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For Your Consideration

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.

 

June Theme

Ritual

Ritual pervades our lives. These include personal rituals, family rituals, rituals at schools, rites of passage, observance of holidays and holy days, rituals associated with sports, those observed by religions, including civil religion, and much more. Rituals provide structure and meaning to life, they bind people together, and they lift up important values. Rituals that lose their significance need to be replaced by new rituals that address contemporary life. And sometimes a ritual does not exist to address some issue and one must be created.

​​Video

What is Ritual?

by Religion For Breakfast (6:31)

     A thoughtful overview of ritual.

     “‘Ritual.’ We all think we know what it means...right? Ritual, though, is a lot more complicated than you think.”

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_URgZf01hU

Flaming Chalice HRJ.jpg
Stones with words like hope, love, and peace engraved on them.

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.

Annual theme for 2022-2023

Regeneration

Child with Candle HRJ.jpg

A River of Saffron

Pam Houston

     I am a mountain girl…. But I’ve been drawn south …by the reported kindness of the Laotian people and the early morning ritual that is about to begin.

     …The bells of the monasteries begin to have their morning conversation.

     When the monks come pouring down the stone steps of the prayer halls, they appear first as a river of color, a ribbon of saffron silk…. All over Asia, monks wear robes the color of spices: curry, cumin, paprika. In Luang Prabang, every robe is brightest saffron….

     As they approach it becomes possible to distinguish one monk from another, hands clasped in front of the belly, echoing the shape of the wooden begging bowl they hold.

     Like the Mekong they live beside, this river of men never stops moving; they pass in a quiet, contemplative gait that is two parts walking, one part floating. One by one they drift past the woman, who also keeps a kind of time with her motions: one large scoop of steaming rice into each hand-carved bowl, refill, release, refill again. Every monk bows to her deeply and moves on.

     Every few streets the same thing is happening: different woman, different monks; same bright, graceful river passing in front of her. …This is what happens here every morning, 365 days, year in, year out.

     The women up early, cooking in the dark, carrying their little tables in the milky first light. Then the monks, a small fire in the gray light, lightening their rice cookers, lightening their burdens.

     …A monk moves around the corner, back up the stairs and into the dormitory, like a magic trick of compassion, of generosity, of prayers offered and received.

Source: https://www.awakin.org/v2/read/view.php?tid=907

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