First Unitarian Universalist Church of Winnipeg's Podcast

June 29, 2025 Join Cheryl Simmonds as she discusses the history of the Sixties Scoop in Manitoba and the history of Project Opikihiwawin, a Winnipeg-based group of white parents who sought to connect their adopted Indigenous children to their Indigenous culture and communities. Service Coordinator: Norm Cobb

June 22, 2025 In her inspiring book Gift from the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote that she wished “to live ‘in grace’ as much of the time as possible,” which she was quick to differentiate from theological doctrines of grace. For her, grace was a quality of inner harmony, grounded in such qualities as simplicity and sincerity, patience and purity of intention, which can save us from the vexations...

April 13, 2025 Both a parent and a child on the spectrum, join Octavia as she sheds light on the challenges of parenting autistic youth and the experience of being one as well. Service Coordinator: Jill Moats

April 20, 2025 On this day, most churches will celebrate the risen Christ, but even in the days when all Unitarians still identified as Christians, they emphasized the living Jesus and his teachings, over the mythical tales about him. So today, we will reflect on the Beatitudes, focusing on the version that appears in the Sermon on the Plain in the Gospel of Luke. I have some good news – and I hav...

May 11, 2025 “It would be curious to discover who it is to whom one writes in a diary,” pondered Beatrice Webb. “Possibly to some mysterious personification of one’s own identity.” I’ve always admired those who can maintain the discipline of keeping a diary, although I’ve never been faithful in keeping a diary myself, despite several attempts over the years. But I write to myself (and even talk to...

May 18, 2025 Joan Goodwin wrote: “Spirit of the East, spirit of air, of morning and springtime: be with us as the sun rises, in times of beginning, times of planting.  Inspire us with the fresh breath of courage as we go forth into new adventures.”  In this last of the Elements series, join us as we discuss the most ethereal of elements, Air, and its intimate connection to the breath, spirit and t...

May 25, 2025 “Practice corporeal politics,” advises Timothy Snyder in his book On Tyranny. “Make new friends and march with them.” Instead of passively watching in horror, we must work together to resist the authoritarianism that masquerades as populism. As Unitarian theologian James Luther Adams proclaimed, “we deny the immaculate conception of virtue and affirm the necessity of social incarnatio...

June 8, 2025 Among Hungarian Unitarians, Pentecost remains one of the key holidays of the liturgical calendar. While on a pilgrimage to Transylvania in 2003, I was given the honour of preaching in a historic village church at Pentecost. The text was assigned, I resisted my prejudices, and in preparing to speak that day, I discovered the simple but profound meaning of Pentecost. Service Coordinator...

March 2, 2025 In acknowledging the land we are on, let’s journey back to the land and think about this terra firma we share with all living creatures. From the Land Back Movement to the healing properties land gives us, to hearing about a new spiritual retreat in the works, you’re invited to patrol some boundaries with Michael and Heather, who learned “you can’t roller skate in a buffalo herd.”

April 27, 2025 Austin Channing Brown wrote in June 2020, “I believe firmly that to practice love is to disrupt the status quo which is masquerading as peace.” This Sunday, Ashlyn will lead an exploration of ways to disrupt fascism with community building and common pitfalls for folks new to activism – or those returning to the fight.

August 4, 2024 Ash Burkowski, from Friends of the Living Prairie Museum, will provide an overview on why native plants are something to consider and pay attention to, including their environmental and horticultural benefits. They will discuss how natural prairies are important for climate change, preserving endangered species, and providing a way for gardeners to have a low-maintenance landscape....

January 19, 2025 Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) didn’t quite write “The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea.” This ubiquitous quote is a Readers Digest summary of a few lines of dialogue from one of her short stories, yet it feels true about how we connect to the element of water, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and are healed by it. At other times, salt (and fresh) wa...

April 6 2025 What does it mean to flourish? What does a flourishing congregation look like? What are the pathways from stability to vitality, surviving to thriving? And what difference would it make for the world? Let’s take time to imagine the next three years, the next decade, the next generation.

2024-03-16 Sermon What does it mean to be a Unitarian Universalist in 2025? What are we actually choosing? Reverend Anne Barker will invite us into a reflective worship space –where we consider the emerging possibilities. Rev. Anne Barker is the Canadian Unitarian Council’s Congregational Life Lead for Western Canada. She is visiting Winnipeg this weekend to consult with our congregation about its...

2025-03-23 Sermon Theologians and philosophers spent the last century talking about the death of God, but today it’s reasonable to ask if society is living through the death of truth. In his book on tyranny, Timothy Snyder notes that “truth dies in four modes, all of which we have just witnessed” – open hostility to verifiable reality, shamanistic incantation, magical thinking, and misplaced faith...

2025-03-09 Sermon “Over the past two years, I have described the kinds of ministry available to this congregation in workshops, meetings, and individual conversations, but I have tried to keep the space open so that you could express what ministry means to you and what kind of minister you wish to have. I have mostly refrained from telling you what ministry means to me – why it exists, what it doe...

2024-12-22 “No one is outside the circle of love,” wrote Rev Susan Frederick-Gray in a 2017 pastoral message. Canada’s commitment to universal health care is rooted in the fundamental belief that every resident, regardless of their background, deserves high-quality care when they need support for their well-being. On this morning after the winter solstice, as we emerge from the longest night of th...

2025-02-16  Like the proverbial olive, winter is an acquired taste for many. But if you do acquire a taste for it, “only in the winter,” says Ruth Stout, “can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savour yourself.” Amidst the frigid cold and dark nights, it is easy to miss the beauty and bounty of this season, its warmth and blessings. In this land of long, vivid winters, we can embrace th...

2025-01-12 In the beginning there is no desire to mark time, and in the end, there is no reason. But in between beginnings and endings, we mark time almost compulsively. Minutes lead to hours, hours to days, days to months, and months to years. And then we repeat. Calendars are the yardsticks with which we measure the passage of time and organize our lives while the proverbial clock ticks. Service...

2025-02-23 “Do not obey in advance,” says Timothy Snyder in his book On Tyranny, warning that, “most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given.” In England, Unitarians emerged within a religious movement that was dubbed Nonconformity, while in America, our kindred spirit Henry David Thoreau was acclaimed for his essay, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience. As authoritarianism is on the rise, w...

2025-02-02 Like all elements, love is essential for human survival. We need it to survive and thrive, so why aren’t we taught to hold unconditional love for ourselves? Join Octavia as she speaks to the true power of self-compassion. Service Coordinator: Cate Ziegler https://uuwinnipeg.mb.ca/services/an-element-of-love-the-elements-series-love/ This is the third in our series exploring The Elements...

2024-12-15 In ancient Rome, the state sought to pacify the people by feeding large groups of citizens and then distracting them with entertainment—such as feeding Christians to the lions and other such “sports.”  In his Satire , the Roman poet Juvenal called this practice “bread and circuses.”  How much has really changed since then?

2025-02-16 Since the dawn of human time, people have experienced a close, yet uneasy, relationship with fire. After countless millennia, we find that our efforts at controlling fire are limited at best. Yet fire in many forms continues to be employed, such as in heating our living/working/playing spaces, in cooking, and in ritual and ceremony. So come, let’s play with fire! This is the fourth of o...

2024-12-08 A bend in the road is a recurring motif in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s stories about Anne of Green Gables. “Oh, there’s another bend in the road at their end,” she writes in Anne of the Island. “I’ve no idea what may be around it – I don’t want to have. It’s nicer not to know.” One of Canada’s most acclaimed authors, Montgomery was born 150 years ago, and we will celebrate her life and lette...

2024-09-22 Sermon Unfortunately the beginning of this sermon was lost due to a computer crash, but we wanted to share as much of it as we could. For most people, eulogies provide the longest biographical narrative ever written about them, recording details of their lives and perceptions of their character. What’s the story of your life? What has animated you? What do you wish to be remembered for?...