Picking up on Deepa Iyer’s insights into human ecosystems, as well as our ongoing exploration of what Beloved Community requires, we celebrate the ways that having many different perspectives and roles among us, deepening our connections, and nurturing our relationships not only feed and grow our spirits, but also help us reach our common, values-centered goals. Goodness knows, the world needs all of it! 

Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Carol Nimick and Sarah Joy Blum, Worship Associates

Rooted in faith in the inherent worth and dignity of every person, Unitarian Universalists have long affirmed explicitly the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large. However, as Molly Ivans put it, “Democracy requires . . . a large tolerance for confusion and a secret relish for dissent.” Sigh. This Sunday we celebrate not only our aspiration but also our promise to give everyone a voice.

Rev. Kevin with Gail Johnson Vaughan, Worship Associate

You want to feel celebratory about this year’s 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding, a founding nurtured by the ideas, values and writings of our religious ancestors, but it can be difficult to scrape up enthusiasm when the nation’s shortcomings are apparent and when so much that we value is in such deep jeopardy. You are invited to this birthday party both to celebrate and to be real.  

Rev. Kevin with Gail Johnson Vaughan, Worship Associate 

“The place where we meet to seek the highest is holy ground.” – Felix Adler.  

It’s tempting to people both outside and inside Unitarian Universalism to characterize our faith tradition “as every kind of psycho-social-political venture except a religious one,” wrote Tom Owen-Towle, who contends, instead, that healthy congregations are “primarily sites for seeking and spreading the holy.”  Here in new space, with our varied beliefs and perspectives, and with room to grow both inwardly and outwardly, how might we together grow a Beloved Community and realize that we occupy holy ground.  

Kurt Gray claims, in his book Outraged, that across the socio-political spectrum we share the same moral foundation – an ancient psychological need to protect the vulnerable from harm. It’s just that we have differing perceptions as to who is being harmed! Let’s examine our own moral outrage and surface our compassion at the same time, even as we learn to set fiercely compassionate boundaries to prevent the harm that we perceive.

Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Randy McKean, Worship Associate

This Sunday, beginning our month-long invitation to “pay attention,” we celebrate the nature and power of community and the rising, nay surging and converging waves of energy and possibility being generated these days. 

Kristin Neff advocates Fierce Compassion: balancing tender self-kindness (yin) with assertive strength (yang). We’ll draw on Neff’s insights to help us cultivate our resilience for the sake of our personal lives and the sake of the world we seek. Plus, the UUCM choir, under the direction of Ingrid Holman.

Rev. Kevin Tarsa, with the UUCM Choir, Marlene Bottenfield, Worship Associate

The whole idea of “resistance” pushes people’s buttons. Sometimes our response comes from a discomfort with or rejection of the idea of resistance, and sometimes the button that’s pushed is a “Hell yes, let’s go!” button. Together, we’ll dive into the complexities of “resistance,” framing resistance not as rebellion for its own sake, but as an expression of faithfulness to our shared values. 

Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Carol Nimick, Worship Associate

For the past several years Rev. Kevin has invited people to choose a word for the year. Some of us travel with the word all year, engaging it in active conversation with our lives. Others of us forget our word within a few weeks. This year, in the swirl of “resolutions” energy, we’ll be invited to enter the next 12 months with a question for the year, a question that meets your life where it is and asks for an ongoing conversation. 

Rev. Kevin Tarsa

As our Soul Matters authors write, “Hope doesn’t just whisper ‘It will be different,’ it also shouts, ‘It should be different’ and ‘It can be different.’ . . . In other words, hope doesn’t just promise us that change will come in the future; it also changes who we are in the present.” Come celebrate the possibility of choosing hope, and honor the Holy Impatience and hope in you. 

Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Cheryl Morris, Worship Associate

Transitioning from the gifts of November’s focus on cultivating gratitude, to December’s theme of choosing hope, we draw on the tradition of Advent (meaning “arrival”), a season of anticipation, reflection, and preparation in various Christian traditions, to check in with our own personal and collective anticipations. What arrivals are you awaiting? 

One year out from the 2024 presidential election, many of us feel the weight and the worry of the unmaking of so much of what evidenced or supported, if often imperfectly, our values in the life of the nation. We like to say and believe that disintegration, though painful, can open up rare space for something powerfully new. Are we there yet? 

Rev. Kevin Tarsa

Thich Nhat Hanh stated: “To look deeply into the suffering of those who have caused us to suffer is a miraculous gift.” Gift?  

Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Gail Johnson Vaughan, Worship Associate

Both empathy and compassion begin as inside jobs, empathy being our feeling of what someone else is feeling, and compassion being the action we take in response to those feelings. This Sunday, we cultivate our self-compassion, powerful medicine for good within and without, and we notice some of what gets in the way. 

Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Gail Johnson Vaughan, Worship Associate

Many of us were taught to be cautious of strangers. As we go about our day, we usually interact with family, friends and coworkers. These relationships can help us feel cared for and connected. But what if there’s a whole category of people in our lives whose impact is overlooked? What if these interactions hold a key for current times? 

Rev. Kevin Tarsa

with Gail Johnson Vaughan, Worship Associate

Erik Walker Wikstrum writes, “Common wisdom holds that people come to church for a sense of belonging, and that getting involved with a committee or task force is a great way to meet people and feel more connected.” But what if we come for an even deeper reason, he asks: “to have our lives transformed.” What if we understood our participation in the life of this community as a key source of spiritual sustenance, and a source of deep joy? 

Picking up on the themes of the previous Sunday’s service, we ask more deeply why it matters that UUCM is here, why being part of such a community matters now in particular, and what the upward movement of energy, interest, and number of searchers at our doors is asking of us, teaching us, and gifting us. 

It's time to put together all the learning we've done about ourselves and start using it to dig into tough topics. Rev. Kevin took time at a recent service to open the conversation about the conflict in Gaza and our spiritual call to find both clarity and complexity.

Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Sophia McKean, Worship Associate

Enneagram Series - Type Nine (9): Our final Enneagram type, the Nine, the Peacemaker, is the part of us that is driven to seek inner and outer peace for ourselves and others. This is also the part of us that embodies the fundamental challenge of all spiritual or inner work – being awake rather than asleep to our true nature. Whew. Sounds exhausting. At least to a Nine. Maybe I’ll sleep just a little bit longer.

Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Lindsay Dunckel, Worship Associate

Enneagram Series - Type Five (5): Our year-long look into aspects of our personalities is meant, in part, to strengthen our ability to live the pluralism our tradition claims as important. We begin this month’s pluralism theme with a dive into Fiveness. The head-centered “Investigator” is the part of us that wants to find out why things are the way they are and to understand how the world works – always searching, asking questions, and testing truth for ourselves. Sounds like many a Unitarian Universalist.

Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Randy McKean, Worship Associate