Church of the Larger Fellowship UU Worship

The phrase "it's easier to wear slippers than to try and carpet the world," has stuck with me since first hearing it many years ago. The phrase is a way to embody our role in movement work. This week, we'll explore the ways we can wear slippers and impact what we can locally as a way to keep from falling into despair at the state of the world.

In the Northern Hemisphere, this weekend marks the beginning of spring. In this service, we will connect our spiritual journeys to the Earth, honoring the green shoots of new life that herald the beginning of something beautiful.

Using Grover’s fear in The Monster at the End of This Book, the sermon explores how fear often comes from the stories we tell ourselves about what lies ahead. The message reflects on courage, curiosity, and the spiritual practice of continuing to turn the page even when uncertainty is present.

In the Christian Scripture of Luke, Jesus is asked, “Who is my neighbor?” We will be paying attention to the people in our neighborhoods--physical and metaphorical--so that we might better respond to them with love.

Join us this week as we explore the importance of communal rituals like worship in creating the sacred bonds of belonging.

Regarded as one of the founders of gospel music, Rev. Charles Albert Tindley, an African American Methodist minister, composed the songs, “The Storm is Passing Over” and “By and By” over 100 years ago, and they continue to sing to us. In witnessing the rise of fascism and authoritarianism, how do we keep journeying toward a world of greater acceptance and affirmation? Perhaps Rev. Tindley’s example of generosity can inspire us all.

A close friend of mine described death as "not the end, only a change of address." This has stuck with me and on this weekend where most people celebrate love, we will honor death and the reason we grieve is indicative of how much we love.

What does it mean to cultivate generosity of spirit? The practices of generosity, gratitude, hope, and interdependence can be part of our embodiment of resilience, especially in difficult times.

The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of Earth taken on Feb. 14, 1990, by NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft. Carl Sagan wrote about this image and its implications for humanity. We will explore what it means to be human on a pale blue dot floating through space. “Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.” ― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space