September 13 – Water Communion

Our week of Ingathering begins with our annual water communion which provides us time to work with the power of Water. We will contemplate waters of transformation, waters of grief, waters of renewal, and waters of joy. In this service, the message is all about our differences, and how they make us more beautiful …. the water symbolizes our commonality – all of us are more water than anything else.

September 20 – What We Make Together Is Just the Beginning

Every beginning asks us to remember something we sometimes forget: we were never meant to do this alone. As we gather for Ingathering, we will explore the web of relationships that sustains us—our connections to one another, to the more-than-human world, and to the Earth that makes our lives possible. With the returning music of Hiroya Tsukamoto and an interactive art project woven into our worship, we’ll experience interdependence not simply as an idea, but as something we create together.

September 27 – No One Stands Between Us

What if the person who was left out of the Bible still has something important to teach us about faith? Thecla was an early Christian woman whose story tells of a woman who refused the life prescribed for her, claimed her own spiritual calling, and—when no religious authority was available to baptize her—baptized herself. Her story invites us to ask what it means to trust our own experience of the sacred, to claim spiritual authority for ourselves, and to live into a Unitarian Universalism where no priest, minister, creed, or institution stands between us and the truth we are seeking.

October 4 – From the Inside of a Cloud

With the gifts of meditation and spiritual practice, we can learn to dwell in the mystery, to notice what calls to us, and to find the courage to develop a theology that is authentically our own. In a faith that invites us to question, spiritual life is not about having all the answers … it is about listening deeply for what might be true.

October 11 – Morning Altars as Spiritual Practice

Let your eyes come witness beauty and creativity, and learn about how we can integrate beauty into our spiritual practices. And we will build a morning altar together!

Please bring something from your yard, the forest, the beach, even a thrift store to put into an altar – it’s great if you can bring at least 8 of one thing – so 8 or more oyster shells, 8 pine cones, 8 handfuls of pine straw, 8 ferns, etc.