The Pulpiteer

"We don't run to get hard. We run to get soft." We've been working with gut, heart, and head folks for a few months now, and this morning I add another layer to the onion: each of those centers tends to come with a time orientation. Heart folks anchor in the past. Gut folks live in the present. Head folks — me included — live in the future. Every one of those is a superpower, and...

If you had asked me when I was going to preach a sermon on sin, I would have guessed never. This is the first of what I expect to become a series: taking a word we've developed an allergy to and asking whether there's something honorable and recoverable in it. I start with a parable about two Habitat for Humanity volunteers and a screwdriver, and why one of them won't touch one. The in...

"You have access to the deepest wisdom you need within you." This episode explores the life journey through the metaphor of origami. An artist starts with a single square. They fold and fold — never cutting, never tearing — until a flat sheet becomes something complex and organic. And then, if they wish, they can unfold it all the way back to a square. The shape is gone, but its story is...

"Your contribution to the work does not define your worth." A shorter episode than usual — homily length. Before the service we held a teams fair, where congregants could visit every team that makes this church function internally and do justice work in the wider community. This is the message that followed. "Take your place" is not the theatre's places, everyone . It is no...

"When you shed a tear, it is likely that some of the water in your tears has been cried before. Maybe many times. Maybe countless times." This is a recording of our Water Communion service. I've left the voices of congregants sharing their blessings in the episode, so that those blessings might be passed on to you as well — sixty-odd voices, one to three words each, spoken into the w...

"We are not free from triggers, but we can develop the skills to recognize those triggers when they happen." In this episode I work line by line through a dense passage from Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed — the one about the oppressed having internalized the image of the oppressor and become fearful of freedom — and ask what it has to do with an ordinary Sunday morning. I s...

"Your body is neither an inconvenience nor tertiary to your existence." This episode is an invitation into embodied practice — and a correction to something the summer sermon series may have implied. Over July, the four-part Social Change series read Deepa Iyer's ecosystem through gut, heart, head, and spirit. That sequence could sound like a ladder. This message says otherwise: the...

"It is possible to be free. Not free from anger, or shame, or fear — but free among them: transparent to the light, a window the light shines through." The final service in the four-part series reading Deepa Iyer's social change ecosystem through a developmental lens arrives at spirit — not a fourth faculty, but the awareness that has been practicing all along. The sermon slows down...

The third sermon in The Pulpiteer's four-part series reading Deepa Iyer's social change ecosystem — from her book Social Change Now , the 2025–26 Unitarian Universalist Association common read — through a developmental lens drawn from the Enneagram's centers: gut, heart, head, and spirit. This week: the thinking triad, whose underlying feeling is fear, and the three ecosystem roles where head ener...

The season two finale of The Pulpiteer is a love letter — to a congregation, to podcast listeners, and to a word that has been weaponized for too many people: faith. Preached on Flag Day, the service begins with the Great World House reframing the flag not as a banner of war but as a covenant — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as promises that carry duties, renewed by ordinary people in...

The second sermon in The Pulpiteer's four-part series reading Deepa Iyer's social change ecosystem — from her book Social Change Now , the 2025–26 Unitarian Universalist Association common read — through a developmental lens drawn from the Enneagram's centers: gut, heart, and head; plus spirit. This episode turns from gut to heart: the feeling triad, whose underlying struggle is shame,...

We begin a four-part series exploring Deepa Iyer's social change ecosystem through the lens of human development — starting where the body starts: in the gut, with those who move first. The Disrupters, Frontline Responders, and Experimenters act before certainty arrives.

When rituals centered on human institutions lose their luster, where can we turn to find renewed meaning and connection? The flower communion is one gesture toward a deeper answer - that nature is our oldest and wisest teacher, and that we can return to her when we wish to learn how to be with one another.

"For the simplicity on this side of complexity, I wouldn't give you a fig. But for the simplicity on the other side of complexity, for that I would give you anything I have." - Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.. What is the simplicity on the far shore of complexity? Why brave the treacherous seas of complexity to get there?

We’ll struggle today with how covenant - a set of promises that binds a community - can be a source for the courage and how, through combining the work of Parker Palmer and James Luther Adams, we might ask the deep question of how to bring about what Adams called the kingdom of God and what Dr. King called Beloved Community.

This year's stewardship theme is Learn, Love, Grow — three words that describe what SGUUF does every week and three words that describe what we're asking of ourselves as a community this year.

"If you love someone, set them free." - Sting How can this way of putting Love at the Center, inform how we approach Religion as modern UU's? Not just in how we serve the adults in our community, but in how and what we teach our youth?

There is a wall, a veil, between our world and the spirit world... the sages and prophets found ways through the wall, they brought back teachings from the spirit world. They left behind signs so that we could find our way through. Some folks who came after, got really into sign making. Some thought that the tunnels through the wall should be enlarged, decorated, celebrated... Some spent their liv...

In our third and final service in the Simone Weil Series, we'll explore the culminating movement of her thought: DECREATION. I'll get you pointed in the right direction with this teaser: "We do not become just by adding virtue. We become just by subtracting the self that blocks reality." Mic. Drop.

For Women's History Month, we'll continue our exploration of the work of Simone Weil - moving from her work on attention as spiritual practice, to her social justice oriented work on the necessity of obligations preceding rights.

In this special episode of the podcast, we'll talk with June Williams and Ashley Blackwell - our co-conspirators in griefwork: sharing stories of how we got here and where we might be headed. Join us, won't you? For your reference, here are some of the books mentioned in the episode: The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller The Smell of Rain on Dust by Martin Prechtel Die Wise by Stephen...

What if your attention is your most valuable resource and the primary responsibility of your own stewardship? Let's follow French mystic-philosopher into the depths as we explore the depths of the soul's attention.

Greensleeves is one of the oldest and most familiar songs in our tradition—tender, plaintive, and enduring. It has been sung as a love song, a lament, and a prayer, carried across centuries and cultures. This Sunday, we’ll listen to it together, reflect on what it has meant, and consider what it might still be teaching us. We’ll sing it, sit with it, and listen again—trusting that sometimes an old...

I got on a bus headed south, past San Antonio to a community called Dilley, Texas. There is a modern day American internment / concentration / prison camp there, we call it a detention center. Let's talk about what I saw, what I learned, and what we might all need to learn if we want things to change.

Here on the precipice of MLK Day 2026, we ask a question, "Could it be that one of the most effective ways to subvert a prophet is to turn them into an idol?" There is a case to be made that this is what "the church" has done to Jesus. There is a case to be made that this is what American Culture has done with Dr. King. If we toss the idol, maybe we can ask what the prophet was...