Awakenings
In the wake of the #MeToo movement, it becomes essential to have open and honest discussions about consent, sexuality, and relationships. Every culture has specific (usually implicit) codes for dating, sex, and intimacy, and these codes are changing and adapting. Our lives also are an ever-evolving journey of awakenings, and we regularly emerge into new ways of being as do our partners, family, and friends. How do we realize and express these emerging desires in mature and healthy ways?
This Sunday’s guest speaker is Jack Gaede.
Please join us for worship at 10 a.m. this Sunday, July 8!
Order of Service: July 8 Order of Service
Listen to the Sermon Podcast:
Guest Speaker: Jack Gaede
Jack Gaede is the new Director of Congregational Community at White Bear Unitarian Universalist Church in Mahtomedi, MN. He recently completed his ministerial internship at All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church in Kansas City under the mentorship of Rev. Dr. Kendyl Gibbons. He obtained his Master of Divinity degree from United Theological Seminary in May of 2017, and he has also served as the Intern for Justice & Religious Leadership at MUUSJA (Minnesota Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Alliance). First Universalist Church was Jack’s home congregation throughout his ministerial formation, and he is deeply grateful for the care and investment that you placed in him. He plans to take that support with him wherever his ministry path takes him.
Offering Recipient: Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity (give here)
Summer Worship Theme: Emergence
We humans look at a flock of birds flying overhead, sketching awe-inspiring designs in the sky, and think the birds must be following a leader. But leadership alone has never been the full measure of history nor the full inspiration of the beauty and patterns that emerge from a community of birds in flight. In fact, the patterns we see in the sky are made by each individual bird bringing to the group its own creativity and reacting to the movement of two or three of its neighbors. It is a dance between freedom and faithful followship. Our work in community, our efforts in justice making, and patterns of right relationship emerge in the same dance between freedom (our own creativity) and faithful following (our commitment to our neighbors, community). Together we create patterns of love and justice. This summer we ask: what makes something emerge? How and when do we lead? How and when do we follow? Where and how do we place our attention? What is emerging?
