Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester Unitarian Universalist Church November 7, 2021   Suddenly, it’s November. Like the trees, who spend autumn drawing nourishment back into their roots, we, too, find that our instincts begin to turn us inward, toward memory and...

What Graveyards Are 1418 Words Karl Frank Oct 31, 2021     When asked if I would deliver a homily today, in a service where we would commemorate the dead, I knew I had some ideas about those things, more particularly about graveyards.  I had recently read Robert...

Make Our Broken Pieces Whole © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church October 24, 2021   I had a really positive experience the other day, that I enjoyed thoroughly – I got to sit with a couple of church members to air some conflict.   I’ve said often that...

The ‘We’ Above the ‘I’ © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church October 10, 2021   Braiding Sweetgrass, a beautiful book about indigenous wisdom and what plants have to teach us, is full of stories. The author, Robin Wall Kimmerer, recounted that she once met a...

Good Neighbors © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church October 3, 2021   There is a hillside in Salem, that I discovered recently. It’s a small area, tucked between two ordinary houses on an ordinary street. It is a hillside known as Proctor’s Ledge, and there,...

Led by Newt Fink, Aug 22, 2021   August 22, 2021  UU The guidance system In many examples from nature we see the workings of an apparent guidance system. A tiny bird, the Red Knot, migrates every year eight thousand miles without a map, without a device, through...

Led by Lucille LePage July 18, 2021 So, what is a Flower Communion?  And what is its significance? The story begins almost 100 years ago, in Czechoslovakia, with Dr. Norbert Capek and his wife Maja.  Both were Unitarian ministers who started the Unitarian Church of...

New Beginnings Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church July 11, 2021   I chose this reading this morning (from John O’Donohue’s To Bless the Space Between Us) because I think a great deal about how this time is a new beginning for us.  It’s not a time we asked...

A Tale of Three Americas © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church July 4, 2021   I was taken by surprise the other day while I was driving down Route 128.  I was listening to an NPR interview with Keith Lockhart, the conductor of the Boston Pops, about plans for...

Karl Frank, Sally Waite, Peggy Kimball June 20, 2021   Sally, Peggy, and I have all mentioned along the way a few of our daily spiritual practices, as how the poetry and prayers we brought to you, came to us.  If only it had come to us at the edge of the darkness...

Charles Nazarian, June 13, 2021 In a unique celebration of Pride Month, we are enriched this morning by personal messages and songs by LGBTQ musicians Brian King, Deb Hardy with her wife Kerry Mullen, Kaedon Gray, Kerr Griffen, and soon by Johnny Blazes. The freedom...

How Do You Tell Your Story? Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church May 23, 2021     Chimamanda Adichie came to the United States from her homeland of Nigeria in order to attend college, first at Drexel University and then at Eastern Connecticut State University....