Author: LdeG

Sunday, 5 October 2025: Living in Parlous Times

LdeG

I’m convinced that if the world survives these dangerous times it will be tens of millions of small things that do it. Keep on.
— Pete Seeger

As I write this, my husband is mowing our paths in a cap that says “The beatings will continue until morale improves.” I have one too, and he brought them back from a conference trip long ago when I was working for a state agency headed by a newly elected official who had fired everyone in the top levels of the agency, and changes were being demanded, without much understanding, in our IT department – at “warp speed.”

I’ve been thinking and reading about how our religions shape our views of the world and each other for a while now, and some of them – flavors of every world religion and beyond – take the attitude that beating people up (including ourselves) will improve morale, or at least behavior. Others focus on gratitude and leading our best lives in harmony with creation and each other. So this Sunday I’ll be sharing some thoughts about that, and how we live in these parlous times.
– Lisa deGruyter

We currently conduct a full worship service on the first Sunday of each month, and discuss a different short reading each of the remaining Sundays.

Please Join us for Worship.

Our services are Sundays at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time on ZOOM and in person at the Progressive Women’s Association Event Center, 305 Washington Ave. in downtown Clarksburg, behind the Courthouse. A coffee hour, a time for discussion and socializing (including ZOOM participants), follows from the end of the service until 12:00 noon. More about us.

If you prefer not to be seen, video is optional. If you would like to participate online, please email westforkuu@gmail.com for details and a link, or for help with using ZOOM.

We would love to have you come worship with us.

Children are welcome.

The building is wheelchair accessible, with an accessible restroom. You may park on the south side of the building, which is marked reserved for the PWA, or the north, where the reserved spaces are available on Sundays.

Map

Email westforkuu@gmail.com or use our contact form for more information or write to us at PO Box 523, Clarksburg WV 26302

Sunday June 1, 2025: Grace, Gratitude, and Privilege

LdeG


“To live a life of gratitude is to open our eyes to the countless ways in which we are supported by the world around us.”

Gregg Krech, Naikan: Gratitude, Grace, and the Japanese Art of Self-Reflection

Much of the time, we focus more on what we lack than what we have. In troubled times, it is even easier to lose track of grace. Lisa deGruyter will lead a service with some practices to help us see how we are supported in the world.

Our services are Sundays at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time on ZOOM and in person at the Progressive Women’s Association Event Center, 305 Washington Ave. in downtown Clarksburg, behind the Courthouse. A coffee hour, a time for discussion and socializing (including ZOOM participants), follows from the end of the service until 12:00 noon. More about us.

If you prefer not to be seen, video is optional. If you would like to participate online, please email westforkuu@gmail.com for details and a link, or for help with using ZOOM.

We would love to have you come worship with us.

Children are welcome. There are activities available for toddlers during the service.

The building is wheelchair accessible, with an accessible restroom. You may park on the south side of the building, which is marked reserved for the PWA, or the north, where the reserved spaces are available on Sundays.

Map

Email westforkuu@gmail.com or use our contact form for more information or write to us at PO Box 523, Clarksburg WV 26302

Sunday, March 2, 2025: Our UU US Presidents

LdeG

Jefferson, though a sincere student of the teachings of Jesus and a Unitarian, was denounced as an atheist. We know the contumely, insult, and mob violence to which Priestley was subjected in England. Franklin, the Adamses, and Fillmore were all Unitarians, but they were looked at askance. Lincoln, one of the most deeply religious men, was clearly Unitarian in his faith. In spite of all these illustrious examples, religious prejudices have been played upon in politics to defeat Unitarians and upholders of liberal Christianity and in very recent years; but even in the time my life compasses, I can see a great change for the better.

–President Taft

A bit late for Presidents Day, we will look back at our Unitarian Presidents, from Jefferson to Obama.

We currently conduct a full worship service on the first Sunday of each month, and discuss a different short reading each of the remaining Sundays.

**If you wish to join by ZOOM and do not already have the link, please email us at westforkuu@gmail.com**

Please Join us for Worship.

Our services are Sundays at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time on ZOOM and in person at the Progressive Women’s Association Event Center, 305 Washington Ave. in downtown Clarksburg, behind the Courthouse.

Children are welcome. The building is wheelchair accessible, with an accessible restroom. You may park in the lot on the west side of the building. Please enter through the door at the back on the west side of the building.

Map

A half hour for coffee, discussion, and socializing, including those who attend through ZOOM, follows from the end of the service until 12:00 noon. More about us.

If you have been a regular attendee and we had an email address for you, we have added you to our Google Group. If you have not gotten a group email already, please email westforkuu@gmail.com so that we can add you to the group. We encourage members to continue discussions through the week using the WFUU email group. Public announcements will continue to be posted here on the website and on our Facebook page as usual.

Email westforkuu@gmail.com or use our contact form for more information or write to us at PO Box 523, Clarksburg WV 26302

Potluck Brunch: Sunday, 29 December, 2024

LdeG
Potluck Brunch

Potluck Brunch! New Year’s Potluck Brunch!

We have a tradition of a brunch on the Sunday after Christmas instead of a service. Bring food to share, or just bring yourself! Come and join us at 10:30 a.m., Sunday, December 29, 2024, for good fellowship and food and a small devotion. This year, Robert and Lisa have invited us to their house so we will not be at the PWA. If you are not on our mailing list, email for the address.

There will be a Zoom session, if you can’t attend in person, where we will share the conversation but sadly not the food. 

Our services are Sundays at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time on ZOOM and in person at the Progressive Women’s Association Event Center, 305 Washington Ave. in downtown Clarksburg, behind the Courthouse. If you wish to join on ZOOM, please contact us for logon information. A coffee hour, a time for discussion and socializing (including ZOOM participants), follows from the end of the service until 12:00 noon. More about us. If you prefer not to be seen, video is optional. If you would like to participate, please email westforkuu@gmail.com for details and a link, or for help with using ZOOM.

Children are welcome.

The building is wheelchair accessible, with an accessible restroom.

Map

Email westforkuu@gmail.com or use our contact form for more information

or write to us at PO Box 523, Clarksburg WV 26302

Sunday, 22 December, 2024: People, Look East

LdeG

People, look east. The time is near
Of the crowning of the year.
Make your house fair as you are able,
Trim the hearth and set the table.
People, look east and sing today:
Love, the guest, is on the way.

Please join us at 10:30 for a service of Yule, Solstice, Hanukkah, Christmas songs and readings. Please bring a candle in a holder to light during the service and holiday treats to share during coffee hour after the service.

Our services are Sundays at 10:30 a.m. at the Progressive Women’s Association Uptown Event Center, 305 Washington Ave. in downtown Clarksburg, behind the Courthouse. A coffee gathering follows the service. More about us.

We would love to have you come worship with us.

Children are welcome. There is childcare and an activity for young children during the service.

The building is wheelchair accessible, with an accessible restroom. You may park on the south side of the building, which is marked reserved for the PWA.

Map

The schedule for the current adult religious education class is here.

Email westforkuu@gmail.com or use our contact form for more information or write to us at PO Box 523, Clarksburg WV 26302

Sunday, 8 December 2024: Hope and Abundance

LdeG

The Tigers and the Strawberry

There was a man walking across an open field, when suddenly a tiger appeared and began to give chase. The man began to run, but the tiger was closing in. As he approached a cliff at the edge of the field, the man grabbed a vine and jumped over the cliff. Holding on as tight as he could, he looked up and saw the angry tiger prowling out of range ten feet above him. He looked down. In the gully below, there were two tigers also angry and prowling. He had to wait it out. He looked up again and saw that two mice, one white, the other black, had come out of the bushes and had begun gnawing on the vine, his lifeline. As they chewed the vine thinner and thinner, he knew that he could break at any time. Then, he saw a single strawberry growing just an arms length away. Holding the vine with one hand, he reached out, picked the strawberry, and put it in his mouth. It was delicious.

Koans, of course, are meant to be enigmatic. This particular one is not just mysterious, it is an open-ended story – we are left with the man neither up nor down, hanging on by a thread which is visibly being nibbled away, with danger above and below.

One interpretation is that the cliff is life. We cannot reverse time and go back to the womb, and at the bottom is death. We hang on to the vine, all of the things that sustain our lives from day to day – our jobs, the cooking, the cleaning, the caring for others, knowing that climbing is useless, because at the top is a tiger, that letting go is useless, because at the bottom are more tigers – stuck in the middle again. And we see the mice, nibbling at the vine.

But there is the strawberry. Why not, in that moment, enjoy that strawberry? Eating it, or not eating it, will not make one bit of difference to the situation – it will not make the vine thicker. It will not make the tigers go away. It will not make the mice go away. Neither will it make the vine thinner, or bring on more tigers – and more tigers would not make the situation worse.

Maybe the key to this story is that we are here, somewhere on a cliff, with no much that we can do about it but hang on. The ending, bar a miracle, is inevitable.

In a time when much is driven by anger and fear, this service will consider the teachings of the Buddha, the Stoics, Jesus, and modern psychologists and theologians such as Alfred Adler and Reinhold Niebuhr about the cause of suffering and how we can find strength and comfort.. Lisa deGruyter will lead the service.

Please join us for Worship:

Our services are Sundays at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time on ZOOM and in person at the Progressive Women’s Association Event Center, 305 Washington Ave. in downtown Clarksburg, behind the Courthouse.

**If you wish to join by ZOOM and do not already have the link, please email us at westforkuu@gmail.com**

Children are welcome. The building is wheelchair accessible, with an accessible restroom. You may park in the lot on the west side of the building; DO NOT PARK in the Washington Avenue pay lot. Please enter through the door at the back on the west side of the building.

Map

A coffee hour, a time for discussion and socializing, including those who attend through ZOOM, follows from the end of the service until 12:00 noon. More about us.

If you are a regular attendee, we have added you to our Google Group if we had an email address. If you have not gotten a group email already, please email westforkuu@gmail.com so that we can add you to the group.

Email westforkuu@gmail.com or use our contact form for more information or write to us at PO Box 523, Clarksburg WV 26302

Sunday 2 June 2024: Spider-Stomping

LdeG
Anansi the Spider


“When the good guy finally wins, viewers are then able to reassert control over their own inner tendencies, repress them, and re-establish a sense of goodness without coming to any insight about their own inner evil. The villain’s punishment provides catharsis; one forswears the villain’s ways and heaps condemnation on him in a guilt-free orgy of aggression. Salvation is found through identification with the hero.”

Walter Wink, in The Myth of Redemptive Violence

Lisa deGruyter will lead the service, on how we still often fall into ways of violence or at least coercion despite the threads of love and non-violence in all the world religions. She says “One day when our daughter was not yet two, when we went to pick her up, her babysitter, Bindu, was showing her how to stomp a spider. “Oh, no” we said. “Please don’t teach her to kill spiders.” Her sitter said “But the children are afraid of spiders, and killing them teaches them they don’t need to be afraid.””

Please Join us for Worship.

Our services are Sundays at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time on ZOOM and in person at the Progressive Women’s Association Event Center, 305 Washington Ave. in downtown Clarksburg, behind the Courthouse.

Children are welcome. The building is wheelchair accessible, with an accessible restroom. You may park in the lot on the west side of the building; DO NOT PARK in the Washington Avenue pay lot. Please enter through the door on the west side of the building.

Map

If you wish to join on ZOOM, please contact us for logon information. If you prefer not to be seen, video is optional. If you would like to participate, please email westforkuu@gmail.com for details and a link, or for help with using ZOOM.

A coffee hour, a time for discussion and socializing (including ZOOM participants), follows from the end of the service until 12:00 noon. More about us.

If you have been a regular attendee, we have added you to our Google Group if we had an email address. If you have not gotten a group email already, please email westforkuu@gmail.com so that we can add you to the group, which we will be using for staying in touch with each other. Public announcements will continue to be posted here on the website and on our Facebook page and Twitter account, as usual.

Email westforkuu@gmail.com or use our contact form for more information or write to us at PO Box 523, Clarksburg WV 26302

Sunday 5 May 2024: Church! What Is It Good For?

LdeG

People who have never been Unitarian Universalists often ask me why we bother with the whole church thing. Buildings and ministers are expensive. Committees and classes and Sunday services are time-consuming. And for what? Our churches don’t promise to take us to heaven. At the end of the day, we’re going to make up our own minds about the big questions anyway, and choose a path through life according to our own consciences. So what’s the point?

When our values are threatened, a congregation is an anchor against despair.

Doug Muder  from “Let’s Get Started Together” in UU World 1/30/2017

Lisa deGruyter will lead the service. She says “Many times my UU faith has been an anchor against despair, and my congregation a place where I could reaffirm I was not alone in beliefs that didn’t seem to be shared, or were actively condemned, by the culture around me.”

Please Join us for Worship.

Our services are Sundays at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time on ZOOM and in person at the Progressive Women’s Association Event Center, 305 Washington Ave. in downtown Clarksburg, behind the Courthouse.

Children are welcome. The building is wheelchair accessible, with an accessible restroom. You may park in the lot on the west side of the building; DO NOT PARK in the Washington Avenue pay lot. Please enter through the door on the west side of the building.

Map

If you wish to join on ZOOM, please contact us for logon information. If you prefer not to be seen, video is optional. If you would like to participate, please email westforkuu@gmail.com for details and a link, or for help with using ZOOM.

A coffee hour, a time for discussion and socializing (including ZOOM participants), follows from the end of the service until 12:00 noon. More about us.

If you have been a regular attendee, we have added you to our Google Group if we had an email address. If you have not gotten a group email already, please email westforkuu@gmail.com so that we can add you to the group, which we will be using for staying in touch with each other. Public announcements will continue to be posted here on the website and on our Facebook page and Twitter account, as usual.

Email westforkuu@gmail.com or use our contact form for more information or write to us at PO Box 523, Clarksburg WV 26302

Sunday, 14 April 2024: Ocean Parable

LdeG

However, sometimes, whilst we are flailing away, we have all experienced “times when waves overtake us from behind, lifting us up and along” and from these moments, Bugbee says “we may take courage and be thankful.” But our new-found courage and thankfulness can all too easily and quickly morph into the delusional thought that, somehow, “in the exhilaration of swift swimming” we can now “claim as our own the power of the wave.” This is what Bugbee calls “demonic swimming”, a state in which we suffer the illusion that we have “not fallen into flailing” but have, instead, “become the masters of our element” and are now fully in control.

Naturally, however, after the crest of the wave comes the trough, and so there inevitably also come those moments when we begin to drop and this movement throws us into depression and despair and leads us to think that there’s nothing that can be done, except either to go down like lead or to start our frantic flailing once again. 

Rev. Andrew Brown discussing Henry Bugbee’s The Inward Morning

We are currently been having a full service on the first Sunday of each month, and a discussion on the other Sundays. We have completed Exploring, volume 2 of Building Your Own Theology, and this Sunday are beginning a new practice of discussing a different short reading each Sunday.

We will open with a very brief service and chalice lighting, after which members will guide each other through the discussion.

All are welcome to participate. The reading for this week is Ocean Parable by Kenneth Kenichi Tanaka. There is also a video of him telling this story.

If you would like more context, Rev. Andrew Brown’s address on THE SUSTAINING SEA AND THE NEED TO TAKE EVEN STROKES IN THESE VERY UNEVEN TIMES ties this to the philosophy of Henry Bugbee.

** NOTE: ZOOM will not be available this Sunday. **

Please Join us for Worship.

Our services are Sundays at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time on ZOOM and in person at the Progressive Women’s Association Event Center, 305 Washington Ave. in downtown Clarksburg, behind the Courthouse.

Children are welcome. The building is wheelchair accessible, with an accessible restroom. You may park in the lot on the west side of the building; DO NOT PARK in the Washington Avenue pay lot. Please enter through the door at the back on the west side of the building.

Map

Note: ZOOM will not be available this Sunday.

A coffee hour, a time for discussion and socializing, follows from the end of the service until 12:00 noon. More about us.

If you are a regular attendee, we have added you to our Google Group if we had an email address. If you have not gotten a group email already, please email westforkuu@gmail.com so that we can add you to the group, which we will be using for staying in touch with each other. Public announcements will continue to be posted here on the website and on our Facebook page and Twitter account, as usual.

Email westforkuu@gmail.com or use our contact form for more information or write to us at PO Box 523, Clarksburg WV 26302

Sunday April 7, 2024: Flower Ceremony

LdeG

Please bring flowers to share in the service.  Whatever is blooming, or a twig in bud, is fine.

Everyone is invited to lunch at Robert and Lisa’s house after the service; ham, potato salad, and rolls will be provided. Other dishes to share are welcome.

We will have our Flower Ceremony, which was created by Dr. Norbert Čapek for the Liberal Religious Fellowship he founded in Prague, then Czechoslavakia, in 1925, and which became the largest Unitarian Church in the world. He sought a ceremony that would celebrate love and community and the interdependent web of life and love among a new and diverse congregation drawn from many backgrounds, and which would be a celebration not tied to any older religious ceremonies, which many of his congregation had rejected. Nearly a hundred years later, it is celebrated by many Unitarian Universalist congregations everywhere.

Our services are Sundays at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time on ZOOM and in person at the Progressive Women’s Association Event Center, 305 Washington Ave. in downtown Clarksburg, behind the Courthouse. A coffee hour, a time for discussion and socializing (including ZOOM participants), follows from the end of the service until 12:00 noon. More about us. If you prefer not to be seen, video is optional. If you would like to participate, please email westforkuu@gmail.com for details and a link, or for help with using ZOOM.

We would love to have you come worship with us.

Children are welcome. There are activities available for toddlers during the service.

The building is wheelchair accessible, with an accessible restroom. You may park on the south side of the building, which is marked reserved for the PWA.

Map

The schedule for the current adult religious education class is here.

Email westforkuu@gmail.com or use our contact form for more information or write to us at PO Box 523, Clarksburg WV 26302