On Oct. 15, the Rev. Molly Housh Gordon’s sermon was “Listening So Others May Speak, Speaking So Others May Listen. ” Jeff Ordway presented related readings. Rev. Molly explored how we can have useful conversations across difference in a polarized and polarizing time, how we might listen in a way that others will speak, and how we might speak so that we might truly be heard.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 11:42 — 9.5MB)
The UUCC Honduras Team presented the worship services on Oct. 8, 2017. The Team has been supporting villages in the Cangrejal River Valley, about an hour drive south from La Ceiba, Honduras, since 2009.
A group of 16 went on the fourth UUCC service trip this past June to build latrines, offer Pap smears in a clinic, and paint the clinic and the elementary school in a Honduran village. Allie Gassman, Jackie Baugher, Leila Gassmann, Jonas Gassmann and Chris Hayday shared their stories.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:09 — 24.3MB)
In her sermon on Oct. 1, 2017 titled “Holy Difference,” the Rev. Molly Housh Gordon said that when she describes Unitarian Universalism to folks for the first time, one of the characteristics she names is, “We believe difference is holy, rather than threatening.” She explored how this belief can be hard to live out in these times and this world and considered how we can live a life in which difference is holy.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:28 — 18.0MB)
In her moving sermon on Sept. 24, 2017 titled “Being Sanctuary, our Affiliated Community Minister, the Rev. Dottie Mathews, shared what she has learned while accompanying immigrant neighbors to ICE check-ins and doing other sanctuary work. She pondered how we can truly treat everyone as members of the human family amid inhumane systems. The sermon text is also available (PDF).
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:39 — 23.1MB)
At our worship service on June 11, 2016, Worship Associate Cande Iveson explored our worship theme for the month – fidelity to covenant. Listen as she unpacks this phrase with concrete examples to help understand it, adding a bit of humor.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:45 — 19.8MB)
In her sermon on Easter Sunday, April 16, 2017 titled “Of Salvation and Scars,” Rev. Molly Housh Gordon explored a Unitarian Universalist interpretation of traditional Easter themes, examining what it means to be wounded and whether a wound paradoxically makes us more human.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:00 — 18.6MB)
Our lay-led worship on March 26, 2017 was titled “Four Score: Reflections on Aging from Four Generations” and was presented by UUs across several decades. Listen to what Cande Iveson, Rachel Byerly Duke, Tracey Milarsky, Todd Iveson and David Leuthold had to say at the 11 a.m. service about what aging means to them.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:08 — 11.2MB)
Life is a series of inevitable changes – yet we cling and grasp at each fleeting piece, always being forced to let go, as we are carried along in the currents of life. Moments of change in our lives can be lessons, as well as deeply emotional experiences. Join us as Director of Religious Education Jamila Batchelder and Rev. Molly Housh Gordon explore how religious traditions help us understand these changes as the impermanence of all things.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:30 — 11.0MB)
Our audio podcast this week considers impermanence – a part of the natural ebb and flow of life. Why do we resist impermanence, meeting our own end with fear and panic? Can we, instead of avoiding this part of living, turn toward it, through our spirituality? Can it be a friend, whispering that we should enjoy this beautiful fleeting moment of gold and ash? Listen as Director of Religious Education Jamila Batchelder and the Rev. Molly Housh Gordon explore these deep questions.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:52 — 15.6MB)
What does it mean to show up with courage in a time of division and even violence? Unitarian Universalists have a storied history of courageously resisting laws that violated their conscience. Listen to a podcast of Rev. Molly Housh Gordon’s sermon on Feb. 19, 2017 as she tells us of a chance and an obligation to take a leap of courage for our community.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:47 — 12.9MB)
Our work in this time of division and fear is the same as the work always is – it is the simple calling of loving our world. How do we remain rooted in love in these times when there is so much to be done and so much coming at us all the time? Join us as Rev. Molly Housh Gordon describes creative ways to sustain our love of the world and make it concrete.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 11:28 — 5.8MB)
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. admonished us to be “creatively maladjusted.” What does that mean as we face today’s challenges? Is it possible to be hopeful? As we confront today’s anti-progressive forces, what would it look like for a creatively maladjusted justice movement to forge a “Third Reconstruction”? Listen to the Rev. Molly Housh Gordon’s Feb. 5, 2017 sermon, “Moving for Justice,” in which she admonishes us to breathe, and then to push.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:17 — 14.8MB)
On Dec. 4, 2016, in a sermon titled “God Is Not God’s Name,” Rev. Molly Housh Gordon explored deep questions of theism, atheism and metaphor, helping us understand the danger of simple, certain and hollow stories – how such simplistic views of the world can leave us with the choices only to agree or oppose. Yet a richer, deeper, more complex story can help develop deep resistance to tyranny and deep sustenance… feeding the soul.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:05 — 9.8MB)
In her sermon on Sunday, Nov. 13, 2016, titled “Beloved Resistance,” the Rev. Molly Housh Gordon spoke to how we as Unitarian Universalists must double down on love and connection with all peoples to combat the forces of racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia and other prejudices unleashed and seemingly normalized during the Presidential election. The audio recording of her sermon is from the 11 a.m. worship service.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:03 — 10.2MB)
On Sunday, Oct. 23, 2016, we welcomed back Kenny Wiley, former UUCC member and now a UU World senior editor and Denver-based religious educator. Kenny attended UUCC from 2008 to 2011 when he was a student at MU. He delivered a sermon, “Finding Home,” that emphasized the importance of the UU First Principle – the inherent worth and dignity of every person – in our relationships across racial and cultural lines. The audio recording is from the 9 a.m. worship service. See photos from the 11 a.m. service.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:24 — 7.0MB)
Listen here to “Leadership, Followership, and Other Ships that Sail,” the sermon topic of special guest preacher Meg Riley at our two worship services on Sunday, Oct. 9, 2016.
Rev. Riley is the senior minister leading our denomination’s largest congregation – The Church of the Larger Fellowship, a congregation without walls serving UUs all over the world.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:55 — 24.2MB)
In her reflections at our worship services on Sept. 25, 2016, the Rev. Molly Housh Gordon explained that when we come to practice self-awareness, we must also decide which parts of ourselves we bare to the world, and which remain hidden.
We must recognize, as well, that pieces of us are hidden to ourselves, though not always to the world. When it comes to our spiritual growth, how do we grapple with blind spots, defenses, and the hidden inner world?
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:33 — 22.9MB)
In her poem “To Be of Use,” the gifted poet Marge Piercy tells us that humans crave real purpose and meaning in life. In her sermon of the same title at the 9 and 11 a.m. worship services on Sunday, Sept. 18, 2016, the Rev. Dottie Mathews, our new affiliated community minister, addressed the foundational question, “Why does spiritual growth matter?”
View photos from the worship service.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:43 — 25.8MB)
On Sunday, Sept. 11, 2016, as we resumed holding two worship services and 9 and 11 a.m., we began exploring our overarching theme for the year – cultivating spiritual growth. What is spiritual growth, exactly? How do we cultivate it, and how do we know it when we see it? These are the questions the Rev. Molly Housh Gordon explored in her sermon.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:11 — 18.9MB)
At our worship service on Sept. 4, 2016, with the aid of the new book White Trash: The Four Hundred Year Untold History of Class in America by historian Nancy Isenberg, the Rev. Molly Housh Gordon explored the profound influence of class in America and in our Unitarian Universalist tradition. She posed the question, How do we faithfully respond to our broader culture’s tragic and deeply ingrained belief that some people are disposable?
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:25 — 25.5MB)
In his remarks during the worship service on July 17, 2016, lay leader Steve Scott shared a key insight from the book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein – that environmental and social justice advocates need to recognize the common causes of the ills they are fighting and work together more closely.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:56 — 24.2MB)
On June 5, 2016, the Rev. Molly Housh Gordon explored the following questions in a sermon titled “Self-Compassion in the Digital Age”:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:58 — 17.4MB)
