Integrity as Spiritual Practice
Year after year, day after day, step by step, moment by moment, breath by holy breath. Welcome the new year by joining in spiritual community throughout the month of January to explore the spiritual practice of “integrity.” Integrity as spiritual practice. A good way to begin a new year. The way to live a life worth living. A life worth dying for. See you at church.
Read MoreMany Sources of Faith
“You can believe anything you want to here.” Well, no. But you will be encouraged to dig deep and discover what you really believe and will be inspired and challenged to live out those beliefs through your daily life and deepest commitments. “But then not everybody believes the same thing!” Yes! That’s the beauty of life among human beings. We don’t have to believe together in order to grow together and do good work together. After all, life on Earth screams multiplicity, creativity, and abundance. Rivers flow quickly… Continents flow slowly… Snowflakes…...
Read MoreCommunity of “Covenant”
You’ve found a community beyond belief! In conversations about religion, it’s common to ask, “What do you believe?” It’s a leading question. It assumes the only important or interesting thing is what a faith “believes.” We are not a church of beliefs. We are a church beyond belief. Allegheny Unitarian Universalist Church is a community of covenant. Covenant being an old churchy word for something like aspirations for how to be together. This is a community of promises and aspires to live deeply, authentically, and wholly; connected to one another, to society, and to...
Read MoreWhat’s going on around here?
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die. (E.M. Forster, Howards End, chapter 22) Life Is Connection Allegheny Unitarian Universalist Church is about connecting. Connecting to faith, to deep experiences of love and compassionate engagement, to spirit and soul and the divine life, to self and one another and neighbors; all of which...
Read MorePrayerSong
Second Sunday PrayerSong offers a more than usually contemplative worship experience of word, song, and lots of stillness. Not the pure silence of the mountain monastery, but the stillness of an inner-city church where we welcome as part of the experience the street noises, creaking pews or bones, and wiggly, crying babies (as Rev Dave says, if there’s not a fussy child in worship it doesn’t count and we’d have to do it all over again anyway). So it won’t be the typical “hymn-sermon-hymn sandwich.” But it will nourish your soul if you let it. Each reading, each time of stillness,...
Read MoreMay Worship — Gifts of Curiosity
Moving from fear to open-heartedness. The worship experiences this springtime month all explore the spiritual practice of what Einstein called, “Holy Curiosity.” So bring your questions. Bring your broken-open heart. Bring your wildest imagination in the spirit of exploration. Who are we? Where are we going? As an evolutionary process. As a nation. As a people of faith and doubt, stretching beyond our little selves. Who are we being inspired to be? Who are we choosing to become? Celebrate life. Nourish the spirit. Inspire justice. Every Sunday, 10:30AM, at the big, open heart in...
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