Upcoming Worship Services
October 13, 2024, “Past and Future” Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels
Founder’s Day
As we mark our congregation’s 81st year and the beginning of our 82nd, I wonder what we owe the past? With a present full of excitement and action, and a future open to whatever our vision calls us to be, is the past simply over, or do our founders and members from decades ago still have a claim on us? Perhaps the answer appears when we consider how we hope the future church will speak of us when we are “past” ourselves?
October 20, 2024, "Living Love Through the Practice of Invitation"
Soul Matters
We Unitarian Universalists pride ourselves on welcoming everyone. We affirm that people of all races and orientations are welcome here; we often state it on our website and display the rainbow symbol of pride and celebration. But what does it mean to “Live Love Through the Practice of Invitation”? We will share a sermon called “Setting a Place for Elijah,” which illustrates what it really means to be a place of welcome for all people.
October 27, 2024, “To Be… Continued” Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels
Halloween
Whether this mortal life is all there is of us or if our personal experience continues in some fashion after our physical death is one of the central mysteries of existence. The play of Halloween and the celebration of Dia de Los Muertos, release our anxiety about the mystery of death but don’t resolve it. Neither do the certainties of the religious answers satisfy. And so we live, and in choosing how we live, imply our answer.
November 3, 2024, “For Better or Worse” Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels
Election Day
Without exaggeration, this Tuesday’s election may be the most significant any of us will ever participate in. The consequences come next year will be great. But it’s also true that whichever way the results come out, we will remain a nation divided with our democracy in peril. Whichever man takes the oath of office on January 20, our task will be the same: to remember we are citizens of the United States.
November 10, 2024, “Some Gave All” Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels
Veteran’s Day
Spiritual health asks us to put aside self-interest for the good of others. That others are persons of worth as much as we are is a principle of our faith. Self-sacrifice, though, can sometimes ask us to value the lives of others more than we value ourselves, or put abstractions like honor or nation above actual human lives. Our Veteran’s deserve more than thanks, they deserve a careful calibration of the mark where virtue turns to tragedy.
November 17, 2024
November 24, 2024, “Enough is as Good as a Feast” Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels
Thanksgiving
The earth’s abundance is the glory of Autumn. Materialism advertises its delights, tempting us with more, more, more, but never satisfying our desire. Spiritual health recognizes not only the limits of the planet to give, but our own limits to receive with equanimity.
December 1, 2024, “Compassion” Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels
World AIDS Day, Bodhi Day
Buddhism’s First Noble Truth declares the truth of suffering. Buddha’s enlightenment revealed an eight-fold path that we can follow to end our suffering, our own suffering, that is, but not the suffering of others. Everyone must do the work for themselves. And so, as suffering persists, for others and ourselves as well, we are called to compassion.
December 8, 2024, “Joy to the World” Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels
Winter Solstice
Merry. Happy. Glad tidings. Comfort and joy. The words of the season, speak to the aspect of the spiritual life that should be filled with fun and pleasure. As the darkness turns to light with the solstice, may our spirits also turn to that which should be the goal of life in every season: joy.
December 15, 2024, Children's Christmas Pageant
December 22, 2024, “The Christmas Story” Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels
Christmas
Of course it’s just a story: no star, no manger, no trip to Bethlehem, no angel. But the magic and meaning isn’t lost by calling it what it is: a story. Rather, the story communicates something the truth never could. Christmas isn’t less because it’s a story; if it weren’t a good story, it wouldn’t be Christmas.
December 24, 2024 Christmas Eve Service, 5pm Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels
December 29, 2024, “Faithfully Flexible” Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels
Hanukkah
The history of Hanukkah tells of people so committed to their faith that they went to battle rather than bend. Their choice is inspiring. But often we do choose to let go of cherished commitments. And sometimes letting go is the better, and even the more religiously principled, choice.
January 5, 2024, “Who Am I, Really?” Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels
Epiphany
It's easier toward the end of life to see that what we call the self is widely changeable. I'm not the person I was as a child, or teen, or young adult. My self becomes more stable as I age, but perhaps I've just given up exploring and experimenting out of laziness, or I've learned to accept a version of myself grown comfortable by habit. Is there a person I was born to be, and how do I know if I'm that person?
January 12, 2025
January 19, 2025, “The Ability to Achieve Purpose” Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels
MLK’s Birthday
The power to direct our lives and achieve our goals is essential to spiritual health. Where do we find our power? The life and work of Martin Luther King provide three answers. Natural gifts give power when matched to appropriate work. Faith gives power when we align our lives with divine aims. Righteous causes give power when inspiring dreams call us to action.
January 26, 2025, “Courage, Friends” Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels
Courage, or fortitude, is one of the four cardinal virtues. Allied with wisdom (or prudence), temperance (or restraint) and justice (or righteousness), the ability to endure hardship without faltering and to move toward the good and best without fear encompasses all the other qualities that define the highest path of living.
February 2, 2025, “An Optimistic Faith” Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels
Candlemas and offering blessing for the coming year
Because we are free, the future is open. Because the future is open, there are no certainties, either of glory or of doom. Uncertainty makes space for doubt but also optimism. Unitarian Universalism is characterized by a sense that our future will be better, because we can make it so.
February 9, 2025,
February 16, 2025, “Flawed Leaders for Flawed People” Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels
President’s Day.
Because leaders are human, they make mistakes. If the leader is a king or a tyrant, the people must simply suffer the leader's mistakes. But in a democracy, like the United States or a Unitarian Universalist Church, leaders are our leaders, and it is our privilege and responsibility to hold them accountable.
February 23, 2025, <Auction Sermon> Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels
Stewardship Sunday.
March 2, 2025
March 9, 2025, “Starting with Me” Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels
Ash Wednesday, Lent
The spiritual life is often described as a journey. It's not the destination, we say, but the journey. But journeys have beginnings, too. We start from somewhere. And every pause we take along the path defines a new starting place: maybe still on the right track or maybe having wandered far afield. The season of Lent in the Christian tradition is about making a clear confession of where we are before we take a further step.
March 16, 2025, “Keeping it Real” Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels
Although religion explores realms not available to empirical study, speaks in myths and parables, and for some, includes the supernatural, to be valuable, religion must engage with reality. I've always appreciated that Unitarian Universalism is what I call a "reality-based religion." But it isn't just our foundation in reality that counts, it's also our commitment to end in reality, with real lives made really better for real people.
March 23, 2025
March 30, 2025, “For the Beauty” Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels
Spring equinox
As one of the three transcendentals: the good, the true, and the beautiful, beauty is a essential quality of being. All existing things are beautiful. Our spirits grow as we develop the ability to appreciate even the parts of existence from which we might otherwise be tempted to turn away.
April 6, 2025,
April 13, 2025
April 20, 2025, “Something Always, Always Sings” Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels
Easter
For Unitarians, who hold a conception of a strictly human Jesus, a physical resurrection is not possible. No human can die and later live again as that same person. But what if we think of Easter not as something that happens to individuals but as a lesson about life itself? Easter could celebrate an eternally existing spirit of life passed through communities, taking shape in collections of individual for a time, and then taking new shapes in later times.
April 27, 2025, “Let Me Flower, Help Me Flower” Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels
Passover
The story of Passover endures because it speaks to one of the fundamental aims of religion: liberation. We seek to be released from all that holds back individuals and groups from the full expression of our potential. The spiritual journey is the journey from oppression by others and by our own doubts and fears to the freedom of lives we make for ourselves.
May 4, 2025
May 11, 2025, “Continuous Creation” Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels
Mother’s Day
The old story tells us that God finished the work of creation in six days and rested on the seventh. So what happened on the eighth day? Clearly creation wasn't finished because the universe has been continuously unfolding for fourteen billion years and will be new yet again tomorrow. On Mother's Day we celebrate the spiritual truth that all creatures are also partners in further creation.
May 18, 2025, "Loyalty: a Delicate Virtue" Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels
To perceive that something is valuable, to connect ourselves to that thing, and then to stick with it when times get tough, is the virtue of loyalty. The value in being a friend, a member of a union or spiritual community, a citizen of a nation, derives in part from our agreement of loyalty. But when the object of our loyalty betrays our values how do we balance faithfulness with right of conscience?
May 25, 2025, "The Eternal Rememberer"
Memorial Day
"We remember them" we say, in one of the litanies from our hymnal. But if honoring the dead depends on memory, then what happens when memory fails? And does the value of a life die with the death of the last person who remembers? I can't respect such a contingent valuation. Something greater than human memory is necessary to give lasting honor to those precious but forgotten lives that came before.
June 1, 2025, Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels, Jacki Weber and the REE Committee
REE Sunday
Our annual culmination and celebration of the church's religious education and exploration program
June 8, 2025, Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels, John Bergquist and the Music and Tech Teams
Music and Tech Sunday
Our annual culmination and celebration of the church's music and tech programs.
June 15, 2025,
June 22, 2025, "Oh We Give Thanks" Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels
Volunteer Recognition, Flower Communion
We close the church's program year with a day to recognize and thank the many volunteers who contributed throughout the year. And we ritually celebrate our community with the Unitarian Universalist ritual of flower communion. Please bring a flower to church today that represents your unique spirit and help us create a beautiful, communal bouquet.
June 29, 2025, “The Last Word” Rev. Rick Hoyt-McDaniels
Today I conclude my ministry career. Although my ordination is for life and I'll likely find small ways to serve as a minister in the future, today is the last Sunday I expect to preach from a pulpit of my own. I'll offer an extended benediction, some "good words", both for you at the close of this interim ministry, and for me, as our paths diverge.