What's Happening: Worship Services
Service Leader: James Gibbons Walker
27 May 2012 - 10:30am - 11:30am
Decoration Day began as an honoring of those who had died in the 1861-1865 War. By the 1900s, it had become Memorial Day, a day of remembering the women and men who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces. Today, we remember all those who have devoted their lives to shape and build and preserve our country. Please bring tokens (such as pictures or medals) and memories of your own service or the service of others dear to you to this ceremony of honor and remembrance.
Service Leader: Barbara Clark
3 June 2012 - 10:30am - 11:30am
Today is the Eastern Orthodox Pentecost. For believers, Pentecost is more than a commemoration of the Holy Spirit descending upon the apostles of Jesus two millennia ago and a milestone marking the formal beginning of a church. It is something that continues in the present for individuals. We reflect on the meaning and presence of the Holy Spirit in the world today and the sense of self and the world view suggested by Pentecost.
Service Leader: James Gibbons Walker
10 June 2012 - 10:30am - 11:30am
Nine hundred years ago, in response to a crisis of faith at mid-life, Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali “the greatest Muslim after Muhammad” combined orthodoxy and mysticism in a manner that resonates with current principles of spiritual direction. His writings, Deliverance from Error, The Beginning of Guidance, and The Alchemy of Happiness, provide a description of his crisis as well as the insights gained from his spiritual struggle, both of which are relevant today.
Service Leader: New Moon Rising
17 June 2012 - 10:30am - 11:30am
In this UU tradition started by Nobert Capek in 1923, everyone is invited to bring a flower to our annual Flower Communion. We honor the diversity of each individual and the beauty created by our common "bouquet."
Service Leader: Joyce Judd
24 June 2012 - 10:30am - 11:30am
Theology of Happiness: Ballou was the most influential and singularly important Universalist preacher, public theologian, editor, author, and pastor in 19th-century America. He believed human happiness is a mandate of liberal faith. We have a God-given right to be happy, Ballou insisted. Do you agree?
Service Leader: Judy Osborn
1 July 2012 - 10:30am - 11:30am
NEW LOCATION: HOLLYWOOD REC CENTER! William Ellery Channing, an influential Unitarian minister, believed that our ongoing personal, internal struggle to gain control over our tumultuous emotions, immoral feelings, wanton desires, and inappropriate physical passions strengthened our moral character. Emotional struggle, Channing insisted, was a major way to develop the moral perfection of our character. What can we learn from Channing's theology of emotional struggle that is positive and productive for our faith today?
Service Leader: Megan Triplett
8 July 2012 - 10:30am - 11:30am
Margaret Fuller, once called "America's first famous European revolutionist since Thomas Paine," taught America how to think, feel, and act with non-dogmatic, life-affirming spiritual integrity. She showed Americans how the human heart transforms liberal faith into action. Can she help us today to find our religion of the human heart?
Service Leader: Chris Schmitthenner
15 July 2012 - 10:30am - 11:30am
George De Benneville was a medical doctor, preacher, teacher, writer, translator, friend of the refugee, advocate for Native American rights and the welfare of indentured servants, host to European nobility through his own aristocratic background, and friend to such men as Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush through his liberal foreground. "Let us search ourselves well," he said, "and test thoroughly what is within us, whether it degrades or elevates us." The pathway to Universal Love begins here, he said. Can his life, words and his deeds help us discover and practice a Unitarian Universalist liberal theology of Universal Love relevant to our own lives today?
