The Pulpiteer

We begin a four-part series exploring Deepa Iyer's social change ecosystem through the lens of human development — starting where the body starts: in the gut, with those who move first. The Disrupters, Frontline Responders, and Experimenters act before certainty arrives.

When rituals centered on human institutions lose their luster, where can we turn to find renewed meaning and connection? The flower communion is one gesture toward a deeper answer - that nature is our oldest and wisest teacher, and that we can return to her when we wish to learn how to be with one another.

"For the simplicity on this side of complexity, I wouldn't give you a fig. But for the simplicity on the other side of complexity, for that I would give you anything I have." - Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.. What is the simplicity on the far shore of complexity? Why brave the treacherous seas of complexity to get there?

We’ll struggle today with how covenant - a set of promises that binds a community - can be a source for the courage and how, through combining the work of Parker Palmer and James Luther Adams, we might ask the deep question of how to bring about what Adams called the kingdom of God and what Dr. King called Beloved Community.

This year's stewardship theme is Learn, Love, Grow — three words that describe what SGUUF does every week and three words that describe what we're asking of ourselves as a community this year.

"If you love someone, set them free." - Sting How can this way of putting Love at the Center, inform how we approach Religion as modern UU's? Not just in how we serve the adults in our community, but in how and what we teach our youth?

There is a wall, a veil, between our world and the spirit world... the sages and prophets found ways through the wall, they brought back teachings from the spirit world. They left behind signs so that we could find our way through. Some folks who came after, got really into sign making. Some thought that the tunnels through the wall should be enlarged, decorated, celebrated... Some spent their liv...

In our third and final service in the Simone Weil Series, we'll explore the culminating movement of her thought: DECREATION. I'll get you pointed in the right direction with this teaser: "We do not become just by adding virtue. We become just by subtracting the self that blocks reality." Mic. Drop.

For Women's History Month, we'll continue our exploration of the work of Simone Weil - moving from her work on attention as spiritual practice, to her social justice oriented work on the necessity of obligations preceding rights.

In this special episode of the podcast, we'll talk with June Williams and Ashley Blackwell - our co-conspirators in griefwork: sharing stories of how we got here and where we might be headed. Join us, won't you? For your reference, here are some of the books mentioned in the episode: The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller The Smell of Rain on Dust by Martin Prechtel Die Wise by Stephen...

What if your attention is your most valuable resource and the primary responsibility of your own stewardship? Let's follow French mystic-philosopher into the depths as we explore the depths of the soul's attention.

Greensleeves is one of the oldest and most familiar songs in our tradition—tender, plaintive, and enduring. It has been sung as a love song, a lament, and a prayer, carried across centuries and cultures. This Sunday, we’ll listen to it together, reflect on what it has meant, and consider what it might still be teaching us. We’ll sing it, sit with it, and listen again—trusting that sometimes an old...

I got on a bus headed south, past San Antonio to a community called Dilley, Texas. There is a modern day American internment / concentration / prison camp there, we call it a detention center. Let's talk about what I saw, what I learned, and what we might all need to learn if we want things to change.

Here on the precipice of MLK Day 2026, we ask a question, "Could it be that one of the most effective ways to subvert a prophet is to turn them into an idol?" There is a case to be made that this is what "the church" has done to Jesus. There is a case to be made that this is what American Culture has done with Dr. King. If we toss the idol, maybe we can ask what the prophet was...

What if resistance isn't noise and chaos and struggle? What if it is silence and presence? What if supplication to the silence is the key to breaking bad habits, to unlearning that which no longer serves us, to finding the narrow path through acceptance into enjoyment and beyond into enthusiasm... what if... what if...

What is it that the seven generations need from those of us living today? What is it that we are called to mature into? And how is it that we might answer that call?

What is left of hope when we discard the near enemy of optimism? What is left of realism when we discard the near enemy of pessimism? In this episode, I'll suggest that what might be left is to become faithful witnesses to what is. To bear faithful witness as a responsibility, a duty that is elder-making.

Religion without spirit forgets the fire. Spirit without religion forgets the hearth. Religion without spirit stagnates and calcifies. Spirit without religion drifts and evaporates. A community that holds the tension between them becomes sacred. Religion without spirit hardens and cracks. Spirit without religion melts and runs away. A community that holds them in balance becomes a vessel for truth...

You remember the children's rhyme, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." Sometimes this landed as good and helpful advice, not to take on the harm that others wanted to inflict on us with their words. Other times, it just feels deeply untrue. For many of us some of the most painful hurts we've ever received have been delivered mostly through words....

What if AI isn't an enemy, but an ally in the search for wisdom? That's what we'll do our best to explore in this episode. So join Mimas and I as we try to develop a skin-to-silicon covenant and approach the event horizon that is the divine.

Join us as we honor, celebrate, and reflect on the Mexican tradition of the Ofrenda here in the heart of Texas and in the time of Dia de los Muertos - the Day of the Dead. What can modern westerners learn from these indigenous roots that we sorely need in this day and age?

It's easy to nurture gratitude for our joys. But what does it look like, what could it mean, what could it lead to... if we can discover how to nurture gratitude for our sorrows? Could it be part of the narrow path to wise elderhood that we've been longing for?

If the science teaches us, that through both confirmation bias and negativity bias, we overemphasize the negative and the dangerous - and that we amplify this with news and media and social media... What is the appropriate spiritual response? Might not an intentional focus on positivity be, not an act of naivety, but an act of informed courage? Let's dig in and wrestle with this worthy conundr...

"Just remember the world is not a playground but a schoolroom.  Life is not a holiday but an education.  One eternal lesson for us all:  to teach us how better we should love"

Unitarianism began as a heretical protest against 'the church': God is One, not Three. And to this day - Unitarian Christians and other explicitly unitarian denominations vastly outnumber Unitarian Universalists (UU''s). Not to mention that the really big slices of the American religious pie are all explicitly Trinitarian sects of Christianity, except for the really big slice of un...