Together we will explore the power of perseverance.  Life is full of curve balls, high highs and crushing losses.   Sometimes, these events happen all at the same time leaving us feeling drained,  exhausted and like we can’t go on.   But we can and we don’t have to do this work alone.  Let us join in activating our collective perseverance.

It can be difficult to discern when we’re being driven by the expectations of others and when we’re responding to our own, deep-seated sense of self and purpose. As we explore this month’s theme of Intention, we’ll listen for the “still, small voice” within, and learn to follow its call.

#MeToo is a movement that calls for women who are ready to break the silence around sexual harassment, assault and intimidation to speak up.   The movement is also a call to allies to become upstanders and reverse the culture that perpetuates sexual violence.  Cedar Lane #MeToo survivors will share their stories and together we will join in a ritual for everyone who has experienced a #MeToo moment to retrieve the pieces of themselves that may have been lost to sexual violence.

Fifty years ago, at the urging of Marion Wright Edelman, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. announced a Poor People’s Campaign in order to amplify the urgent needs and oppressive conditions that weighed on people living in poverty. While gathering support, Dr. King made it clear: “We will go there, we will demand to be heard, and we will stay until America responds. If this means forcible repression of our movement, we will confront it . . . . If this means scorn or ridicule, we embrace it because that is what America’s poor now receive.

Whether consciously or not, everything we do begins with intention. Learning how to make conscious intentions goes hand-in-hand with realizing our deeper purpose and puts us on a path to living a life of meaning and in the moment. When we live with intent, we learn to consciously plant the seeds of our dreams, water them, and nurture them along the way. We learn to appreciate the gifts of the moment, and to stop, slow down, and take a much-needed breath.

What if 2018 could be your best year yet? As 2017 is comes to a close, we will end it ritually and then begin to harness hope for the new year. This intergenerational service will be led by Rev. Katie Romano Griffin and Tim Atkins, Director of Lifespan Religious Education.

Join us for this youth-full and interactive service as folks of all ages help us unfold a unique telling of the Christmas story, complete with sing-along carols and children choirs – not to mention a little mooing, braying, and clucking! Together, we’ll look with wonder on the shimmering Christmas star and celebrate the hope and joy that it brings to a cold winter night. This service is for families with young children.

Join us for our annual multigenerational family winter holidays service. We will explore the themes of Winter Solstice, with a special appearance of our Nativity Animals as presented by our first grade class.

Unitarian Universalism not only offers us a religious identity, it also celebrates and supports our many identities. Our faith cheers Whitman’s celebration of messiness and contradiction: “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” The service will investigate. We will welcome new members during the service.

In the face of all the brutality, violence, and stupidity that goes on in the name of god and human beings, is there any reason to have hope in the human race, in the human spirit, in human history?