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:

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.