Sermons

The holiest days of the Jewish yearly cycle of observations. The days of Awe, from Rosh Ha-Shanah to Yom Kippur, offer a chance to contemplate our past, wonder about our future, tremble at the mystery of life, make things right, and make or renew commitments.

As if any day were not. Not just 14 billion years ago. Today. It's time for a new, wiser, gentler humanity.

9-16-07

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Repent! by F. Jay Deacon

For the Renewal of Life: the Days of Awe.

Every year, Yom Kippur comes asking hard questions. Could there be a world without guilt? Should there be? There's only one "Supreme Critic" capable of calling you to turn, and it's closer than your breath.

9-23-07

.pdf	Afraid of the journey by F. Jay Deacon Life is a journey from a past that can be no more to a future that is not yet and remains invisible to us. What is it that draws us onward in this arduous and unending quest?	9-30-07
.pdf	In the telling by F. Jay Deacon The story is in the telling. How do, you tell it? Where do you start? stop? What do you include, leave out?	10-07-07
.pdf	*Cataclysm* by F. Jay Deacon This is about personal-sized ones that disrupt your life with the force of a drought or earthquake or war.	10-14-07
.pdf	Gather by F. Jay Deacon We gather in richer company than is immediately apparent. What kind of gathering is this? Who is here, and what, and what difference does it make?	10-21-07
.pdf	Anger! by F. Jay Deacon We all know it. But what to do with it? The transformation of anger into a sublime energy we need.	11-04-07
.pdf	The Leverage of Truth by F. Jay Deacon From our own Unitarian Universalist story, moments of failure and moments of heroism prove the power, in those moments on which history turns, of truth. You've probably heard of Theodore Parker - but do you know William Gannett, Moncure Conway, Sojourner Truth, or Anthony Burns? Let me introduce them through his wrenching, thrilling story.	11-11-07
.pdf	G-D by F. Jay Deacon What does anyone mean when they speak of God? It's a dangerous word which, repeated too easily, can amount to little more than profanity. Here, language fails us and we have to struggle to say what we mean. Is that a bad thing?	11-25-07
.pdf	The Speed of Light by F. Jay Deacon ,,,and it's persistence, in a darkening time. Light is everywhere. What's it doing? What is it to be light?	12-02-07
.pdf	*Past and future: hearing voices* by F. Jay Deacon The season of Advent involves the mythic story of Jesus in the wilderness, alone, apart, listening to voices you won't likely hear amid the din and turmoil. It changed him. He went there with the usual religious assumptions and came out with something revolutionary - though those who now claim to speak in his name rarely seem to get it. What will it take for us to hear the deeper, subtler voices?	12-09-07
.pdf	New heaven, new earth by F. Jay Deacon There is an evolutionary principles that knows how to Unfold, to become for the first time ever a Flower. The grass knows how to grow and in Spring it will again. Our human consciousness shares that something, expresses it, is a part of it. There is Something at the heart of things that is preparing the way for a great shift in planetary consciousness, making all things new. We are beginning to witness that spirtual awakening. But it begins with pain and discontent.	12-16-07
.pdf	*Unto you this day is also born...* (not quite a Christmas story) by F. Jay Deacon Three hopeful stories you never get to hear of three others born at Christmas, the Unitarians Isaac Newton, Clara Barton, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Their humanity and their greatness will give you hope.	12-23-07
.pdf	*Who Has a Dream?* by F. Jay Deacon Dr. King's odyssey was, actually, an often disheartening path. His wasn't a life of peace. The power - and the penetrating question - of a dream.	01-13-08
.pdf	*Art of Impossible* by F. Jay Deacon A lesson: The very power that resides in the obstacle resides also in you and that is because the power resides not in you nor in the obstacle, but in the moment. The transformative passage is the realm of the gods.	01-20-08
.pdf	*Context* by F. Jay Deacon This is what a spiritual community is, and what a congregation can be: a context for the unfolding of our highest possibilities, an engine that actually creates a new and nobler culture. But it may not be for everyone. It will have to be something more than a collection of egos.	01-27-08
.pdf	We Had Hoped by F. Jay Deacon A little story tucked into the end of the Gospel of Luke offers an entirely different take on Easter than you'll find in the rest of the New Testament. No cadavers-come-back-to-life. Instead, something that might feel awfully real to you.	03-23-08
.pdf	Make No Little Plans by F. Jay Deacon Daniel Burnham, who at the turn of the twentieth century laid out the "Plan for Chicago", among other monumental designs, counsels "Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir [the] blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work...." Do we have a right to make little plans?	03-30-08
.pdf	Channing: the power of one sublime idea by F. Jay Deacon Tomorrow is the birthday - in 1780 - of the frail Boston minister who defined Unitarianism and led it to breathtaking thresholds. He struggled: he's been called a "reluctant radical." His story will inspire you.	04-13-08
.pdf	Candle is for burning by F. Jay Deacon There is a spiritual shallowness, a superficiality about these times - and I think it has to do with the ease and comfort we have enjoyed. We have not faced very much adversity. There are always the personal struggles and reversals, of course, but overall we've been among the luckiest people ever to live. But UUs have the chance to be a spiritual and cultural vanguard, and sometimes we learn our purpose in adversity. And spiritual depth is for trying times, and trying times are for spiritual depth.	06-22-08

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