In the Torah, the holiest place of the temple is a place of awe and terror.

As Unitarian Universalists, we often think of the Holy as love, welcome, and invitation. What can we learn from the Talmudic understanding of the Holy as overwhelmingly awesome?

How is the Holy related to death?

Immortalized in the song by the Byrds, Ecclesiastes claims there is a time to every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, a time to die, a time to dance, a time to weep.

But as a people who want to give welcome, sanctuary, and affirmation to each other, every part of ourselves, and others, how do we know what time it is?

How do we know when it is time for comfort, or time for challenge?

Join us in this service where we explore the balancing act of providing sanctuary for self and others.

Church should be a sanctuary for our people, a place where our authentic selves are welcome.

What does that mean when people come to church bringing differences of culture, race, and ethnicity? How do we create refuge for the whole of people?

How do we embody our Unitarian Universalist values in our welcome, our worship, and our communal practice?

Please join us in this worship service with guest speaker Christopher Sims, a Unitarian Universalist lay leader of color from Rockford, IL, who travels the country sharing his poetry and wisdom with Unitarian Universalist congregations.

Every Sunday, we welcome people into our beautiful sanctuary and community by saying “we welcome all your heart longs to set down.”

Sanctuary is a refuge, a respite, a place where we can set down our burdens and gain renewed strength to pick them up again.

When times are tough, I remind myself that I carry my sanctuary within – an oasis of wholeness that is always there, even when outer conditions are frantic, scary or burdensome.

How do we create inner sanctuary for all the parts of ourselves, even the parts we don’t like?

The 12th-century Christian polymath, Hildegaard von Bingen, was a composer, a writer, a theologian, a scientist, and a mystic.

She is recognized as the founder of scientific natural history in Germany, and was an Abbess in the Catholic Church. She preached publicly, which was extremely unusual for a woman at the time. She recorded her visions in books, drama, and liturgical poems and songs.

Join us in this service that explores the intersections of mysticism, science, love of the natural world, and social forces in the life of an extraordinary 12th-century woman.

In the apocryphal story of Michelangelo, he described his creative process of sculpting as simply “chipping away all the marble that doesn’t look like David.”

Sometimes visions, creative or otherwise, come to us already fully formed.

Join us in a service that explores creativity, curiosity, and realizing visions.

Sight and vision are different.

It’s not what we look at that matters, it’s what we see. Vision is a focus that eliminates other possibilities; vision sets a direction toward a destination.

I love that about vision, but how often do I consider my sins of omission in pursuit of a vision?

This week brings the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, a day of at-one-ment with all we are: our accomplishments and failures, intentional and unintentional.

What are we not seeing about ourselves?

In visions, possibilities are unveiled. In Hesiod’s telling of the story of Pandora, opening up the box of the unknown unleashes terror.

But if we reconsider the story as one of opening up the box of life’s possibilities and the womb of the future, then maybe more than just hope flies out.

On this celebratory Sunday, as our community gathers in for the return of the two-service church year, join us as we explore the possibilities in our communal life, step back to see the whole picture, and witness the gifts of being together.

During this spring’s Youth Service, our young voices challenged us to examine our practice, our social-justice activity, and our contribution to the status quo.

Some congregational feedback stated that this made them uncomfortable. This Sunday, let’s explore how we are being challenged by today’s youth and whether FUSM is a place to get comfortable.

“Between here and now and forever is such precious little time” sings Carrie Newcomer, yet we find so many ways to escape the present moment, especially if it’s painful. Today we’ll explore paying attention to our mortality in the here and now and the lessons that come from being present with painful experiences.

Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron says “the most precious opportunity presents itself when we come to the place where we think we can’t handle whatever is happening.” Poet David Wagoner writes, “wherever you are is called here and you must treat it as a powerful stranger, must ask permission to know it and be known.”

Making meaning out of our experiences in the here and now doesn’t happen once and then we’re done. It happens over and over again, if we’re paying attention to our precious little time on this earth.