My husband David grew up in Chester, Massachusetts, a small, out-of-the-way, non-descript hill town in the Berkshires. His city-reared parents had bought the Chester Inn, smack in the center of the village, and ran it as a Boarding House/ Bar that came to be inhabited and frequented by a quirky cast of characters straight [...]
The Christmas Sunday Homily
It’s true, [as was pointed out earlier] this is my 25th year here in Wayland, my 25th
Community Carol Sing, my 25th Christmas Sunday, and my 25th Christmas Eve, all since
the beginning featuring two services. I figure I have sung about 400 verses of “It Came
Upon the Midnight Clear.” I apologize to [...]
Story for all Ages: “Town Mouse and Country Mouse” as told by Kimi Riegel
One morning the town mouse woke up shivering from a dream about the kitchen cat who prowled the house. “I need a vacation,” he said to his wife. “Let me take you to see the. Life is quiet and peaceful there. “Let’s [...]
As in most denominations, we Unitarian Universalists come out with a new hymnbook every generation or so. Favorites from the old book are carried on, sometimes over and again, like two hymns still in our latest book, written by long-departed predecessors of mine in this pulpit, “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” and “Mysterious [...]
There is an ancient story of an adopted child. His mother couldn’t keep him safe and so she made an adoption plan and set the small being in a boat where someone who could care for him would surely find him. He was pulled out of the river by another family and raised as their [...]
Before the month is over, we will have a service centered on the popular hymn that begins, Spirit of Life, come unto me. Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion.” And so forth. For some of us, that image of a spirit of life is a wonderful metaphor, a way of describing something [...]
There will be a variety of sermon topics at the First Parish in Wayland on the five Sunday mornings this month. There always is, like at most Unitarian Universalist churches, fellowships, and societies. We are that kind of a movement. Our religious interests tend to range widely. We seek inspiration, knowledge, and guidance in all [...]
To newcomers, let me assure you, I will not spend every Sunday morning’s sermon relating our current practice to the way things used to be done here at First Parish, as I did last week with our heritage of “congregational polity,” with both independence and connectedness for local congregations.
Other connections with the early [...]
by the Rev. Kimi Riegel & the Rev. Ken Sawyer
The words of our responsive reading, taken from Buddhist tradition, offer a heartening hope: that we might live with “boundless love for all the world,” with “love unrestrained, without hate or enmity,” never wishing “evil to anyone at all.”
But then when we signal our interest in [...]
A Sermon About the Cambridge Platform
To outsiders, Unitarian Universalism often looks like a religion that is very contemporary, alert to the issues and ideas of the moment, even too much so, perhaps a little faddish, the sort of place where, you turn your back for a few years and when you look again, [...]
This is a tale of two tattoos — a parable of regret and redemption.
There was a man who had been a devout Jew. As a boy and young man, he had joyfully worshipped his God in the village shul, and he kept all of God’s commandments and laws.
But when he entered his twenties, the man [...]
Wasn’t the summer just great! You went to that place to which you always go, and life there was a wonderful as ever, I’ll bet: the sailing, the swimming, the hiking, the arts, the crafts, the lobster, the sunshine. You went to a camp that was so simple and natural that they didn’t even have [...]