Complete Service-First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco

"Jonah and the Big Fish" (August 30, 2020) I love stories and their power to teach or invite us to let them speak to us wherever we are.  And I love the story in the Hebrew Scriptures of Jonah and his journey with that Big Fish. And what layers we might find for ourselves in it about how to face life and what it might insist on from us. Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern, Senior Minister Gregg B...

"Launching the Fledglings" (August 23, 2020) It's an odd year to think about how to raise and launch adults (be they nieces, nephews, children, grandchildren).  It is also a process and one we are engaged in all along the way. It probably also has lessons about how we deal with some adults too!!! Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern, Senior Minister Dennis Adams, Worship Associate Reiko Oda Lane,...

"Turning Points" (August 16, 2020) Our history is full of turning points. So are our individual lives. As we live through a time full of both danger and opportunity, let us reflect on some of the great turning points in our national history – such as women winning the right to vote in August, 1920, or same sex couples winning the right to marry just five years ago, – and how they came about. John...

"Story Time" (August 9, 2020) We are the stuff of stars. A collection of particles held together by the laws of physics and the forces of nature. We talk of free will but we move and act in accordance to evolution’s playbook. What sets us apart is our ability to reflect, to look back in time and imagine the future – to see ourselves as part of the unfolding story of time, and ask ourselves what do...

"The Promise in the Desert" (August 2, 2020) Some have begun calling 2020 "The Great Reckoning," a time when the injustices of reality are fully being called in by the promises of our possibility. It is a powerful, scary, tense, creative, and uncertain time in our lives. Drawing inspiration from the story of Hajar in the Islamic Traditions, we will explore what it can mean to believe in the promis...

"From Fragility to Accountability" (July 26, 2020) This Sunday, there is a journey we'd like you to take with us.  Let us go as seekers. We will pack a little bag and wander along a less traveled path. It's a path that we hope, one day, will become well worn as others follow us into a new place. We won’t be following an easy trail, but the promise of this journey is that we will become l...

"Poetry for Summer Musing" (July 19, 2020) Periodically diving deep in the world of poetry is like asking someone to hold a frame around the ordinary or a magnifying glass against the small that holds universes. What better time for such presence to ordinary that is anything but ordinary than summer days -- bring a blade of grass to put between your teeth! Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern, Senior Minist...

"The Power of Witnessing" (July 12, 2020) In W.H. Auden's poem "Musee des Beaux Arts" the poet describes two Brueghel paintings and in both something about the witnessing or missing of huge moments in the human drama was/is the theme. It got me thinking about this act of witnessing, why and how it is important to us, a salve, a buoy. And how it might actually be one of the most important and not-s...

"Exquisite Risk" (July 5, 2020) Following on our sermon on "Negotiating Risk" (May 17) we will look this Sunday at the flip side of risk -- that part of engaging life that is scary but gorgeous and transformative, that keeps us growing and alive. Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern, Senior Minister Dennis Adams, Worship Associate Reiko Oda Lane, organist Gilead Wurman, baritone Asher Davison, bass-baritone...

"The Perfect Day" (June 28, 2020) In the story of creation told in Hebrew Scriptures, after six days of work creating heaven and earth, God took a day off. And so there’s a long tradition in Judaism and Christianity and Islam this day of Sabbath so the actual day that’s marked as such as different in each tradition. It is a day of mandatory rest. A day in which we are supposed to pretend that ever...

"Lost Stories" (June 21, 2020) June 19th, every year, also known as Juneteenth, Freedom Day, Black Fourth of July, is the day in The United States that we commemorate June 19, 1865, when two and a half years after the Emanciation Proclamation was implemented, enslaved African Americans in parts of the South finally got word of their liberation.  As we commemorate that date we will look a...

A Welcoming Community (June 14, 2020) We look at the importance of community and the power of radical welcoming - a celebration of the congregation and a thanks for priceless gifts. This will be Sharon's last sermon with us as our 2019-2020 Ministerial Intern. Sharon Weld, Ministerial Intern Rev. Alyson Jacks, Associate Minister Reiko Oda Lane, organist Jennifer Peringer, pianist Ben Rudiak-Gould,...

For Such a Time as This (June 7, 2020) Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern, Senior Minister Rochelle Fortier Nwadibia, Worship Associate Ben Rudiak-Gould, tenor Asher Davison, bass-baritone Wm. Garcia Ganz, pianist Eric Shackelford, camera Joe Chapot, Social Media Chat Support Alex Darr, Zoom Remote Host Jonathan Silk, OOS, Sound, Podcasting, Video Edits, drums

“Apart/Together” (May 31, 2020) One of the side-effects of physical distancing and shelter-in-place is loneliness. According to Dr. Vivek Murthy, the former Surgeon General, research shows that more than 20% of the US adult population struggles with loneliness, and that was before COVID19. Social connection is baked into our nervous system. We need human interaction to survive. What causes lonelin...

"The Human Spirit, Hardy and Delicate" (May 24, 2020) Poppies come to us in magnificent clumps of color. They grow wild. They bring us hope.  If not for their brightly colored blooms, they would be considered a weed, given how their seeds drift on the wind and take root by any road or on any hillside. Their flowers are delicate, their life force is hardy. It was for these characteristics...

"Negotiating Risk" (May 17, 2020) Life is risky business, always, and always has been, but life right now has put the idea of risk at the center of our lives, and in more ways than one. Let's talk risk and what it brings into sharp(er) focus in our own lives and the world, and how this close dance-with-risk might change us! Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern, Senior Minister Sam King, Worship Associate Re...

"It Takes a Village: The People Who Shaped Us" (May 10, 2020) Mothers are important, but also mothering and befriending, grand parenting and neighboring all shape us too as we grow, come to know ourselves, choose how and who we'd like to be in the world.  This Mother's Day we will celebrate the stories of, as Garrison Keillor says, "The Mothers and Others." Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern, Se...

"How Are You Feeling?" (May 3, 2020) Fred Rogers taught us that it's important to express our feelings, and to be listened to and respected. It's not always easy to say what's in our hearts. We need to feel safe and know that others can be trusted. It's what we strive for in our Sunday School, and in all of our church interactions. This Sunday, we'll draw lessons from Mr. Rogers neighborhood that...

"Life in the Monastery" (April 26, 2020) Part of me has always wanted to live in a monastery. The only problem is that my spouse wouldn't agree, and there are all those vows too. Lately, though, there is a lot monastic about my life, and maybe yours. What if we think of framing our time of stay-at-home as "Life in the Monastery"? What would that mean or might it. Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern, Senior...

"Earth’s Lessons" (April 19, 2020) On April 22,1970 “teach-ins” launched the first Earth Day. Fifty years later, voices from across the globe are demanding that we wake up, double down, and respond more quickly to the climate crisis. “Climate change is a timed test” (McKibben) and the 2020s will be our exam. This is neither a test of individual purity, nor an exam we can pass alone.  In...

"Easter in Holy Week Times" (April 12, 2020) This, you might say, is not exactly an Easter time.  The events of Holy Week, as it is traditionally celebrated, feel so much more accurate a description of where most of us find ourselves around the globe. We live now, more than we often do, together in the shadow of loss, keeping company with human limitations, facing our mortality, and pres...

"At Ease" (April 5, 2020) During times of crisis and uncertainty, we experience suffering, and seek out ways to bring comfort to those in need, including ourselves. It being Palm Sunday, and Buddha’s birthday on April 8, we’ll journey with Jesus and Buddha to contemplate ways we can ease suffering and bring comfort to our souls. Rev. Alyson Jacks, Associate Minister Sharon Weld, Ministerial Intern...

"Perspective: The Power of Climbing up onto the Balcony and What Can We See?" (March 29, 2020) We all know that anxiety and fear sharpen our minds and brains down to a narrow tunnel of needs and priorities and put our thoughts on infinite repeats of certain “What If’s” — or a long, tired, bleak list of them. The antidote to that is, in part, perspective, what one author called, “Getting up on the...

"Are We Saved?" (March 22, 2020) A sermon about the age-old religious question and the honest-to-God answer (at least by this preacher)! Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern, Senior Minister Rev. Alyson Jacks, Associate Minister Joe Chapot, Office Assistant & Young Adult Coordinator Reiko Oda Lane, organ My Hoa Steger, piano Michele Kennedy, soprano Asher Davison, bass Eric Shackelford, camera Jonathan Silk...

"Gifts Great and Small" (March 15, 2020) This is Pi(e) weekend. The ratio of the radius of our circle of caring and sharing to its circumference, geometrically, is forever roughly 3.14. So just what does this mean for our relatively small, church community in relation to the great surrounding spiritual and social needs of the city and world in which we live? What part of the whole pie of services...