When Home Won’t Let You Stay © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church July 16, 2023     In 2015, the author Amitav Ghosh began to pay close attention to the “migration crisis” in Europe. For several years now we have all seen the images of overcrowded unseaworthy...

Pleasure Activism © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church June 18, 2023     There was controversy, back in the winter of 2006, about whether New Orleans should celebrate Mardi Gras. Hurricane Katrina had roared through the city in August of 2005, and months...

Pride: Celebration, Protest, and Fear© Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church June 11, 2023   Little Kristin was five years old. One day she was playing with her sister in the family’s living room when her grandmother summoned her to dinner. “Girls, dinner’s...

To Live in Communion© Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester Unitarian Universalist Church June 4, 2023   “How would it beto live like the aspen,to know the selfas one expressionof a glorious, radiant whole,to live in communioninstead of competition…”   Each spring, we...

In the Image of the Creator © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church May 14, 2023     Yesterday, while procrastinating, I checked in online to see how my minister colleagues were doing. We often start commiserating on Saturdays about our writing process, how we...

Blessed Are the Makers © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester Unitarian Universalist Church May 7, 2023   Today is a day of many blessings. We feel the blessing of the warm sun after what has felt like a prolonged cold and wet spell. But on a day like today, we can...

Sacred Fire © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church April 23, 2023     “Every bush is a burning bush…”.  (John Muir)   It’s always fascinating, to look back at someone’s life, and try to understand how they were able to become who they were intended to be. Time...

Now Let Us Rise Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church April 9, 2023     “…maybe we are not so different than the leaves. …maybe we are also always being reborn to be something more then we once were. …maybe that’s what waking up each morning is.”  (For the...

Spiritual Resistance © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church April 2, 2023     Introduction   Typically when we think of the word ‘resistance’, it’s not at all in a spiritual context. Resistance usually implies an active response – pushing back at something or...

The Key of Longing © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church March 26, 2023     “Bring your broken hallelujah here... We all bring some broken things, songs and dreams, and long lost hopes…”   There was a civil war, in the 1990’s, in Bosnia, in Eastern Europe. The...

The Privilege of Vulnerability © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church March 12, 2023     They haven’t caught the vandal or vandals that spray-painted hate messages on 16 businesses and the local synagogue in Portsmouth, New Hampshire late in February. But the...

To Be Alive is to Be Vulnerable © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church March 5, 2023     We have learned a lot these past three years. We’ve learned some science, and some medicine. We’ve learned a lot about our economy, and how dependent we are on the global...