An Intriguing Way

of Doing Church

A Unitarian Universalist congregation can transform the people it serves, inspiring them to help transform the world. This requires an intentional, sustained, integrated, holistic process of deepening that informs, nurtures, and challenges.

Developed over eleven years, this theme-based ministry project has been dramatically expanded to make a meaningful difference in people's lives within your congregation.

 

We invite you:

     1. To browse our website to learn how

          what we offer can transform

          your programming.

 

     2. To request our materials for the  

          theme of beauty to facilitate a

          comprehensive review by your staff           and key volunteers.

 

     3. To schedule a call with us so that we

         can answer any questions that you

         may have.

 

     4. To order a trial-subscription for

          three months to implement and

          evaluate our program.

 

     5. To extend your subscription for the

          balance of the program year, which

          ends in August of each year.

 

Click here for information about subscriptions.

 

  Sepetmber Theme

Awakening 

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“We wake,” writes Annie Dillard, “if we ever wake at all, to mystery, rumors of death, beauty, violence.… ‘Seem like we’re just set down here,’ a woman said to me recently, ‘and don’t nobody know why.’” As the Buddha suggested, just being born is no guarantee of actually ever being finally awake. Your birth was your first awakening, but hopefully not your last.

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​​Video

Creating Who We Are

Alan Watts & Jim Carrey (4:13)

Narrative intersperses words by Alan Watts and Jim Carrey about awakening to who we are. 

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG7Bgxn2Ysw

Monthly Themes 

for 2022-2023

Our theme-year begins in

September 2022. Please click on

the pdf icon to access the monthly

themes for 2022-2023.

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Annual theme for 2022-2023

Regeneration

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Themes for 2023-2024 are now being selected. Email us. We would love to see your suggestions!

What He Said: A Riff on Thoreau

Rev. Kirk Loadman-Copeland

“Wake up!”

     “But I am awake.”

“Then why do you live your life as if you are sleeping?”

     “What do you mean?”

“Well, you and countless others are awake enough for physical labor, but do you think that is really being awake?”

     “Well, yes!”

“And I disagree. If you had not been overcome with drowsiness each and every day, you and all of humanity would have accomplished so much more in life.”

     “But look at all we have accomplished!”

“You miss my point entirely. Only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion. Have you become all that you could be?”

     “Well, perhaps not. I’m a work in progress.”

“And how far do you think you will get? Do you not see your purpose, even in your dreams? Only one in a hundred millions is awake to a poetic or divine life.”

     “Well, not everyone can be a poet.”

“That’s not what I mean. My life has been the poem I would have written, but I could not both live and utter it. I am speaking about living, about human possibility. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met anyone who was quite awake.”

     “But I am clearly alive.”

“It takes two to speak the truth, — one to speak, and another to hear. And I don’t think you hear me.”

     “I am listening, but you speak in riddles.”

“The mass of men [and women] lead lives of quiet desperation. Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? This is why I believe that you are asleep.”

     “Well, I’m not asleep, but life is challenging and, for many, there is desperation.”

“But so much more is possible. We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep.”

     “So the solution to everything is simply to get rid of my clock radio.”

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his [or her] dreams, and endeavors to live the life …imagined, he [or she] will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. ...In proportion as we simplify our life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty, poverty, nor weakness, weakness.”

     “I guess it’s not really just about the clock radio.”

“No, it’s so much more. I know of no more encouraging fact than our unquestionable ability to elevate our life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”

     “You’re saying that living should become an art.’

“Precisely! Each of us is tasked to make our life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of our most elevated and critical hour. But there is more.”

     “What do you mean?”

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

     “How do I begin?”

“Wake up! The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. If your elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of others.”

     “So, you’re a morning person.”

“Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. And the same could be true for you.”

Source: Touchstones