, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, points out that the pain of the world has become hard to bear. “One has to have strong cojones and ovarios to withstand much of what passes for ‘good’ today.” Abject disregard and corruption of principled ideals has become the new normal. But, ‘take heart,’ she says. “We … Continue reading We Were Made for Times Like These
We are all given a particular tool essential to enlightenment which all too often goes unnamed when counting our blessings. Scientists have called it an acnestis. Engineers, psychologists, architects and even lawyers will attest to its cursed properties and it’s tendencies to torment an individual. But the theologian will quickly point out the often overlooked … Continue reading Blessed by an Acnestis
When Hate and Hurt come to town, it is rarely a good idea to fight fire with fire. For this year’s Love Hero Award, we are very proud to celebrate a group of spiritual leaders who are committed to diverse expressions of love to change the world for good. TCIC understands that we need not … Continue reading Love Hero
Love is a great idea. For most of us, it is what shapes our dreams and aspirations for how we want to live – and what we want most from the people we live with. But we are inundated with stories that describe love swooping in to sweep us off our feet when, in truth, … Continue reading Love Over the Long Haul (or, What Happens After You Realize You’re Married to a Yak)
Sometimes, in our pre-occupation with human customs and conventions, we lose track of all the ways we are blessed by our non-human companions through this journey through life. They, however, very rarely lose track of us. In this service, we will look closely at all the ways our various furry, flapping, flippered, scaly, slimy and … Continue reading Blessing of the Animals
In 2020, one of the initial intentions of the Mission Peak ARO Team (Anti-Racism, Anti-Oppression) was to offer a land acknowledgement at the beginning of our worship services. The purpose of Land Acknowledgments is to humbly recognize the impact that our settler-colonialist history has had on the people and the land. When we began the … Continue reading A Land In Search of Its Ancestors
