The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Corvallis
In Unitarian Universalism, freedom means the freedom of each individual to claim their own identity – to not be defined by others or social norms. Transgender people find this freedom hard to come by in most places – indeed many parts of our wider community are dangerous for trans folks. How can we as a congregation help provide more safety and support for all?
As strange as it may sound, grieving does not necessarily come to us naturally. And, culturally for most of us, it has not been well-modeled or taught. We need each other in order to learn how to tend to our grief, to practice, and to learn to carry it. When we can’t tend to our grief, our capacity for joy and happiness is too often diminished. What can we learn, and how can we help each other?
We’re continuing a series of Sundays focusing on values identified by thousands of UUs as central to who we are and strive to be now as we move into the future. We’ve considered love, transformation and pluralism. This week we’ll consider interdependence, which, before it can be considered as a value, must be understood as a fact of life – biologically, ecologically, and spiritually. Join us!
We’ve moved into the season of longer nights and shorter days, and we arrive at the point on the Wheel of the Year called Samhain and Halloween. We’ll honor this season, considering our lives within in, considering the ancestors who made our lives possible and live in us still, considering our connectedness within the ever-turning wheel of birth and death.
All are invited to come in costume, if you like, and to join in Trick or Treat with UUFC teams and councils following the service.
One of the unique characteristics of our religious movement is pluralism – the willingness to be different and be together at the same time. Historically, this meant we did not require allegiance to a specific theological creed or doctrine. Now it is a much wider effort. The main question is not whether or not we are different from each other, but how we manage our differences while staying true to shared values.
Rev. Jilll McAllister
It would be hard to argue that things don’t change, or that they aren’t changing constantly, and not always in ways we understand or are prepared for. Take this week for example, or almost any of the past seven years. A new generation of UU’s describes a need for us to be able and willing to not only change, but be changed, in order to keep adding love into the world.
Rev. Jill McAllister
It’s not uncommon for UU’s to note that they like being part of a congregation because they’re among “like-minded” people. It turns out, the more we learn about how brains function, and the more we listen to people instead of making assumptions about them, we’re not very like minded at all! What, then, do we offer one another for our religious lives?