Church of the Larger Fellowship UU Worship

As Unitarian Universalists, we care deeply about matters of justice. However, in a world where the chaos and evils of Empire are becoming more and more apparent to many, how do we confront and transform overlapping and interlocking systems of structural evil, while fostering the integrity of our fullness? Join us this week as we explore how valuing sacred little things can offer us a new perspecti...

How does our relationship with the sacred call us to integrity? Does wholeness simply require us to be ourselves, or is there something more involved? We will explore the dimension of integrity that connects us to something beyond ourselves.

Over the years, and in different congregations I’ve served, I have received feedback that I was “too political” and not “spiritual enough.” I will name that spirituality absent recognition of the politics of the day is disassociation. We can be spiritual as we navigate the challenges of our times. The invitation is to engage in grounded spirituality that feeds the soul while not denying what is ha...

What is the relationship between story-telling, meaning-making, memory and thriving? Join us this week as we explore remembering and reclaiming our past as a liberative practice.

We are called to bear witness to the lives of our incarcerated beloveds. Through their words and their songs, written with Unlocking Harmony, we will be entrusted with a sacred gift of giving voice to those our society makes voiceless.

The Unitarian Universalist tradition of the Flower Ceremony (also called Flower Communion or Flower Festival) was introduced in 1923 Prague by the Revs. Norbert and Maja Čapek to celebrate the beginning of summer. It soon became a symbol of the beauty found in diverse community, which was already under attack in Europe at the time. We will celebrate a CLF version of the flower ceremony and use the...

In this soul-deep service, I’ll speak the truth of my own grief—of what it means to love someone whose memory is fading, and to keep remembering anyway. Together, we’ll honor the tenderness of memory, the ache of forgetting, and the fierce, faithful ways we carry love forward.

The concept of moral injury is a phenomenon of distress when people witness horrors that contradict one's deeply held beliefs. Humans in the past few decades have been experiencing moral injury when we witness the horrors in Gaza and the horrors here in the U.S. with seemingly no way to stop them. We will explore ways to maintain our sense of self, justice and the will to continue fighting for a k...

If self-care is communal care and communal care is self-care, who benefits when we hide or dim our light; our unique manifestation of the Source/Force of life? Join us this week as we re-shape and reframe our relationship to ourselves and the (often problematic) metaphor of light.

Poet Toi Derricotte once wrote that “joy is an act of resistance.” We will claim joy as a necessary act of defiance to an authoritarian state and as a source of strength. We will tap into the sources of our joy and embody them in the world.

We’re told we’re depressed, have ADHD, experience anxiety. Too often, the treatments for those ailments don’t get at the deeper spiritual issues: financial and housing insecurity, increasingly authoritarian regimes, discrimination and violence. What is the treatment for this pain of our hearts and spirits?

An improvisational worship on empire and resistance made necessary by a disruption in the Force (aka our technical capabilities).

Community provides us with an incredible opportunity to bring our cares and concerns to one another. Often, we are taught not to be a burden or to invoke our own strength when we are dealing with difficult times. We will explore the ways that collective grief can create opportunities.

It is Spring, the season of regeneration and resurrection. Signs of new and returning life are all around us in nature but how do we humans resurrect our joy, fullness, dreams, and visions when they have been buried ? Texts: My First Sermon, A Personal Narrative The Sound of the Genuine:https://www.dailygood.org/story/1846/the-sound-of-the-genuine-howard-thurman/ Gospel of John: 11:38-44

A community centered on love and care is transformative. It allows us to blossom fully into who we are. It holds us as we try on new ways of being. We will explore this kind of community together today.

In times of collapse, it is vital that we are able to imagine a future beyond what we have already known. How do we approach the future creatively while living through decline?

In order for prison abolition to be possible, we must create a society that makes it so. That begins with imagining what the post-abolition world is like, because only then can we begin to work towards it. As CLF prepares to engage our denomination in the study of abolition, we will begin by activating our imaginations.

What does it feel like to live in a liberated world where everyone thrives and we center care and love? "It feels like spring." This question was asked to a group of UUs during a workshop on expanding our imaginations. When I heard this response, I felt it in my body. We'll explore the role of imagination in transforming our world.

Come with me, and we'll be in a world of pure imagination. In that world, we will dream of what can be--not to detach us from what is, but to make something better possible.

When does bearing witness become a radical theological act? How do we provide sanctuary for those whom our society wants to remain hidden? We will bear witness together and in doing so honor humanity, worth, dignity, and love.

How can witnessing ourselves and each other provide spiritual direction and resilience in our times of great upheaval? Soren Austenfeld (he/they), Music Director at First Parish in Malden, MA, shares a reflection from his experience of voice change as a transgender man and his work in gender-affirming voice education.

The story of Pandora’s Box is best known as the story of the curious woman who unleashed evil, mayhem and chaos on the world. But, what many leave out is the last item in the box, hope. We need hope more than ever and we will look for the ways holding on to a hope that transforms society.

What does it mean for us UU’s to bear WITNESS in these times? Must our witness and that of our co-conspirators be uniform and monochromatic? How does one’s social context impact what witnessing looks like? Join us as we begin exploring our February theme of Witnessing. NOTE: the image used here by Nikki Free is a AI generated variation of an original work by Navi Robins.

Beth Murray has served CLF and provided leadership for our Worthy Now Prison Ministry for 20 years, and is retiring at the end of the month. We will celebrate Beth and her example of leadership and service as we say goodbye.

If the purpose of our service is to give rise to the world that we know is possible, we must learn how to make it a reality. Inspired by a new book co-edited by Elandria Williams, we will tap into what E called “collective and ancestral wisdom” in order to explore the qualities that we can cultivate in ourselves and our communities to move everyone forward.