Sermons & Talks

By Les Grady May 22, 2022 At the request of the author, please DO NOT COPY OR REUSE SLIDES . Climate Change 2022 file is in pdf format.

by Linda Dove May 1, 2022 Our Conscious Living Adults group has heard this before. A soldier before the battle of Waterloo is reported to have prayed, “Dear God, if there is a god, save my soul, if I have a soul.” I’ve decided I’m no longer going to tiptoe around the “God” word. As UUs we’re often reluctant to refer to God with a capital “G”  for fear of offending our Humanist or Atheist members and friends. And many of us migrated from religions discomforted by their rituals

by Linda Dove January 23, 2022 Good morning. I’m going to talk common sense today! But I’ll disappoint you if you think I’m preaching revolution against the Brits as did Tom Paine in his 1776 pamphlet entitled Common Sense . No, my focus this morning is on everyday sense-making, one of our three HUU tenets, as you know. < =">#1</a><strong>" Know="Know" Thyself-Temple="Thyself-Temple" at="at" Delphi="Delphi"> I’ve always been interested in how we humans make sense of ourselves

by Dave Pruett January 16, 2022 The Dilemma The late cultural historian and Catholic priest, Thomas Berry wrote: “We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story.  We are between stories.” The “we” to which Berry refers is the human race, certainly the Western world. No one with eyes to see can deny that humanity is facing simultaneous existential crises: pandemics, climate instability, aging nuclear weapons on hair triggers, extreme disparities in wealth and p

By Rev. Kirk Ballin December 5, 2021 READINGS 1.Out of the Stars by Robert Weston Out of the stars in their flight, out of the dust of eternity, here have we come, Stardust and sunlight, mingling through time and through space. Out of the stars have we come, up from time. Out of the stars have we come. Time out of time before time in the vastness of space, earth spun to orbit the sun, Earth with the thunder of mountains newborn, the boiling of seas. Earth warmed by sun, lit b

November 21, 2021 by Linda A. Dove As you all know, one of the earliest Thanksgiving celebrations was in October 1621 when the Plymouth colonists, together with the Wampanoag people, gave thanks for the harvest. Or perhaps it was earlier in Virginia in 1619, or later in Winthrop’s Massachussets in 1637, or even President Lincoln’s Union victory celebration in 1863. But nowadays, we celebrate the holiday this week, the fourth Thursday in November, thanks to FDR’s official edic

by Linda A. Dove September 26, 2021 Good morning. Our long absence from HUU has made me realize how attached I am to our schoolhouse in its lovely gardens and location. This gets me thinking about the physical aspect of church buildings, what religious meanings they convey, and how they do it. My mother and I used to explore old churches in England. She loved the modest ones in country villages—every one unique in style. We also visited the early-Gothic cathedrals like Lincol

By Dan Spitzner September 19, 2021 Calling the Four Directions:  Text by Jane Carnwath. Read by Sue Miller. Grandmother and Grandfather of the EAST -- Spirits of the morning, of inspiration, of new beginnings. We ask you to give us your clarity of thought, your quickness, your creativity, and your courage. Grandmother and Grandfather of the SOUTH -- Spirits of joy and spontaneity, of the day at its height. Grant us your gifts of deep emotion, of empathy, of warm hearts and of

by J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. August 15, 2021 It has been widely argued that New England transcendentalism was the first genuinely Americanintellectual movement, strongly influencing philosophy, theology, politics, and literature. Many date its clear beginning to the first meeting of the Transcendental Club on September 12, 1836, never really a club rather than a series of meetings. That first meeting had only three participants: two Unitarian  ministers, Frederic Henry Hedge who

Presented by Chris Edwards and Robin McNallie July 4, 2021 Video: Democracy, by Leonard Cohen Chalice reading: Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are people who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never did and it never will. Frederick Douglass I: On The 1619 Project (CE) -- In August, 1619, a

by April Moore May 30, 2021 A few months ago, here at HUU, I expressed a great joy about something that had unexpectedly come into my life—a folder of my mother’s writings from long ago. Apparently, when I’d received the folder a couple of years ago from my sister, I’d stashed it in a closet and forgotten all about it. But a couple of months ago I came across it. This folder was stuffed with more than 40 typed stories and essays.  From the return address on the first page o

by Tom Hook April 11, 2021 When I first began to review this topic from Soul Matters of “Becoming”, I must admit that I was a bit perplexed and challenged. After all, most of us present here today – including myself – would be categorized in the camp of “aging out”. So what else do we need to Become? After all, we have weathered so much in our brief stay on Mother Earth. Wars, unrest, pandemics, the re?emergence of racism. Can’t we just rest? Put our feet up and relax for the

By Cathy Strickler February 14, 2021 Hi Everybody, it’s really great to be here with you all and have the opportunity to talk. Thank you Merle, I really appreciate you for asking me and I really appreciate you all for listening. I also appreciate and thank everyone who has made these programs possible. They have been a consistent source of connection and comfort. When Merle asked me to speak I knew right away that I wanted to talk about compassion because I had been thinking

By J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. January 31, 2021 Three weeks ago Tom Hook spoke about “Imagination, ” the topic this month from Soul Matters, with today the last of the month. While he mentioned a dark side to imagination, he mostly focused on its positive aspect, providing visions of better futures that may be achieved with proper hope and effort. Today we shall be more concerned with the dark side, people imagining things that are simply unreal and are not going t

By Mary Hahn January 17, 2021 I woke up one morning and saw the frost on the roof and on the grass and I looked out at the mountains that stood strong like an unbreakable sentry that has stood guard over the valley for millions of years. The mountains are the soul of the region. To understand the mountains is to know ourselves. During our brief lifetime we see little change; they appear much the same. My mind drifted back to the times in which we live. The acrimony and the pa

By Tom Hook January 10, 2021 IMAGINE THAT! Can I? Can we? When I chose this video for this morning, it was before the devastating attack on our Democracy this past Wednesday. This video, titled “The Great Reversal” is based upon Isaiah 60. Isaiah wrote this for the Jewish exiles who are returning to Jerusalem after their captivity in Babylonia. Cyrus of Persia, who had defeated the Babylonians, allowed the Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem and even provides funds to financ

By Les Grady December 27, 2020 As part of the service, Linda Dove read RUBAIYAT FOR PLANET EARTH . So, what’s an apocaloptimist?  The urban dictionary definition is “someone who knows it’s all going to hell, but believes it’ll turn out OK, ” with “it” being the country, the environment, humanity, or something else.  For me, it’s the climate. I’m an engineer, and most engineers are, by nature, optimists.  We solve problems, which requires optimism.  If a problem is so large an

By Tom Hook, November 8, 2020 Quote - bell hooks (author & social activist) What Does It Mean to be a People of Healing? pdf format Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion. Healing is an act of communion? Let’s ponder that a bit…. Here we are in the midst of a worldwide pandemic of Covid-19, racial and civil unrest, economic uncertainty, and just five days from one to the most vicious, divisive elections in history and we hear from b

By Anna Karola August 9, 2020 When I sat down yesterday to take one last look at this talk, I came across this quote from Hildegarde von Bingham. She was a poet, composer, mystic far ahead of her place and time. She was a Renaissance woman before the Renaissance, who led a monastery north of the Alps. In her holistic understanding of the universe, she expresses herself in one sentence and expresses my talk in this one sentence. Born in 1098, she predates me by over 1000 years

Bill Faw June 14, 2020 On March 8, I was the last in-person speaker at this church. Sorry: I did not mean to shut you down! In the ‘lemonade out of lemons’ category: the shutdown has given me a chance to watch most of the HUU services on Zoom with Martha, and then watch my Bridgewater Church of the Brethren services later via YouTube. This has allowed me to see some excellent sermons from both inspiring churches! I ended my March 8 talk with the possibility that humans