Sermons-First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco

"What's Going On?" Sunday, March 27, 10:50 am, Worship Service Livestream I want to talk about what I have been seeing and hearing the last week or two -- not about timeless and eternal questions but about what is going on around and within us all these days... at least my best guess, with a little input from my friends. It will be a time to sing, too light candles, to enjoy each other in coffee h...

"The Question of Legacy" Sunday, March 20, 10:50 am, Worship Service Livestream I've been thinking a lot about legacy. Call it mid-life, call it an eternal itch we humans scratch and an eternal question with which we wrestle. It's a grounding question, a sobering one, sometimes an inspiring one, and maybe, maybe our answer changes as we go, as the path before us twists and opens. The question of l...

"Rites of Passage Service: Big Life Questions" Sunday, March 13, 10:50 am, Worship Service Livestream We are excited to welcome our 4th and 5th graders for this year's Rites of Passage Service. The service will include wonderful music, performed by our bell and church choir, we'll have special songs, and a few surprises. And of course, the Big Life Questions! Our eight young people have waited an...

"The Ecology of Generosity" Sunday, March 6, 10:50 am, Worship Service Livestream Our preacher this week, The Rev. Vail Weller, has served congregations as parish minister in West Virginia, Michigan, and most recently San Mateo, California, where she still resides. She is also the Congregational Giving Director at the Unitarian Universalist Association and we are so grateful to have her with us on...

"To Change the World, with Love" Sunday, February 27, 10:50 am, Worship Service In her book "Pleasure Activism" author adrienne maree brown questions whether activism needs to look like suffering and opens up the invitation for this piece of what we do to be not just more sustainable but life-giving, pleasurable!! What does she mean by "pleasure activism" and how can it change more than just our s...

"To Sondheim, with Love" Sunday, February 20, 2022 Livestream Worship Service This morning we celebrate the great composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim who recently passed away at the age of 91. His cool cleverness and skeptical, often ironic, intellectual character have long been commented on. It is not hard to find articles with titles like "The Case for Sondheim as Existentialist," or an obitu...

"To Relationships, with Love" Sunday, February 13, 2022 10:50 am, Worship Service Over the years, we can learn a few things about what it means to be in relationship well. How to love well? How to get over the rough spots and increase the joy and depth of connection. What are some of the lessons of love? Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern, Senior Minister; Dennis Adams, Worship Associate; Reiko Oda Lane,...

"Weaving Waters: Regional Assembly Worship" Sunday, February 6, 2022 10:50 am, Worship Service This worship is an embodied, engaging, multi-gen service focusing on unity and interdependence. It is a testimony, boldly embracing the reality of Regionalization - combining resources and congregations to better and more equitably serve a vast geography from Western Nebraska through and to Alaska (and b...

"The Many Faces of Leadership" Sunday, January 30, 2022 10:50 am, Worship Service Two days from now the Lunar New Year celebrations will begin and the Year of the Tiger will begin with it. And although being born under one of the Chinese Zodiac signs or another is supposed to have some influence on your character or disposition, perhaps each sign can also be an invitation to all of us to explore s...

"Some Joy Please" Sunday, January 23, 10:50 am, Worship Service Livestream This Sunday let's take a break from lockdown woes and worries and turn our attention to how we bring joy and pleasure into our lives. Is it a song, a favorite recipe, a good book? Hard times make us think that joy isn't possible. But we think joy and pleasures, and staying in touch with both, is the secret sauce that will g...

"History is not History" Sunday, January 16, 10:50 am, Worship Service Livestream On this Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend when we could focus on the history of the Civil Rights Movement, let's focus on the present realities. From the old deed to an old house to a new staff member's request for a simple lanyard, to modern civil rights leaders asking we celebrate MLK Day only one way this year, what...

"'God' is not God's name" Sunday, January 9, 10:50 am, Worship Service Livestream As a theist, a liberal theist, in a pluralistic religious movement, and a congregation with a significant humanist/atheist/non-theist members, I don't talk much about God. Today, I will, and what that word, that-which-it-points-toward, means for me, and has for other progressive theists too. And whether it is useful...

"Right Belief or Right Living" Sunday, January 2, 2022, Worship Service Livestream On Sunday, January 2nd, the Rev. David Usher will be preaching “ right belief or right living“. David was the hula hoop champion Manchester before going on to write one of the greatest books of knock knock jokes and it’s probably most famous for his art exhibition at the Guggenheim of cotton candy sculptures. We hop...

"Kwanzaa" Sunday, December 26, 10:50 am, Worship Service This Sunday we will celebrate and deepen our understanding of Kwanzaa, an African American and Pan-African cultural holiday observed by millions of people worldwide. Please join us in honoring the symbols and significance of another important December rite that lends texture and meaning to this Holiday Season. We will be helped by Brotha Cli...

"Being Alive" (December 12, 2021) Worship Service We are welcoming the President of Starr King School For The Ministry, the Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt preaching. And we are celebrating two rites of passage -- blessing the newest member of our congregation, Baby Eliot, and celebrating Thomas Brown who has served this congregation for over two decades and is formally retiring. Come join service and t...

"Big Music Sunday" (December 5, 2021) Worship Service Walt Whitman was a man who lived a very rich life, finding beauty and divinity in all corners of the earth. We enjoy his words as set to some of the most beautiful music imaginable, but we also speak his words, we hear his words, we hear about the man. As a special element we also shall frame the service with that which gave him inspiration to...

"A String of Gratefuls" (November 28, 2021) Worship Service A service of readings and songs on what gives us joy and for what we are grateful. Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern, Senior Minister; Mari-Ester Magaloni Ramos, Worship Associate; Daniel Jackoway, Worship Associate; Rev. Millie Phillips, Small Group Ministry Co-Chair; Reiko Oda Lane, Organist; Leandra Ramm, Mezzo Soprano; Ben Rudiak-Gould, Song...

“What the Pecans have to Teach?” (November 21, 2021) Worship Service I know -- What does Vanessa mean by this?! Drawing on a chapter in Robin Wall Kimmerer's "Braiding Sweetgrass" a little more about the pecans in your pie, and their life story and wisdom, to lead us soulfully into the week ahead. Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern, Senior Minister; Linda Harris, UUSC Chair; Bell Choir led by Reiko Oda La...

“The Pursuit of Radiance” (November 14, 2021) Worship Service As the darkest days of the year arrive, lights appear everywhere: ropes of lights outline tall buildings, colorful Christmas lights brighten windows and trees, candles are lit reverently in Hanukkah menorahs, Kwansa kinaras and winter solstice rituals. We humans instinctively crave and seek out light when days are dark. This is true, me...

"We are the Thousand Winds that Blow" (November 7, 2021) Worship Service This service is one that may be becoming a tradition for us -- a chance on this Sunday that coincides with Samhain, All Souls Day, and Dia de Los Muertos to call into our space the memory, an a snapshot of the lives we have lost this last year -- call them into the space to bless and mourn and offer gratitude. Rev. Vanessa Ru...

“The Costumes We Wear” (October 31, 2021) Worship Service A worship service about disguises. Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern, Senior Minister; Dennis Adams, Worship Associate; Sam King, Worship Associate; Reiko Oda Lane, Organist; Nancy Munn, Soprano; Bill Ganz, Accompanist; Ben Rudiak-Gould, Songleader Eric Shackelford, Camera; Shulee Ong, Camera; Jonathan Silk, Communications Director; Joe Chapot, Li...

“The Land of Memory” (October 24, 2021) Worship Service The artist Etel Adnan, wrote that her memories were like a forest with unstable boundaries. Adnan was born in Lebanon, lived in France, then moved to California, living at the base of Mount Tamalpais, where she wrote and painted for many years. Her paintings were a way to explore memories and make meaning of them. Navigating the land of memor...

"Right Thinking, Right Feeling and Right Relations" (October 17, 2021) Worship Service Twins and co-authors of a recent book "Burnout", Emily and Amelia Nagoski talk about patterns of thinking and dealing with stress that lead to burnout. However, they also go deeper, to patterns of thinking, feeling and being in relationships that undermine our own and one another's health, joy and, I'd say, dera...

"Who is Earth to Me?" (October 10, 2021) Worship Service Robin Wall Kimmerer in her book "Braiding Sweetgrass" opens with a simple description of this act of weaving, braiding the supple green stalks of a plant, but what unfolds is layers of relationship and story and a paradigm that has saving grace. Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern, Senior Minister; Daniel Jackoway, Worship Associate; Sam King, Worshi...

"Higher Love: Installation Service" (October 3, 2021) Worship Service "The Installation Service of Senior Minister Rev. Vanessa Rush Southern" This is a sermon (Higher Love) about where this ministry together takes us and some of what we learn along the way. Our preacher, the Rev. Elizabeth Lerner Maclay, is the Senior Minister of the First Unitarian Church of Providence, RI. Rev. Maclay has been...