March 20 is the date of the Spring Equinox. We reflect on the circle of the seasons, the years, our lives. Drummers Dan and Pam Susany will be with us, leading an Equinox drumming circle.

Hinduism and Buddhism both argue that suffering is the result of selfish attachment to things we desire and aversion to things we don’t. We’ll explore whether this ancient thinking still applies today, and what practices and tools might be helpful in letting go of such attachments and aversions.

While addiction often has a strong physiological component, for many it has a spiritual component, a longing to fill some emptiness in one’s life. We’ll explore the nature of addiction, desire, management and recovery.

This is Valentine’s Day. It is also Evolution Weekend. We pair these up to explore the role of sex and death in the evolution of life in our world, and what it means to us as products of evolution.

As UUs, we resist racism by recognizing the inherent value in every person regardless of the hundreds of factors used to divide us from one another. Today, we explore how we will actively resist institutional racism and interpersonal prejudice in our neighborhood now and in the near future.

As people of resistance, we may seem to be looking for trouble, standing up for the weak and oppressed, questioning authority, agitating for social change. But what about inward trouble? Do we go looking for that? What do we do when we find it? How does that transform who we engage trouble in the outer … Continue reading Jan 24 – “Looking for Trouble”

Health and disease is a useful metaphor in understanding churches, as well as businesses and other organizations. We’ve been working to increase our ‘dis-ease resistance’ here at UUYO, in part with “Healthy Leadership’ training. How might the ideas of healthy leadership be applicable for all of us, and beyond the church?

What are your deepest, darkest secrets, those you shared with no one? A “regret, fear, betrayal, desire, confession, or childhood humiliation” — these are the kinds of secrets sought by the amazing mail art project called postsecret. We’ll explore such secrets, and what might happen if we do share them.

Sometimes the things we receive are just as we expected, and sometimes they are a complete surprise. We explore how expected and unexpected gifts (of grace) play into our lives.
We will follow this service with a variation on our tradition of a Boxing Day white elephant gift exchange. Please bring one or two wrapped gifts to share.

WA: John & Christine Gulgas