This Curious Religion © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church May 17, 2026     People tend to think that it’s easy to be a Unitarian Universalist. After all, they like to tell us, we can believe anything that we want!  What could be simpler? And the...

The Blessing and the Curse © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church May 3, 2026     I was attempting to meditate for a short while yesterday. I am confident that I possess some gifts, but to be honest, meditation just doesn’t seem to be one of them. I...

To Learn from the Land © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church April 26, 2026     In Northern India, in the state of Meghalaya, which means “the abode of the clouds”, there is a mountainous region known as the Khasi Hills. Many Unitarian Universalists...

Building a House Called Tomorrow © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church April 19, 2026     When you think about it, a church really is a remarkable thing. To open the service I chose words of a colleague, the Reverend Leslie Takahashi, that set forth...

Returning from the Brink © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church April 12, 2026     First Reflection: At the Brink   It has been, perhaps, the most frightening week of recent memory. To find the equivalent, I found myself going back to September...

Dying is the Opposite of Leaving © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church Easter Sunday April 5, 2026   Today is a day of stories. We enter into this day, that we call Easter Sunday, thinking we know the story. But there are many stories, many layers, many...

To Speak Out Against Kings © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church March 29, 2026     By 1980, El Salvador was overrun with paramilitary groups: death squads, who roamed the country assassinating people in the name of “traditional values”, and “law and...

Making the World Come Alive © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church March 15, 2026     Most years I dread the month of March. It’s not really winter, and not quite spring. The clean brightness of the snow recedes and leaves mud and dead leaves and gray...

The Beginning of Devotion © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church March 8, 2026     In one of his most famous passages explaining his decision to live alone in the Concord woods for two years, Henry David Thoreau wrote, “I went to the woods because I...

To Live Like a River Flows © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church February 22, 2026     People often wonder how a minister creates a sermon. Frankly, the minister often wonders this herself. But people tend to be curious about the process: how we find...

James Baldwin: On Love and Salvation Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church February 15, 2026     He could have grown to adulthood consumed with hatred. In fact, he harbored great anger at the way his country treated him and other marginalized people....

To Take Back Our Land Again © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church January 18, 2026 As I was writing this sermon yesterday, I heard that there was a large-scale protest taking place in Minneapolis, the city most recently targeted for authoritarian control of...