Sermon: Giving Sanctuary
Religions and religious communities are, among other things, sanctuaries for stories. From ancient stories to stories of current day peoples to individual stories of people in this room, our community...
View ArticleSermon: Women Of Hebrew & Christian Scriptures: Esther
The story of Esther is the story of a hero. And like so many of the heroes in the Hebrew Bible, she is a reluctant hero. She doesn’t seem particularly interested in being queen to the Persian king...
View ArticleHomily: What if Climate Change is a Big Hoax And We Build A Better World for...
Joel Pett, a once obscure cartoonist for USA Today, became famous after one particular cartoon of his became a sensation. It was published right before the 2009 Climate Summit in Copenhagen and it...
View ArticleSermon: Rules For Resurrection
The story of Easter is the story of a resurrection. A resurrection is a miracle and a miracle, as I talked about last week, is something explosively new that’s created when heaven and earth crash into...
View ArticleSermon: Don’t Mind the Gap
What do we do when we find that there’s a big old gap between what we think we should ideally do and what we feel like we actually can do or want to do? It’s an uncomfortable place for most of us to be...
View ArticleSermon:That’s All Well and Good in Practice, But How Does It Work in Theory?
Some people think that mystics are a little bit out to lunch. They walk around with their head in the clouds, thinking their big thoughts, communing with the infinite, and falling into potholes. Or,...
View ArticleSermon: Our Bodies, Ourselves
My dad is a philosophy professor and sometimes for fun he writes philosophical children’s poems. This is one of them: Sometimes I feel like a wee tiny elf Curled up inside me and watching myself,...
View ArticleSermon: A Community for All Seasons
A story from Winnie the Pooh: “Piglet?” said Pooh. “Yes Pooh?” said Piglet. “Do you ever have days when everything feels… Not Very Okay At All? And sometimes you don’t even know why you feel Not...
View ArticleRev. Ana Levy-Lyons Announces 2018-2019 Sermon Series: Religion & Technology
Second Sundays continue to be “happenings” at First Unitarian. Following the success of her previous sermon series, The Ten Commandments (which was the basis for her book, No Other Gods, the Politics...
View ArticleSermon: The Ripple Effect
Fifty years ago there was a war going on. It was called the Vietnam War and many people believed that the war was wrong and that the United States should get out of it. People led dramatic protests...
View ArticleSermon: Lessons In Apology
Back in May, a man named Quai James made a video of a little four-year-old Hasidic boy in his neighborhood with Quai’s own voice making fun of the boy because of the boy’s haircut. The boy’s hair is...
View ArticleSermon: The Portable Gift Economy
Over the summer my family and I spent a week on a little island off the coast of Maine called Cranberry Island – the same one I talked about a couple years ago, for those of you who were here. We went...
View ArticleSermon: Satyagraha
When Christine Blasey Ford stood before the senate judiciary committee and swore to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” you could have heard a pin drop across this entire...
View ArticleSermon: Technology & Religion: God As Virtuality
“Open your eyes. You are a fisherman in the Pacific, a weaver in the Philippines, and a journalist on the front lines. You act with kindness; you fight with courage. You swim the depths of the oceans;...
View ArticleSermon: Technology & Religion: God As Consumer
The Gazelle Project. This is what Amazon called a new initiative to work out contracts with small publishers. The Gazelle Project. This name was coined after Jeff Bezos instructed his team to approach...
View ArticleSermon: The Second Best Time to Plant a Tree
Ana Levy-Lyons December 2, 2018 First Unitarian, Brooklyn A hairy, naked male and a hairy, naked female crouch over the body of an antelope they’ve just killed. They’re looking up with fear and fight...
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