Unity Church-unitarian's Sermon Podcasts

Thanksgiving / Partner Church Service

Fellow Travelers, Common Journey — Lissa Gundlach The poet Rumi wrote: "O you who’ve gone on pilgrimage where are you, where, oh where? Here, here is the Beloved! Oh come now, come, oh come! Your friend, he is your neighbor, he is next to your wall." Jerusalem may be the most Holy city in the world, a site of pilgrimage for Christians, Jews, Muslims, and seekers alike. The Temple Mount is a shared spiritual landmark for Jews and Muslims — the Dome of the Rock marks where Muslims believe the prophet Mohammad ascended to heaven, while the Jewish people believe the site to have supported the original Temple during Biblical times. How might a common pilgrimage journey provide fertile ground for connections amongst as well as conflict between people of faith?

Some pilgrimages involve travel to a foreign or holy destination. Others actually can occur right at home. Janne and Worship Associate Mary Baremore will explore the dimensions of staying home, recognizing the sacred lessons available in our everyday lives and the riches to be explored in the pilgrimage within.

Our series on pilgrimage begins with a service for the Day of the Dead. When we move through the world with pilgrim eyes even our memories take on new life. Mary Oliver writes, "it matters how you carry it, books, bricks, grief." Pilgrims have to learn to travel light.

We are all sojourners, strangers, on a quest to find deeper meaning and connection in life. We are all strangers but we are all brothers and sisters. The service will explore the soul’s work of finding a true religious home. Rev. Abhi Janamanchi has been serving the Unitarian Universalists of Clearwater, Florida since 1999. He is a native of India and a third-generation member of the Brahmo Samaj, a Unitarian-Hindu reform movement. Abhi is a member of the International Advisory Council to the UUA President. He and his wife, Lalitha, have two sons, Abhimanyu and Yashasvi.

After scoring a run in the sixth to tie the game, the Indians forged ahead with two runs in the seventh. Luis Valbuena singled to start and moved to second on a sacrifice bunt. With two outs, Brantley sneaked a single through the right side of the infield… The Twins lost that game, 3-1. Cleveland taught us about what sacrifice really means. Sometimes, we think of it as an act of losing, as surrender, as a penalty for a mistake or worse. Sacrifice is also a means of getting the runner home.

San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk used to begin every speech by saying, "My name is Harvey Milk, and I’m here to recruit you." He was asking us all to come out; all of us, gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgendered, queer and each and every ally, all of us together have a right to live open and authentic lives.

What’s Love Got to Do with It? — Janne Eller-Isaacs What does sacrifice mean in a liberal religious context? As its meaning becomes more elusive in today’s post-modern world, is it possible that it is exactly what we need now?

Stuck in a dead-end job? Move. Or don’t. Sometimes a change of attitude or perhaps, of consciousness is really what’s called for. Could it be that our upwardly mobile, self-centered culture puts too much emphasis on moving on and too little emphasis on staying put? There are times in our lives when only faith can see us through.

How do we know when we have been "called" to particular work or tasks? How do we respond to numerous calls coming from different directions? How do we do as Quaker educator Parker Palmer says, "Let our lives speak"? Janne explores this dimension of vocation.

Labor advocates and spiritual progressives have found common cause for a century and a half in Minnesota and the nation. The righteousness of all God’s children getting fair recompense and enjoying the fruit of their labor is foundational for the Judeo-Christian tradition, and others too. After decades of progress earlier in the 20th century for working people, Labor Day 2009 finds us at low ebb. Union membership has declined sharply over the last 30 years and middle- and lower-income households now have a smaller share of total income than they’ve had since the Depression. But there’s new hope and energy rising, and a growing understanding among business leaders that we must obey Donna Summers’ message in her hard-driving 1983 anthem for working women (and men): We’d better treat them right.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that our real sacred text is "...life passed through the fire of thought." In other words, we find the holy when we share and process our stories with each other. This Sunday, we will explore the ways storytelling and storyhearing let us cross barriers of difference and allow us to meet each other in our deepest humanity.

This I Believe: Holding Onto Doubt — Richard Foushée During the past year I have struggled with two of the central issues of religion. Join in the exploration and personal reflections on faith and doubt and what they mean to our lives.

In his book A Path with Heart, Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield writes, "...it is not by moving rocks that we find happiness and awakening, but by transforming our relationship with them." When we suffer, it is often because we are defining ourselves by a life story that we have come to believe as absolute truth. We define ourselves by this narrative because in many ways it is easier than the work that is required to create a new story. Changing our story requires a faith that many of us as religious liberals struggle to define. How do we do the hard work of transformation when we may not have faith in a higher power? Where is our source of comfort?

When we tie our words together as if making nets large or small, what is it that we hope to catch? What is the power of poetry and story, of naming and metaphor, to catch or to carry that which is beyond words? How do we use these tools of language in matters of faith?

It’s a small world. Our tendency to shuffle life’s debris around rather than confront the mess is not without its consequences. From the broken toasters in the city landfill to the children in our broken foster care system, worship leader Kerri Meyer and Worship Associate Steve Harper explore the geography of human responsibility.

Youth Sunday: The Street COA Experiment When’s the last time someone struck up a conversation with you about religion in a public space? The youth of Unity Church have taken their Coming of Age questions out on the streets, engaging folks on the bus or on the sidewalk in respectful discussion about their beliefs around death, the sacred and God. Come hear their reflections on the experience of going deep with strangers as our youth lead us in worship.

William Channing Gannet’s Bond of Fellowship, which we read in unison with new members, speaks of a community of helpers wherein it is made easier to live a thankful, trustful, loyal and helpful life. We are in covenant with one another, a religious family which values the sacredness of every individual and encourages us to live lives of integrity, service and joy. Laura Smidzik will explore the impact of a sacred covenant and how belonging to a spiritual community enhances one’s life.

We’re Americans, and we breathe American culture. But does our Unitarian Universalist religion tell us something about our role as citizens? How should we engage with America? If it is true that neither politics nor religion should be spoken of in polite company, it could be that UUs are more likely than others to get thrown out of dinner parties. Maybe that’s not all bad.