All Souls Unitarian Church

Do we have to agree in order to get along? Or maybe it's more accurate to say we agree *to* get along. The Greek word "symphoneo," from which we our English word "symphony" simply means "to sound together" — not necessarily to sound alike. It's likely impossible for us to ever find someone who agrees with us on everything, and instead of those differences threatening our belonging, perhaps they ar...

This Sunday after the United States midterm elections, Randy Lewis reflects on what it takes to stay in relationship with those we love, and those we might love, across all of our differences and as we change. We may disagree about so many things on the surface, but beyond that there might be a greater love that holds us together. This message was delivered on Sunday, November 13, 2022 at All Soul...

Our country is built on a promise we make to each other as citizens. It is far from a perfect system, but at its best it is guided by core values articulated in the Declaration of Independence regarding liberty and justice for all. As we head into an extraordinary election week, in America, people on both sides of the aisle seem to fear a win by the other side could be the end of our country as we...

This Sunday, minister Randy Lewis explores the uniquely American problem with violence — particularly gun violence — and what it means to protect ourselves, not just from physical threats, but from corrosive positions in our own hearts. Is there a political stance that can elevate us out of our current struggles with violence, or is this something that must begin within and spread outward? This me...

The importance of accessibility to a broad range of literature has been held up over the course of our democracy by American luminaries as broad across the cultural spectrum as Emily Dickinson, Frederick Douglass, Ronald Reagan and Laura Bush. These individuals each spoke of the intellectual freedom and ethical instruction they received from literature in their times. From volumes as diverse as th...

The word conscience (or "con-science") roughly means "with knowledge." What, then, does it mean for us to have a conscience about good and evil? How do we learn about what is evil, and how do we know it's true? In this message, Carlton Pearson reflects on his own journey of understanding of what we might call God (or the "Good") and what we might call Evil. How does someone transition from believi...

This message was delivered on Sunday, October 2, 2022 at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma by Rev. Dr. Marlin Lavanhar in the 10 am service. Description: Perhaps more harm has been done in the world by foolish people who think they are doing right than by people who deliberately act wrongly. So when we ask the question "why do good people do bad things," we might instead ask, "how do w...

This message was delivered on Sunday, September 25, 2022 at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma by Rev. Dr. Marlin Lavanhar in the 11:30 am The Point Humanist Hour service. Description: Irish poet John O'Donohue once said of the soul that "there is a part you that has never been wounded." What does that part of us know — what is it capable of? What would it look for us to feed that part...

This message was delivered on Sunday, September 18, 2022 at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma by Randy Lewis in the 10 am service. Description: Our lives are made up of stories. Every day we are telling stories to ourselves about ourselves and others. Stories about what will happen to us in the future, and who we were in the past. Some of these stories define us, for better or worse, b...

This message was delivered on Sunday, September 11, 2022 at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma by Rev. Dr. Marlin Lavanhar in The Point Humanist Hour service. Description: As the world continues to open back up following the COVID-19 pandemic, we are all left to reckon with everything we have been putting off. That might mean something literal like getting married, or switching jobs, or...

This message was delivered on Sunday, September 4, 2022 at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma by Carlton D. Pearson in The Point Humanist Hour service. Description: Our imaginations are our gateway into our worlds. Our past, present, and future all has to go through an interpretive lens that we get to choose. We always have the opportunity to reimagine our relationships to ourselves and...

This message was delivered on Sunday, August 28, 2022 at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma by Randy Lewis in The Point Humanist Hour service. Description: What does it mean to have emotional intelligence, and how might we increase it? Why would we even want to? This Sunday, Randy Lewis explores what it means to practice kindness as a serious business that has consequences in our own li...

This message was delivered on Sunday, August 21, 2022 at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma by Rev. Dr. Marlin Lavanhar in The Point Humanist Hour service. Description: Salman Rushdie, who has spoken twice at All Souls in Tulsa, was violently attacked, on stage, last week. One of our congregation's middle school girls had to be escorted out of a Public School Board meeting this summer b...

This message was delivered on Sunday, August 14, 2022 at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma by Rev. Dr. Marlin Lavanhar in The Point Humanist Hour service. Description: How are you feeling right now? Happy, anxious, depressed, or maybe even numb? Or perhaps there is a fear or uncertainty of what will happen when we really let our feelings reach the surface. Sometimes we aren't even awar...

This message was delivered on Sunday, August 7, 2022 at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma by Rev. Barbara Prose Description: "One expression I will take with me when I leave All Souls is 'I appreciate you.' It's one of the ways I've learned to say thank you here. Those words express that what someone just did or said—or simply who they are—makes a difference in my life and in the life...

This message was delivered on Sunday, July 31, 2022 at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma by Rev. Tamara Lebak Description: Maybe there is a part of you that wants to come to church and a part of you that wants to stay home. Maybe there is a part of you that wants to flee the country and a part of you that wants to firmly plant yourself in the resistance. Maybe there is a part of you wh...

This message was delivered on Sunday, July 24, 2022 at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma by Carlton D. Pearson. Description: What does it mean to become more inclusive toward ourselves? As we venture into radical inclusivity, sometimes we are surprised to find old parts of our stories coming back to make us feel guilt, shame, or self-loathing that we thought we had left behind. This Su...

This message was delivered on Sunday, July 17, 2022 at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma by Cory Lovell. Description: We are living through times that will ask more of us and challenge our faith in ways we never imagined but now can't possibly ignore. The values of Unitarian Universalism call upon us to be compassionate, innovative, and steadfast even amidst such unpredictability. By r...

This message was delivered on Sunday, July 10, 2022 at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma by Randy Lewis. Description: This Sunday, Randy Lewis explores what it means to try to love another person when we don't even know what it means to love ourselves. The golden rule tells us to "do unto other as we would have done unto us," but many people treat themselves with no love at all. Throug...

This message was delivered on Sunday, July 3, 2022 at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma by Barbara Prose. Description: Our country stands on the edge of a precipice. It feels impossible that on the weekend that our nation celebrates its 246th birthday, some of the freedoms and rights we hold dear have been taken away and other rights and freedom are so vulnerable. In these extraordinar...

This message was delivered on Sunday, June 29, 2022 at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma by Randy Lewis. Description: This Sunday, Randy Lewis, Sabbatical Minister reflects on the enduring meaning of LBGTQ Pride in America and in his own life, and leads us to think more dynamically about cultural progress in our current age, when the Supreme Court has just overturned Roe v. Wade and ma...

This message was delivered on Sunday, June 19, 2022 at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa Oklahoma by Carlton D. Pearson. Description This Sunday, on both Father's Day and Juneteenth, Carlton Pearson explores what it means to reckon with our fraught histories surrounding inclusion. Some of us are victims of exclusion — maybe in our own lifetimes, or maybe through our inherited histories, such as...

This message was delivered on Sunday, June 12, 2022 at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma by Rev. Barbara Prose, Executive Director of Ministry in The Point Humanist Hour Service. Description: This Sunday, Rev. Barbara reflects on the chaotic moment we are living in and asked the question, "Is peace even possible right now?" What would it look like for us to choose peace at a moment lik...

The homily was delivered on Sunday, April 19, 2020, at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, by Rev. Dr. Marlin Lavanhar, Senior Minister. DESCRIPTION Many people around the world have taken to wearing masks. Masks are being worn in the hopes that they will keep us safe from the coronavirus. However, people also wear masks for other reasons. Join me to explore the use of various kinds of...

The sermon was delivered on Sunday, April 5, 2020, at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, by Mariela Pérez-Simons, Intern Minister. The recording includes a pastoral-care message from Rev. Dr. Marlin Lavanhar, Senior Minister. DESCRIPTION "Survival of the fittest" has always been a deeply misunderstood concept, but now, after decades of research by sociologists and evolutionary biologis...