Foothills Unitarian Church

This Earth Day Sunday, we lean into the tension of the reality that so much of what fills us with wonder and gratitude can be temporary and fleeting. Together in an all-ages service we honor both the beauty and the ache of being alive. With shared ritual, and music from Christopher Watkins Lamb, we practice meeting the living world with reverence, honesty, and gratitude.

In hard times, pleasure is not frivolous. It is one of the ways we stay human. When the world is frightening, exhausting, or cruel, we can become cut off from our bodies, from joy, from appetite, from play, from beauty, from one another. We can start living only in vigilance, productivity, grief, or survival mode. Rev. Gretchen shares how she had to personally remind herself of this after an especially difficult week, and how important and meaningful it is to lean on one another to retain our humanity, especially when doing so doesn't feel possible. 

There is a kind of love that looks away. That holds up the beautiful parts and quietly ignores what's cracked underneath. But that kind of love doesn't hold. You cannot truly love what you refuse to see. Rev. Sean bring us a message this Easter about what it means to stay present with what is broken, to extend grace before anything makes sense, and to recognize the resurrection that is already happening in the ordinary moments most of us have been trained to overlook.

Rev. Elaine invites us to into the sacredness of subtraction. Love calls us into movement work in so many ways – and sometimes, not in the ways we’re expecting.  Could it be that seeking out rest, inconvenience, and social awkwardness are just what we need? Sounds…weird, wonderful and awful! Join us for an exploration of the less-discussed movement work that just might carry us through in the long haul.

Rev. Christopher Watkins Lamb invites us to channel our longing and deep imaginations to create the village that is our birthright.  We'll draw on Rev. Christopher's work as an eco-chaplain, musician, spiritual care practitioner, and lead Chaplain at Poudre Valley Hospital, and upon the wisdom of Susan Silk and Barry Goldman's "Ring Theory" of crisis response, to explore how to care for each other in disruptive, playful, and world-shaping fashion.

Join us in a very special conversation with Rev. Sean and Dr. Cori Wong, Experimental Public Philosopher and a member of our Fort Collins Community.  In her uniquely playful and creative style, Dr. Wong reminds us that movements for liberation ask us to follow the lead of those most impacted, and that the best followers are good learners. Together we'll ask ourselves: From whom do you learn? What are you willing to learn? How does what you learn inform what you choose to do? Dr. Wong is a dynamic and experimental public philosopher, educator, speaker, consultant, writer, and community builder known to bring creativity, humor, and authenticity to all facets of her work.  With her personable, playful, and expansive style, Dr. Wong shows how to make meaning of complex ideas and real feelings that are inherent to movements for collective liberation. Learn more about her work at coriwong.com

What does it really take to join the Movement? Rev. Gretchen explores the difference between casual activism and accountable neighboring — and why real transformation asks more of us than good intentions. In Unitarian Universalist language, this is covenant: making promises in love, staying in relationship, and helping tend the whole. If you’ve been longing for deeper belonging, wondering what this moment asks of you, or feeling frustrated by how slow change can be, this service is for you.

"Sometimes you have to be a little bit naughty!" Even for the most polite and least confrontational among us, love can call on us to disrupt and create tension in service to justice.  Rev. Elaine Aron-Tenbrink leads us in an exploration of where our collective power lies and how we might create “good trouble” together.

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. 

"It's okay to change your mind." We’re living through a critical moment, when democracy is being tested, as is our capacity to see one another as fully human across real difference.  A few weeks ago, a group of our ordained and lay ministers traveled to Minneapolis thinking we were going to help them. Instead, they helped us - offering an immersive learning experience in how to respond with our values at the center: courage + humility, strategy + creativity, care + resolve. This sermon kicks off a 8 week series where we will practice what it means to become neighbors in a deeper way, building spiritual resilience, making meaning together, and learning the practices a movement for courageous love requires.  

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?

In this moment, we are called to inhabit one of the most ancient stories: the story of being good neighbors to each other, in love and in protection.  Rev. Elaine explores how being a neighbor is more than a moral concept—it’s an ancient, relational practice that calls us to listen with humility, cross lines of difference with compassion, and remember our deep interconnection with one another.  "Won't you be my neighbor?"

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.

This Sunday we honor Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and bear witness to the many layers of story in the present moment. Rev. Gretchen along with members of the congregation, weave the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with first-person accounts from the Civil Rights era, testimony from the present moment, scripture, poetry and song. You will hear the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Claudette Colvin, Carin Mrotz, Mamie Zwadie King- Chalmers, Matt Suarez, Hollis Watkins, Aurora Levins Morales, Susan Raffo, Rev. Ashley Horan, The Gospel of Matthew, and Carol, a current resident of Minneapolis.  You can find a full transcript of the readings and watch the whole service here: https://foothillsuu.churchcenter.com/episodes/597762

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?

We must release before we can receive. We open the new year with our annual Fire Ceremony—a powerful ritual of letting go. Before the new direction becomes clear, there is always a threshold: a space where the old stories, habits, and burdens must be set down so that something truer can take root. Through fire, reflection, and shared intention, we will name what no longer serves us and create room for what is waiting to emerge. Come ready to loosen your grip, to trust the unknown, and to begin again. If you would like to participate in the ritual element, we recommend you gather the following items before listening:  Small piece of paper  Pen/pencil Bowl of Water  Stone or other heavy object  There will be prompts to write, followed by music. The music is your cue to take the paper you've written on, and put it in the water, symbolically or literally destroying it. 

Between the noise of holidays, pause to listen to that still small voice within. Community Minister and Hospice Chaplain Rev. Roger Butts will guide us into the contemplative practice of listening—listening to our own hearts, to one another, and to the call of the holy. In the quiet few days after Christmas and before the new year, we’ll make space to hear what we might otherwise miss: the wisdom that speaks only when we are still.

Joy is not something we force into being, nor is it a reward waiting on the other side of certainty or peace. Rev. Gretchen reminds us this Holiday Season, that joy comes to us as an invitation, as a gentle summons to pause, to turn our gaze toward what is tender and new, and let ourselves be interrupted by wonder. Adoration is the courage to give our full attention to life as it is unfolding, to kneel before the sacred beauty that appears even in fragile forms. Joy does not deny the darkness, but shines within it—quiet, embodied, and faithful—asking only that we draw near and allow ourselves to be changed.

There is no growth without rest. No healing. No liberation. Rev. Gretchen invites us to rest in the darkness, and reminds us that the light can return. She’ll explore what becomes possible when we stop forcing growth and trust the hidden transformations happening beneath the surface.   In winter, roots strengthen, bodies recover, and the world prepares for beginning again. On this Solstice Sunday, we turn toward the wisdom of the longest night—the sacred invitation to surrender, renew, and let the earth do its quiet work within us. 

What we ache for reveals our values, our wounds, and our hopes for the world. And yet longing carries real risks. It can narrow our vision; distract us from the present; it can try our patience and make us think we have more control than we do. This Sunday, we will explore what it means to practice longing faithfully, and how desire can be our teacher and our guide in the turning.