First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston Podcast

In this service celebrating May Day we will look at the roots of the tradition as both an ecological and labor holiday. I plan to invite local workers who have been organizing with Starbucks to come and share their testimonials during the service. We might consider a forum on labor issues either between the services or after the second service.

On Earth Day 2023, we explore...what influence do we have in our relationships with others? How can we use our limited, but real agency to create a life that changes us and the community we love?

We will follow the Saturday service with a service focused on calling for an end to gun violence.

Our Easter service this year will include a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Faithful Fools street ministry in San Francisco. The Faithful Fools founding minister the Rev. Dr. Kay Jorgensen was both a religious leader and a clown. Alongside her friend Carmen Barsody, a Franciscan nun, she started a ministry that has pushed Unitarian Universalists across the country to discover what love in action is all about.

Walt Whitman told us, "The smallest sprout shows there is really no death." There are those, whom we lost this year, whose ability to inspire us will live on. Continuing his revival of an annual tradition, Rev. Scott reflects on some of these individuals.

A seed, feigning cold death, warms and sprouts to achieve its potential, unimagined until realized. We join together on the first day of a new year to think not only about what we hope to achieve, but why.

Genesis tells us we will return to the ground, because "for dust you are and to dust you will return." Carl Sagan was a bit more specific when he pointed out that we are made of stardust. We begin Advent, when those in the narrative looked to the star, and end our monthly theme of soil with an appreciation for our interdependence with these facets of the web.

Hope is the ground from which so much of our religious tradition springs. In this second sermon on our series on Soil we'll celebrate hope and offer the US debut of the song "Hope" by Commoners Choir. Commoners Choir is a project of the English musician Boff Whalley of Chumbawamba fame. They have given First Houston permission to perform a selection of their songs in over the course of the year.

We will start a monthly theme on Soil with a sermon reflecting on the source of faith. Is it in humanity? In the divine? Both? Neither? Something else? Does Unitarian Universalist spring from one source or many?

Our annual All Souls Day service and autumn music concert celebrated the music of former First Houston Music Director Thomas Benjamin. As part of the service, Rev. Dr. Colin Bossen spoke about recognizing all of our ancestors. He also challenges us to recognize some of the now out-dated views of our ancestors that we should let go of.