Sermons and Services
The Song We Couldn't Write
​Lessons inspired by KPop Demon Hunters. My homily starts at 10:30.
Hope in Pieces
​Exploring the ways we shape hope out of the shattering around us. My remarks start at 26:18, but I recommend watching the story that starts at 21:52. It's one of my favorites.
The Promise of Freedom
​On the Sunday before Juneteenth, a challenge to and questioning of the freedom story woven into our American story. My remarks start at 29:23.
Love and Justice and Us​
Justice is about the steps we take, not a destination beyond our horizon.
Where No Man(?) Has Gone Before​
Explore the galaxy, and probe the reach -- and limits -- of moral imagination through the Star Trek universe. My sermon starts at 13:01, but the story at the beginning is worth your time.
A Woven Whole
A Tapestry Drawn From Story, Song, and Human Spirit
We all connect with ideas, with creation, with each other and with meaning in different ways at different times.
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I try to build services that reflect that breadth and depth of human understanding. As much as I love preaching, I know sermons can only be one piece of a meaningful service. The whole of the message comes to us through images and sounds, singing and listening, poems and stories.
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​In collaboration with lay leaders and musicians, I set out to pull these elements together, threads woven into a whole. Each congregant may find a message, a connection, in a different piece of that integrated offering.
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A religious humanist, I see our canon as wide open. Scripture from the world's religions, physical and social sciences, poetry and drama, Bruce Springsteen and Chappell Roan, comic books and space opera -- all of this and more is the work of humans trying to make sense of how humans fit into the human story, and how that story fits into the vastness of existence.
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More than "Once Upon A Time..."
With art and emotive language, children's books connect with us in ways that are different from -- and complementary to -- reasoned arguments. And so I try to weave a great children's story into each service.​
To see some books recommended by me (and my wife, Amy, a former children's librarian), check out this list: Children's Books for UU Worship​
And here you can watch us tell the story of "Lizard's Song" with the help of a few stuffed animals.​​​
Shaping Understanding
Worship: From the Old English “weorthscippen,” meaning to “ascribe worth” or to “shape things of worth”
“Worship.”
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It's a word not all UUs are comfortable with, though many – even UUs of humanist leanings – are. I’m one of them. To me, “worship” encompasses a broad understanding of human connection with each other and the creation we inhabit – not a higher power. As the UUA Commission on Common Worship wrote, “Worship is a human activity. Though it is often defined as reverence given to a divine being or power, it need not have supernatural implications.”
For me, though, it's not what we call it that matters. What matters is that we gather to celebrate, to question, to challenge, to wonder.
Whether we call it “worship” or “Sunday service” or “assembly,” we gather to contemplate what is worthy and to give shape to it in our lives.