Unfolding Faith: Sermons from Foothills Unitarian

In a world that keeps demanding we either smooth over our differences or cut each other off completely, Rev. Sean's message explores a harder, more honest way forward—where love isn’t control or avoidance, but the daily work of staying rooted in your convictions while making space for others to be fully themselves. What if the tension we’re trying so hard to eliminate is actually where love—and transformation—lives?

In a world where fear often masquerades as wisdom, this message invites you to treat your discomfort not as a red light, but as data—pointing to where love is asking more of you. Rev. Sean draws on personal experience to help differentiate between real threat and personal unease, and choosing to cross the bridge of courageous love—even when it’s hard, even when you’re scared—to have fellowship with those on the other side.

This past Sunday was our cherished annual Service of Remembrance, where we came together to honor loved ones who have passed by bringing their photos or objects into our sacred space as we built a shared altar.  Rev. Elaine asked Foothills Member Karen Wilken to talk about the sudden loss of her son, Oliver, and her journey with grief.

You’ve spent years believing that if you just told the truth clearly enough, people would see it—but now that logic feels broken, and it’s breaking something in you, too. When the old tools stop working, faith invites us to grieve what’s gone and still step forward, learning to speak truth in a way that reshapes the ground we stand on.

We want to believe heaven is already here, on earth. In beauty, and nature; in generosity and creativity; and in human goodness that still surprises us in its abundance. But then....we read the headlines, we feel the heartbreak, and we experience the harm - and all of these ideas feel hollow. So, as Eleanor Shellstrop (from TV's The Good Place) might say....is this the bad place? And if so, how do we live faithfully here - in what Parker Palmer calls the "tragic gap,"  between the world as it is and the world as it could be? These are the questions at the heart of this sermon from Rev. Gretchen.

Life shifts under our feet in ways we didn’t ask for— relationships strain, identities evolve, and structures and expectations that once felt right can start to feel confining.  It’s easy to mistake the pain of breaking open, growing, and becoming as a sign that something is wrong.   This message from Rev. Elaine invites us to discern whether the strain we feel is the cost of becoming or the cost of staying too small.

What happens after we mess up—after we hurt someone, fail ourselves, or cause harm, intentionally or not?  We can either spiral into shame—or we can turn toward growth. Shame disconnects us from belonging, but growth deepens it. This Sunday, Rev. Gretchen Haley continues our Broken | Open series with wisdom from the Jewish High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Together, we’ll explore how to find meaning and belonging—even after we fall short. ✨ A creative story for kids and youth ✨ Gorgeous music to ground and lift us ✨ Belonging, even in our brokenness

Lament is the cry of the heart that says: “This pain matters.” It doesn’t try to fix, defend, or explain. It witnesses. It gives voice to the grief, anger, confusion, and sorrow we so often carry in silence. Across traditions - from the Hebrew psalms to Buddhist stories, from African American spirituals to modern poetry - lament has always been a way to be fully present in life as it really is. Together, we’ll learn how lament can connect us, comfort us, and remind us: whatever you’re carrying, you don’t carry it alone. You can expect a space for all-out whining and collective sighing, maybe even some stomping of feet. And of course powerful music from Julie Koenig the whole way through it all. Most of all, the invitation to both share and witness all that we are holding, in community. Let's do this, together. Link to Book of Laments: https://simplebooklet.com/bookoflaments#page=1

Feeling entirely lost? Confused? Sometimes, right when the map fails, the real path begins. This Sunday: bewilderment, whirling, and the possibility that being lost can be the place where we are ultimately found.  Rev. Gretchen will be preaching, Christopher Watkins Lamb and Julie Koenig will be leading music, Rev. Elaine will be reading a wild poem about a crab, and many of us will be twirling. Maybe including you? Hope to see you there! 

Do you ever get the feeling that you are having an experience NO ONE could ever understand? Something too hard, too embarrassing, too messy....these feelings can make us feel so alone, and so isolated. But what we have learned (especially those of us whose job it is to meet people in these challenging moments) is that these moments that feel unique to you, are often the exact things that other people are struggling with too.  This Sunday, Rev. Elaine shares from her experience as our lead minister for pastoral care to remind us that the place where you feel most alone is often your place of deepest belonging.  

You don’t become a different person overnight—but staying in long-haul relationships has a way of slowly confronting who you were and calling out who you’re becoming. This message from Rev. Gretchen looks at how deep, lasting connections reshape us over time in ways quick fixes never could.

This Sunday we share a re-imagined and reinvigorated Water Ceremony ritual for all ages. This tradition was born from UU women 45 years ago who got tired of being told how to worship and decided to create their own ceremony, and this year we take up their mantle as we reinvent this piece of our living tradition in our own way. We explore what it means to be dammed up and what it feels like when those dams finally break, practicing the radical act of letting barriers come down. We'll look at the Klamath River, where the largest dam removal in U.S. history just happened. After a century of being blocked, salmon are swimming home. The river remembers. We're made of that same stubborn, remembering water, and its gifts are also ours: The wildness of the water is a current alive in within you, within us, flowing in a way that needs no permission, no apologies, no restraint. The power of the water is ours, together - a force within us like a river that's been gathering behind a dam of lies for decades, finally free to carve new channels through everything that tries to contain us. Wild belonging, as innate as the belonging of a river in its bed of stone and soil, is ours to claim when we only remember that we’ve always been part of this current.

We gather to celebrate and honor the extraordinary Eleanor VanDeusen, who is retiring after 26 years of ministry in religious education and family ministry at Foothills.  Revs. Gretchen, Sean, and Elaine, along with guest minister Rev. Justin Schroeder guide us. Rev. Justin grew up at Foothills and worked with Eleanor as a youth coordinator.  He reflects on both Eleanor, and also on what our children, youth, and families need from the church now, as truth refuses to be still, continuing to unfold and reveal new understandings and possibilities. This Sunday we also bless backpacks for all our kids and school employees about to start their new school year! Plus, we’re joined by musical guest Adam Podd!

In these days of fear, we must keep asking: what sacrifices must we make to make belonging real? Not just pretty words, but actual bodies fed, actual doors opened, actual love lived out loud. That's the work. That's the fight. Building a belonging so fierce, so wide, so stubbornly inclusive that even our enemies find themselves home.

The world is so beautiful - and in the beauty we see the fullness of what is broken. Our living practice invites us to answer the call of beauty, which is justice. This Sunday as part of our Beyond Belief series, The Rev. Mary Katherine Morn joins us at Foothills to dive into that invitation - that tug toward wholeness, even (especially) when everything feels broken - and the tools that love and beauty offer us as we hold this work in community.  The Rev. Mary Katherine Morn has led the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) as President and Lead Executive Officer since 2018, and has been in faith-based leadership and justice work for over 30 years in Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, and far beyond.

Join us as we explore the spiritual practice of hope-making—where faith isn't belief or proof, but the stubborn insistence that we belong to each other, and we're not letting go. In June, Rev. Sean addressed UU General Assembly, where the Liberal Religious Educators Association asked him to share how we approach social change here at Foothills. How we do the work when everything feels like it's breaking. In this service, as part of our Beyond Belief series, Sean brings pieces of that sermon home. Because we need to remember how to make hope follow us when the way forward disappears under our feet. How to trust that what emerges through raw, real relationship will transform us through trust, rupture, and repair into something the world desperately needs. Rev. Sean Neil-Barron // July 13, 2025

In our series that starts this Sunday, Beyond Belief: The Living Practice of Unitarian Universalism, we aren’t offering easy answers or spiritual platitudes. We're asking, what if faith isn't about believing the right things, but about living with courage, curiosity, and radical love? This Sunday, join Rev. Elaine as we begin the series "Beyond Belief: The Living Practices of Unitarian Universalism" with a dive into what we really mean when we say “everyone is worthy of love and belonging, without exception,” and how we got there as Unitarian Universalists. Come for the questions that won't let you go.  Stay for the living practice of our faith that emerges through the struggle. Rev. Elaine Aron-Tenbrink // July 6, 2025

Allowing yourself to receive information that explodes nearly everything to which you’ve dedicated your life takes tremendous courage. Rev. Shawna Ambrose knew she had to do it, even though it meant letting go of a proudly held identity, a way of understanding the world, a mode of serving the greater good with pride, and connections with family and community. Witness Shawna’s story of military service transforming into a powerful commitment to the anti-war movement.   June 29, 2025

Sometimes, life in religious community can feel like an experience of exile in the exact place where we most deeply yearn to belong.  Roger Butts, Unitarian Universalist minister, shares his own journey of coming to peace with his Christian background.  Telling of a journey through shame and alienation, Roger shares how he finally found a way to living with his heart wide open. June 22, 2025