Sermons & Talks

By Tom Hook December 1, 2024 Advent: What Does It Mean? In Christianity, Advent refers to the period of four weeks leading up to Christmas. It begins on the Sunday closest to November 30 and ends on December 24. It is a time of anticipation and preparation for the celebration of the birth of Jesus on Christmas Day. The word “Advent” is derived from the Latin word adventus, which means “coming” or “arrival, " which translates to the Greek word parousia. Parousia means: . . . p

November 17, 2024 Rev. Janet Onnie The story of Nehemiah is my go-to story whenever I think about the challenges of building the world our Unitarian Universalists values dictate. Values we share with those ancient Jews. Last week those values came under attack. As did many other congregations, we at HUU participated in a grief vigil. Last Sunday the Unitarian Universalist congregations nationwide reported overflowing sanctuaries with people expressing their fear, anger, s

Rev. Janet Onnie September 1, 2024 Last week Rev. Paul Britner described ministry, quoting Gordon McKeeman, as ‘the quality of a relationship between and among human beings that beckons forth hidden possibilities.’  Rev. Britner gave striking examples of individuals doing ministry.  I need only to look around at HUU and see equally striking examples of people doing ministry.  So why did you feel you needed a minister?  To address that question that I’ll need to reference our

by Rev. Kirk Ballin August 18, 2024 The Dash by Linda Ellis I read of a man who stood to speak at the funeral of a friend. He referred to the dates on the tombstone from the beginning…to the end. He noted that first came the date of birth And spoke the following date with tears, But he said what mattered most of all Was the dash between those years. For that dash represents all the time that they spent alive on earth. And now only those who loved them know what that little li

by Tom Hook August 11, 2024             Good morning and thank you for having me again.  This was a short notice situation as your scheduled speaker, Valerie Luna Serrels, had to cancel for this Sunday for personal reasons.               I suspect several of you are somewhat familiar with the Enneagram.  I first was exposed to it in 1990 during my Spiritual Direction studies.  Over the years I have become more and more intrigued with this personality typology and how it can (

July 7, 2024 By Bill Faw Good morning! This is my 14th message for HUU since September, 2018. Today we look at the interesting question: Is history flat (basically staying the same), circular (getting better, then worse, in cycles), inclining (getting better), or declining (getting worse)? PARTS ONE AND TWO: HISTORY FLAT AND/OR CIRCULAR For classic portrayals of both the ‘flat’ and ‘circular/cyclical’ views of history, let us turn to good old Ecclesiastes from the Hebrew Bib

June 30, 2024 Upwellings © Linda Ankrah-Dove As if in unchanging tidal currents solitude brings me me quiet soothings in my peaceful home. My body floats, my mind calms, spacious with the lulling cycles of the once-steady seasons. I think of our mammal cousins—whales slow-swinging easy with the ceaseless ocean rhythms, rising to breathe the essential air, blowing rainbow spouts across the sloping waves. But in these frenetic times, the climate calendar's constant clangings tr

June 16, 2024 HUU Minute with Judith Dreyer I am preparing a talk for LLI as part of a class offered by the Master Gardeners. I have been researching the “flip side of invasives” for several reasons…to flip the narrative from war on specific plants to what they are trying to tell us and, more importantly, what they are doing for us. As you can imagine, I'm going “out on a limb” here. (pun intended) I am looking at specific troublesome species. Guess what? As Merle calls our

By Rev. Janet Onnie May 12, 2024             Among other events on the May calendar is Mother’s Day.  This holiday is celebrated in the U.S. and in several other countries around the world today.  This is a day when many of my colleagues flee their pulpits.  To address the complexity of the individual experiences with their birth mother – or lack thereof – regardless of nationality -- is to guarantee push-back from almost everyone.  It also ignores the men who have nurtured c

By Sandy Greene May 6, 2024 Wow, what a perfect topic for this pollen palooza spring!  And for the flower communion. (Pollen and nectar are like the sacraments!) Wind Pollination is the oldest and most obvious. Oaks, hickories, grasses, willow, pines. The bulk of our entire ecosystem here in the Shenandoah Valley!    So much pollen just taking a chance that it might land on the right kind of dangly flower racemes so that an acorn or hickory nut can develop.  It has to be the

March 17, 2024 Presenters: April Moore, Barbara Moore, Lee Anna Farrall, Andrew Henry, Pete Rapp, Linda Dove With the coming of light after long winter darkness, it’s a good time for us to look forward to the turning of our seasons. With this service, if a little prematurely, we contemplate Spring Meeting Summer. Poetry is an ideal medium for us to contemplate the various responses of human beings to seasonal changes, especially for us in the Shenandoah Valley blessed with al

By Tom Hook March 3, 2024 One of the Article II Revision’s Shared Values is: Transformation .          We adapt to the changing world. We covenant to collectively transform and grow spiritually and ethically. Openness to change is fundamental to our Unitarian and Universalist heritages, never complete and never perfect. (article II Revisions Shared Values) __________________________________________________________________ It doesn't matter how old we are. We all need stories

February 4, 2024 By Rev. Kirk Ballin READINGS FOR LOVE AND ONLY LOVE 1.” Soberingly, despite all our advances in technology and material resources, we are not much more advanced in the art of delivering emotionally healthy childhoods than generations before us. The number of breakdowns, inauthentic lives, and broken souls shows no marked signs of decline… We are failing to offer one another tolerable childhoods not because we are sinful or indifferent, but because we still ha

January 7, 2024 Rekindling the Light by Merle Wenger I would like to open this sharing part of the service with a message provided by our UUA President Sofia Betancourt in a sermon we might air at a later date.  The sermon focuses on the seeds we are planting for new year and the expectations we have for their fruit. (I paraphrase)During Covid we weaved our faith into community care. We built magical bridges and those bridges bring us into the present but require tending. Whe

November 19, 2023 by Linda Dove, Chris Edwards, Robin McNallie, and David Lane Apple Communion Beryl’s apples fall for Kroger boxes to enclose and keep till Sunday service-goers take and eat as many as they will. Through blue September days they fall, through nights that darken, lengthen, end all summer. They fill one season, yes. But empty first another. Fall apples then, the windfall sign that times and marks a season’s end -- that speak their sermons not in stone, com

November 5, 2023 ©Rev. Janet Onnie A few weeks ago the weather was unseasonably warm for the Saturday morning Staunton Farmer’s Market. As I shouldered my way through a bumper crop of chatting adults, unleashed children, and many, many dogs, I remembered a column by Perry Bacon Jr. who was bemoaning his inability to find a religious community for himself and his daughter. He wrote, “The Saturday farmers market in my neighborhood and a weekly happy hour of Louisville-area jo

What does it mean to be truly human and fully alive in the twenty-first century? by Tom Hook August 20, 2023 We shall be known by the company we keep by the ones who circle round to tend these fires. It is time now, and what a time to be alive. In this Great Turning we shall learn to lead in love. These words from MaMuse might seem conflicting to the times we are living in. With the immense knowledge humankind possesses at present, and the myriad of crises the global communit

August 6, 2023 © Rev. Janet Onnie           In 1971 John Lennon wrote the wildly popular song, “Imagine”.  Some of the lyrics, “Imagine there’s no heaven, No hell below us, ” is core Universalist theology.”  No one is damned, all are saved.  What I find problematic, however,   is the lyric, “Imagine there's no countries, nothing to kill or die for – and no religion too.”  And also no religion??  The implication is that religion is the basis for all conflict and if we could j

By Andy Schmookler July 16, 2023 Who are we human beings by nature? Why has our story been such a troubled one? What do we need to do to achieve the kind of world we want? As a civilization, we have not had adequate answers to those questions. And an important part of the reason for that is this: We have not been seeing ourselves in the perspective that shows us some fundamental truths about the story of our species. For millennia, humankind developed its answers without good

by Bill Faw July 2, 2023 INTRODUCTION Happy Birthday, America. Happy 247 th Birthday. What kind of a nation are you? What kind of government do you have? Let us begin to answer that by considering this distinction between “nation” and “government”.  The “nation” constitutes the land and the people, while the “government” is the network of administrative, legislative, and judicial forces which governs the nation.       Christian nationalists generally blur that distinction an