Claim OwnershipChurch of the Larger Fellowship UU Worship
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Worship services from the Church of the Larger Fellowship, a Unitarian Universalist congregation without geographical boundaries or walls.
63 Episodes
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It has been over two years since the start of the genocide in Gaza and the world has been grieving the continued loss of life and potential of thousands upon thousands of Palestinians. Together we will honor the lives lost and hold in our hearts prayers for an end to the horror and destruction.
Description: Job's wife is vilified for her anguished, irreverent response to tragedy in her household. But what if we listened more closely to her challenge? What if, instead of avoiding or ignoring the pain of loss, we allowed it to open a path to a fuller, more courageous faith?
Reflection question: It has been said that a broken heart is an open heart tenderized to love even more deeply. What's breaking your heart in these times? What losses have you avoided grieving? What haven't you said to God for fear of rebuke? What support do you need to tell God the truth?
Often when we discuss grief, we are being encouraged to identify, acknowledge and/or accept the layers and cycles of grief that we are experiencing. But how do we engage this subject when we are the cause of another person’s grief? This week. I will share a story about a time when I was a source of grief.
The Rev. Meg Barnhouse once said, "I believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every person, not every idea." In what ways can we lean into affirming each other and maintaining the humanity of all as we work to dismantle systems of harm.
Arundhati Roy, in her novel The God of Small Things, describes trauma, grief, and loss as leaving holes in the universe--shaped like the things we have lost. When we sew up those holes, we leave a mark behind even as we restore our fabric to wholeness. How do we honor those marks and help each other sew up our holes of grief?
Lamentation is a ritualized approach to grief. It creates opportunities for us to acknowledge, reflect upon and say goodbye to the piles of rubble we leave behind; our many unmet expectations, dreams and desires.
How do progressive religious folks maintain their faith in a time of monsters? This was the question posed during a symposium in Seattle recently. I will share my own reflections and learning on how we keep the faith in a time of monsters.
Can lament over the suffering all around us be our hope? Can we express lament without getting stuck there? We seek to build a religious community where that lament is welcome as part of a cycle of healing, growth, and action.
So much talk about accountability focuses on our accountability to others but how are we accountable to ourselves. . .our values. . . our flaws. . . our visions. . .our desires? How do we honor the “sound of the genuine” in us, our embodied knowing that is beyond words?
Rev. Donté's questions to think about:
Why are you on this path of life ?
What are your patterns of dissatisfaction with the path ?
What is Missing on this path?
What are you going to do about it ?
When we center the needs and care of the most vulnerable among us, we help all of us. When we reject the idea that anyone is unworthy, we refuse to let systems of oppression flourish. We are faced with a moment in time right now. Humanity can center each other, the planet, life and love or we can ignore the reality that our destinies are intertwined at our peril.
We see the atrocities everywhere--starving children, bombed cities, concentration camps. People take to social media and the news talking about "toxic empathy," as if there could be such a thing. It feels like we are losing our humanity in real time. How do we turn the tide?
“The Circle Is Still Open” is a message about grief, covenant, and accountability as sacred practices rooted in love, truth-telling, and community. Through personal story and collective memory, it calls us to reject silence and systems of harm, and to stay in the work of justice by holding one another with care, courage, and integrity.
Reflection Question: How might your understanding of accountability change if you see it not as judgment, but as a practice of love and healing?
The beginning of August is celebrated in European paganism as the beginning of the harvest season, known as Lammas or Lughnasadh. We will celebrate the ways in which the Earth sustains our lives, and ponder what accountability means in this context.
In a world that often asks us to wear masks or shrink parts of ourselves, integrity calls us to live with wholeness and authenticity. This service explores what it means to align our inner truth with our outer lives—and how that alignment can be a path to healing, liberation, and sacred belonging.
As Unitarian Universalists, we care deeply about matters of justice. However, in a world where the chaos and evils of Empire are becoming more and more apparent to many, how do we confront and transform overlapping and interlocking systems of structural evil, while fostering the integrity of our fullness? Join us this week as we explore how valuing sacred little things can offer us a new perspective on social transformation and personal formation.
Reading suggestion: Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by adrienne maree brown
How does our relationship with the sacred call us to integrity? Does wholeness simply require us to be ourselves, or is there something more involved? We will explore the dimension of integrity that connects us to something beyond ourselves.
Over the years, and in different congregations I’ve served, I have received feedback that I was “too political” and not “spiritual enough.” I will name that spirituality absent recognition of the politics of the day is disassociation. We can be spiritual as we navigate the challenges of our times. The invitation is to engage in grounded spirituality that feeds the soul while not denying what is happening in the world.
What is the relationship between story-telling, meaning-making, memory and thriving? Join us this week as we explore remembering and reclaiming our past as a liberative practice.
We are called to bear witness to the lives of our incarcerated beloveds. Through their words and their songs, written with Unlocking Harmony, we will be entrusted with a sacred gift of giving voice to those our society makes voiceless.
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