[The Responsive Reading: "Would You Harbor Me?" by Ysaye Barnwell]
Would you harbor me, and try to provide me safety in a world often difficult and sometimes cruel? Would I harbor you? Would any of us harbor a very pregnant stranger and her husband who show up out of the blue?
I think how [...]
I hope that you all had happy days of thanksgiving, and that you found much for which to be thankful - that whatever satisfies your heart and mind, it has been yours, and is.
Each of us has his or her own sense of what most satisfies, for which we can aspire, the achievement of which [...]
A sentiment I have heard commonly of late is an eagerness for an end to or at least an abatement of all the political news and advertisements. Indeed, some of you may have come to church this morning in hope of finding refuge from all that. But ever since the Newcomer Committee took [...]
Weekend before last, my wife Carol and I were back in New Jersey, where we’re from. The occasion was the fiftieth anniversary of the UU Church of Monmouth County, which is in the town of Lincroft. There was a dinner on Saturday evening, and then at both celebratory services on Sunday morning the [...]
I want to celebrate the many ways that many of you take our religious values out into your lives beyond these walls - in your relations with family and friends, at your places of work, and in voluntary efforts to promote peace, justice, and what I recently heard a colleague describe as the gentling of [...]
Here is how it began: I got an email from one of you, who often goes under the name of Roger Horine, with an article attached, one about a new book by Darrin McMahon called Happiness: A History. He commended it to my attention because, he wrote, “it brings up so many angles [...]
Here it is, our first regular Sunday of the new church year, and I want to talk about gifts, about the gifts we give and receive, the gifts that we are, or can be, gifts to each other, and to the world.
I read a book about gifts this summer called The Gift by Lewis Hyde. [...]
If you were here a month ago, you had a chance to write down on a 4×6 card what thing bugs you that the rest of us wouldn’t guess. If you weren’t here, you might wonder, Why? To get into my sermon today, I need to begin by repeating a part of the [...]
My apologies go to those of you who are worshipping here at First Parish for the first time. This is not a typical Sunday morning. It is the Sunday morning of Memorial Day weekend, and for thirty years or so, I have used the occasion to recognize the deaths of people who were alive when [...]
Religion has been in the news of late, and not just because of the mega-church phenomenon or the political clout of the religious right. Actual religious scholarship has made some headlines, religious scholars are interviewed on talk radio, at least on national public radio, and scholarly religious books make the best-seller lists.
One of the books [...]
We gather in this season and we celebrate the beauties of nature. Our music sings of the glories of nature, the wonders of Creation. And we and our children rededicate ourselves to the care for those wonders, to treasure and protect that Creation.
We have done this before: paused on a Sunday to cherish the beauties [...]
“Spirit of Life” [which had just been sung] is probably the most popular song in our hymnal. There are even some UU churches where it is sung every week, maybe as accompaniment to the children’s departure. People love it. Except for the people who hate it. You know what else [...]