Wisdom Story: Feel Grateful, Feel Great
Who here wants to be happy? Everybody, right? The Declaration of Independence puts the “pursuit of happiness” right up there next to “life” and “liberty” in the famous list of must-haves. Pursuing...
View ArticleStory: Cool Versus Happy
Some people think that to be cool, you have to be a little cynical, a little critical of everything. Seriously, earnestly appreciating something makes you seem naïve or uncool. Imagine a couple, Jack...
View ArticleSermon: The Audience of the Future
The story broke a couple weeks ago and by now everybody’s heard: Jon Stewart is leaving the daily show. I remember early that evening all the newsfeed alerts on everybody’s phones suddenly began...
View ArticleSermon: Keeping The Peace (Part 1)
When Jesus made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, we can imagine that the sun was out and the mood was celebratory. His assistants had just stolen a donkey for him, just like that, explaining that...
View ArticleSermon: Keeping the Peace, The Sequel
Last Easter I preached a sermon called “The Art of Battling Giants” that cast Jesus as an underdog who played a “different game” than the Romans and the institutional Jewish leaders. His “different...
View ArticleExorcizing Experience
In a recent Rolling Stone interview, Bruce Springsteen explains that going through life is like riding in a car where new people get in all the time but no one ever gets out. Every experience you’ve...
View ArticleWhen You’re Down And Out: The Parable Of The Good Samaritan
If you need a kidney transplant the average wait time for getting one is 4 ½ years. Often if you’re sick enough to need a transplant, you don’t have 4 ½ years to wait. You can go on dialysis but...
View ArticleThe Field Of Lovingkindness
At the First U auction last year, our Treasurer Mitch Major was the lucky winner of the opportunity to tell me what to preach about. Mitch is a Buddhist Unitarian Universalist and he wanted me to...
View ArticleSermon: Not Your Grandmother’s Sabbath
Not Your Grandmother’s Sabbath Ana Levy-Lyons October 18, 2015 First Unitarian, Brooklyn The beginning of the end of Joy Gabriel’s Sabbath practice came the Sunday that she realized she was out of...
View ArticleHomily: Halloween Communion
My kids have a kind of warped idea of Halloween because for the last couple years I’ve managed to convince them that the way it works is that you go trick-or-treating, collect a bunch of candy and then...
View ArticleSermon: Creation Day Two–Sky And Sea
Relative to the first day, the second day of creation seems kind of uneventful. All God does is to create an expanse – a space – in the middle of the waters. The writing is dry and practical and...
View ArticleHomily: Born Ready By Ana Levy-Lyons
In the early 90’s a young British woman in a bad and possibly abusive marriage filed for divorce. She was now a single mother with a baby and no job. Her mother had recently died and she was alienated...
View ArticleSermon: More of What Matters
One of the cardinal sins of sermon writing is to bore the congregation with a detailed account of all the difficulties you had in writing this sermon and how first you thought about writing A, and then...
View ArticleSermon: Creation Day 3
It is said that the world was created through ten utterances. You might have noticed this already in the Biblical story. God speaks things into existence. “God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was...
View ArticleSermon: No Minor Stars
A story is told of Tycho Brahe, the Danish royal astronomer of the 16th century, who took his work so seriously, he would put on the robes of his royal office before he would even approach his...
View ArticleSermon: The Left Hand Of God
When a shooting of twenty children at Sandy Hook Elementary School isn’t enough, when a shooting of fourteen non-profit workers in San Bernardino isn’t enough, when a mass shooting somewhere an...
View ArticlePrayer: The Left Hand of God
Spirit of life and love, God of many names and faces, we open our hearts to the world through our worship this morning. At the beginning of this new year, we resolve to move ever and ever closer to...
View ArticleSermon: Creation: The Fourth Day
On pretty much any street corner in New York you can buy one of those knockoff Coach handbags. Everyone knows they’re not the real thing. And just the fact that they’re sitting there in the open air...
View ArticleSermon: New York Values
New York Values Ana Levy-Lyons January 24, 2016 First Unitarian, Brooklyn In 1939 a guy living on State Street here in Brooklyn Heights opened up the basement of his brownstone to a group of Yemeni...
View ArticleSermon: Spiritual Networking
Spiritual Networking Ana Levy-Lyons January 31, 2016 First Unitarian, Brooklyn It’s an old worn-out trope that money can’t buy you happiness. We’ve heard it before in a thousand different ways. That...
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