Many 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 MoreLiberation Worship
For Pittsburgh’s “Liberation Sunday” worship experience, we heard LGBT writers and lyricists including Leslie Feinberg, James Baldwin, Holly Near, Audre Lorde, and others. Of course there’s so much that could be added. But here’s the more extensive quote from James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time nugget: Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be. You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that...
Read MoreJune 10: LGBTQIA+ Liberation Sunday Worship
This week is Pittsburgh’s LGBTQIA+ Liberation Sunday!
Read MoreSources of Faith
Life on Earth sings of creativity, multiplicity, abundance. Snowflakes… Soil… Fingerprints… Stars… Everything named “tree” differing from every other thing named “tree.” (Not only every tree, but every wonder-soaked leaf on the same tree. Completely unique.) How much more so for this very human creation called, “religion.” Maybe religion, like nature or nature’s God, abhors monotony. Maybe religion, like nature or nature’s God, ebbs and flows between unity and chaos in a cosmic dance of creativity, multiplicity, abundance. Perhaps faith, at its...
Read MoreWhite Supremacy & UU?
On February 4, 2018, Allegheny’s Get Woke/Stay Woke and the Worship Ministry answered the call from the Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism Organizing Collective (BLUU) to create a worship experience centering the voices of Unitarian Universalists of color from across the denomination. Grateful to be part of a church that has been doing a lot of good things for years that BLUU has challenged Unitarian Universalists to do, like lifting voices of people of color in worship and actively engaging with local organizations that are run by people of color; we still remain vigilant to recognize, address, and heal from remnants of the legacy of White Supremacy that continue to live within the culture and structures of even this Beloved Community of spirit and engaged compassion.
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