Welcome: To learn more about being human – Erika A. Hewitt
Welcome to this morning, this day, and this opportunity to be together in community — which is a time of joy, comfort, and sometimes challenges. This Unitarian Universalist congregation is a place where we come to learn more about being human. We’re not here because we’ve figured out life’s questions, or because we think we’ve got it right, or even because we think we know what the questions are.
We come here to learn more about being in relationship together: how to listen, how to forgive, how to be vulnerable, and how to create trust and compassion in one another.
Let us move into worship, willing to be authentic with each other, honest within ourselves, and opening to connection in all its forms.
Today we are celebrating our Flower Ceremony, which was created by Dr. Norbert Čapek for the Liberal Religious Fellowship he founded in Prague, then Czechoslovakia, 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 Unitarian Universalist congregations everywhere.
We will have a potluck dinner and egg hunt following the service at Robert Helfer and Lisa deGruyter’s house in Clarksburg. Ham and potato salad will be provided. Please bring a dish to share and baskets for collecting eggs. There will be cascarones. Your friends and family are welcome, too.
We would love to have you come worship with us.
Our services are Sundays at 11 a.m. at the Progressive Women’s Association Event Center, 305 Washington Ave. in downtown Clarksburg, behind the Courthouse.
Our Religious Education/ Life Long Learning Class will meet at from 10am to 10:45 am with a coffee gathering before the service. More about us.
Adult religious education, at 10, will be a discussion on applying our beliefs to current events.
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 can park on either side of the PWA building. The lots are marked as private, but are available on Sunday mornings.
Prelude: Mango Thoughts in a Meatloaf Town Rev. Meg Barnhouse, First UU, Austin, Texas
Welcome
Hosea Ballou said “Man, being not only a religious, but also a social being, requires for the promotion of his rational happiness religious institutions, which, while they give a proper direction to devotion, at the same time make a wise, and profitable improvement of his social feelings.” And so we gather here, not only to practice our religion, but to support each other.
Chalice Lighting Drawn Together – Jennifer Leota Gray
We come together every week bound not by a creed,
Or a mutual desire to please one God or many Gods
Yet we are drawn together by a belief, that how we are in the world,
Who we are together matters.
We light this chalice, together in the knowledge
That love, not fear, can change this world Continue reading →
“Dance, when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you’re perfectly free.” ― Jalaluddin Rumi
Our youth and children will explore dance as a spiritual practice. The service will be fun and interactive.
We would love to have you come worship with us.
Our services are Sundays at 11 a.m. at the Progressive Women’s Association Event Center, 305 Washington Ave. in downtown Clarksburg, behind the Courthouse.
Our Religious Education/ Life Long Learning Class will meet at from 10am to 10:45 am with a coffee gathering before the service. More about 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.
We gather in the chill of winter solstice,
finding warmth from each other, nourishing
hope where reason fails.
Grateful for small miracles, we rejoice
in the wonder of light and darkness
and the daring of hope. Continue reading →
Lama Surya Das writes about our shared values in Buddhist Voices in Unitarian Universalism: Buddhism and Unitarian Universalism value many of the same things, including experiential practice, study and self-inquiry, mindful awareness cultivation, insightful wisdom development, and loving-kindness, combined with active compassion in the world. This is the heart of sacred activism—empowering, educating, edifying, elevating, transforming, and liberating.
This Sunday John Hall will explore the histotical connection between Unitarian Universalism and Buddhism.
We would love to have you come worship with us.
Our services are Sundays at 11 a.m. at the Progressive Women’s Association Event Center, 305 Washington Ave. in downtown Clarksburg, behind the Courthouse.
Our Religious Education/ Life Long Learning Class will meet at from 10am to 10:45 am with a coffee gathering before the service. More about 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.
[Heyr, himna smiður (Hear, Smith of the Heavens) was written by the Icelandic chieftain and poet Kolbeinn Tumason, according to tradition, on his deathbed in 1208 AD. Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson set the poem to music in 1973. This recording features the Icelandic “Indie Rock” group Árstíðir. For more information, see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolbeinn_Tumason.]
Welcome: The beauty of the whole, By Meg Barnhouse
We gather to worship, our hearts alive with hope that here we will be truly seen, that here we will be welcomed into the garden of this community, where the simple and the elegant, the fluted and frilled, the shy and the dramatic complement one another and are treasured. May we know that here, each contributes in their way to the beauty of the whole. Come, let us worship together, all genders, sexualities, politics, clappers and non-clappers, progressive or conservative, may we root ourselves in the values of this faith: compassion and courage, transcendence, justice and transformation.
Chalice lighting: Afraid of the dark, By Andrew Pakula
In sightless night, terrors draw near
Nameless fears of talon and tooth
Hopelessness yawns before us—an abyss
Alone and unknown in the gloom, longing for the dawn
O sacred flame blaze forth—wisdom brought to life
Guide us—
With the light of hope
The warmth of love
The beacon of purpose and meaning
Because we are all afraid of the dark
Let there be light
We are Unitarian Universalists. We are people of many paths who are brave, curious, and compassionate thinkers and doers.
Every day, people are inundated with information, overwhelmed by demands, and pulled by a culture that seeks to divide us from the web of life. Unitarian Universalism reconnects, bringing people together with meaning and inspiration. We are a house without walls, a congregation without spiritual limits, and a movement that calls you to put more faith in yourself, your community, and your beliefs. We are a faith that honors your mind, your heart, your journey. Simply put, we are a guided path towards a better you and a better world.
Grounded in more than two hundred years of thoughtful, spiritual communities, we are people of many generations, ethnicities, genders and sexualities, and spiritual backgrounds. People engaged in making the world a better place. People focusing on what really matters – love, justice, integrity, and hope.
Unitarian Universalists have different beliefs. but shared values. We are Unitarian Universalists, and at the same time we may also be agnostic, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, humanist, Jewish, Muslim, pagan, atheist, believers in God, and those who just let the great mystery be. The diversity of beliefs you’ll find in a Unitarian Universalist community is one of our strengths – we’re always learning how to see the world from a different perspective.
What unites us are our core principles that uphold seven real-world values:
Believing in the worthiness of every person.
Showing compassion and fairness.
Accepting others for who they are.
Growing through a personal search for truth.
Leading with democratic spirit.
Working for justice.
And understanding that everything is interconnected.
Seven days a week, Unitarian Universalists live these principles by doing. When we gather we worship, reflect and remind ourselves what matters most in life. Whatever our age, we learn to live with more wisdom, more awareness, more gratitude and more soul.
We show our values by showing up to answer the call for social justice. We have a track record of standing on the side of love for civil rights, LGBTQ equality, immigration reform, environmental sustainability, reproductive justice, racial justice, and more.
Find what it means to live your deepest values out loud. Join us on this extraordinary adventure of faith!
Welcome: To Remind Ourselves What Is Real, By Elena Westbrook
In a world ravaged by violence, by hatred,
by conflicts that seem eternal and insoluble,
sometimes the only thing we can do
is be still for a moment
to remind ourselves what is real:
the sun that rose this morning,
the dirt under our feet,
the air whispering in and out of our lungs.
This hour, try just to be present in each moment as it unfolds.
Your simple attention is what makes these moments holy.
Chalice lighting: Embrace The Night, By Jennifer Leota Gray
Universal mystery,
Guide us away from the desire to
Shine light in all the corners.
Teach us to embrace the night,
For without the darkness,
We never see the stars.
Cricket Hall will lead us in a service about the 4th Principle which is a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.
We would love to have you come worship with us.
Our services are Sundays at 11 a.m. at the Progressive Women’s Association Event Center, 305 Washington Ave. in downtown Clarksburg, behind the Courthouse.
Our Religious Education/ Life Long Learning Class will be from 10am to 10:45 am with a coffee gathering before the service. More about 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.
West Fork Unitarian Universalists 