Unfolding Faith: Sermons from Foothills Unitarian

This week, we did something a little different. We felt that there were two different messages that our congregation needed to hear this past Sunday. So this week we are releasing two messages for you. This one, is from our 11am service. What if the most defiant thing we can do right now is to be unmistakably, joyfully alive? This Sunday, we find out! This service is a celebration that hands the hour to queer and trans joy, the kind that's contagious and liberating and reminds us that all of us need all of us. Joining Rev. Sean, local poet and composer Silen Wellington will share their poetry, and drag artist Kitty Androgenie will bring their talent to our stage.Come witness it, come celebrate it, and know that the "us" in all of this includes you. And yes, this means you, our straight and cisgender friends. Queer and trans joy isn't a spectator sport, and it isn't a favor you do for someone else. It spills over, and some of what it frees is in you too. So come not just to watch but to celebrate and be transformed!

When I was nine, my mother drove me two and a half hours to enter a beauty pageant. Spoiler alert: I lost. But the "why did we ever think that was a good idea?" of that story still haunts us both. We got caught up in stories about what "girls" were supposed to like, and do, to make sense in this world — stories that even then had very little to do with who I actually was. And for a minute, it felt good to believe I could fit inside one. We all have something like that. Something we cling to a little too tightly, mistake for solid ground, build our whole world around — only to find it was a lot less solid, or a lot more partial, than we let ourselves believe. It happens when we talk about what's ultimately true and holy. And it happens when we talk about gender (which, it turns out, is also holy). Listen as we explore the truths about gender we treat as ultimate — and what happens when we grow past them, and find on the other side a wilder, fuller, more dynamic freedom than those old stories could ever have given us.

What are you tending? Are you squash, or beans, or corn? Does gardening align with fascist ideology?Rev. Sean tells a story about an overheard conversation at a botanical garden, that provides a winking insight into how we might find our place, our role, in The Movement to resist the authoritarian breakthrough that is happening right now.

At the recent protest at the Minneapolis airport, clergy knelt on frozen ground, prepared to be arrested… and prayed the Lord’s Prayer in unison. One UU minister told Rev. Gretchen that, for the first time in her life, this prayer felt exactly right. How would the words have felt for you? Comforting? Curious? Off-putting? Empty? This Sunday we will explore our relationship to Jewish & Christian scripture and how it relates to us as Unitarian Universalists in this moment - what we can reclaim, refuse, and carry forward in the work of courageous love? How can we turn these texts from weapons used for division, into tools for community?

There is an old story that has a hold on us, and it needs our cooperation to stay alive. The old story that says "nothing changes". The one that says "stay in your lane". It can't survive without you. Which also means, it starts to break the moment you stop repeating it. This message from Rev. Sean is an invitation to practice. Not heroism, but faithfulness in the struggle. Small moments of being willing to tell the right story wrong. To say the right thing though your voice may shake and crack. So that when it matters most, when your neighbor needs you, when the stakes are real, you've already been exercising the muscle. Courage isn't something you find alone. It's something we practice together.

Rev. Sean opens the "New Story. New You" series with “Finding Our Way in the Dark.” A good story can inspire someone to action, provide hope to get you through a hard time, or help us empathize with an unfamiliar perspective. But a well told story can also dehumanize, sew doubt, or spread fear. "The thing about stories, is they don’t just describe what is, they prescribe what’s next." Listen as Rev. Sean reflects on the power stories have to shape how we experience the world, the ways we view the people and events around us, to what we believe the future holds.What story do you have inside of you?