First Unitarian Universalist Church of Winnipeg's Podcast

2024/03/31 - Novelist D.H. Lawrence believed that humans are born first to themselves and only later to a sense of humanity, when “most are born again on entering maturity,” shedding the innocence of childhood and achieving an adult understanding of the world – “a consciousness of all the laughing, and the never-ceasing murmur of pain and sorrow …” Spiritual growth is akin to being born anew, or reawakening, and this repeats itself to the end of our days, if we allow it. This is very different from what most people mean when they claim to have been born again.

2024/04/28 - Long before the Unitarian Universalist Association adopted its current statement of principles, which affirms “respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part,” John Ruskin Clark was urging us to adopt a new worldview that found the unity of being in what he called the great living system. “Life is a process by which order is created out of disorder in the universe,” he pointed out, and life entails both autonomy and mutuality, which necessitates that humans accept their responsibility to live interactively and constructively. “We live in such a web of interconnections and dependencies that no action is without moral consequences for good or evil.”

2024/04/14 - Canada's National Volunteer Week, April 14-20, is when organizations take time to appreciate Canada’s 24 million volunteers. We are part of a collective volunteer movement which is critical to strengthening the well-being of our communities. This year's theme is “Every Moment Matters; no effort is too small.” Your time, skills and kindness truly matter in reaching out to the congregation and to the larger community. The Volunteer Resources Committee invites UUs of all ages to celebrate with us at this special Sunday service, followed by a light lunch.

2024/05/19 - Everyone needs to eat, but not everyone has the money, time, energy, or desire to cook good food. In early 2023, I decided to see what would happen if I offered to cook dinner once a week for friends, asking only that they pitch in for groceries as they could. Over a year later, I’m now regularly making 30 meals for old friends and new comrades every Tuesday on an entirely Pay What You Can basis. This Sunday, I’d like to share some of the laughs and lessons I’ve learned along the way in my quest to feed people really good food in the spirit of mutual aid.

2024-05-05 - How do you make decisions? Oftentimes, the choice is easy; other times it may be especially difficult. “We still haven't figured out any satisfactory systematic way of deciding these things,” observed the late Daniel C. Dennett. “Anything that can relieve the burden of figuring out how to make these hard calls is bound to be an attractive idea.” While some may wait for a sign, I prefer to discern a reason.

The Canadian Unitarian Council’s Lay Chaplaincy program started in 1971, from a belief that everyone has a right to a rite, no matter their religious affiliation. The program, to paraphrase the CUC, helps people in need of meaningful rite of passage ceremonies that recognize their personal beliefs and the needs of everyone attending the ceremony, reflecting Unitarian and Universalist values. The thresholds innate to rites of passage can be daunting. John O’Donohue wrote, in To Bless the Space Between Us, “To acknowledge and cross a new threshold is always a challenge. It demands courage and also a sense of trust in whatever is emerging.”

2024-05-26 - “Pluralism that reflects no commitments whatever to the common good is pluralism gone berserk,” according to John W. Gardner. Robust pluralism, the diversity that resolves itself in unity, requires sufficient shared values and mutual trust to work. As it turns out, pluralism is more work than universalism, but more achievable for religious communities, and between religious traditions, not to mention for whole societies.

2024-07-07 - It goes without saying that we are each the sum of our experiences. We carry stories, scars, wounds, lessons – and sometimes, tattoos – from the life we’ve had. But what happens when who we were is no longer congruent with who we are? How do we negotiate that change? In this sermon, Andre will share his experience from once being a pastor in various Christian churches and a proponent of Christian ministry, to now being a Unitarian Universalist, and secular Spiritual Health Practitioner in a still Christian-dominated profession.

2024-06-23 - While what we call artificial intelligence reveals the astonishing capacity of modern computer technology to process information, I’m not persuaded that this capacity is properly called intelligence, at least not in any meaningful human understanding of the term. Intelligence is more than the ability to manipulate data, even predictively. We really need a new term to describe AI, although I doubt that one will ever be coined since AI long ago entered the lexicon. How can we harness AI without sacrificing our humanity?

2024-07-21 - You are welcomed to join in this service inviting us to live out of a gratitude base, engaging with whatever life may throw our way. This is not a naive gratitude which ignores the challenging, in order to keep a happy mask in place. Wholesome gratitude seeks the strength of a life-affirming base with which to build on other positives, and actively address negative realities.