At-one-ment © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church September 24, 2023   You have to really admire the Ziz; the giant mythical bird in the story I told a few minutes ago. He had a good heart and a good soul; he meant well and didn’t want to hurt anyone. And yet,...

Offering Belonging © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church September 17, 2023     A bit of a kerfuffle erupted at the Unitarian Universalist Association this past week. In its effort to welcome everyone into a new church year, the Communications staff at the UUA...

Where Waters Meet and Merge © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester Unitarian Universalist Church September 10, 2023   This past June, visiting Pittsburgh for the first time, I found myself drawn to the spot where the Allegheny and the Monongahela Rivers meet to form the...

        Order of Service – August 27, 2023 What's in a Poem?  Gloucester UU's Write Poetry Worship leaders Pat Johnson, Mern Sibley, Andrew Soll Introduction to the Poetry Service – What’s in a Poem? (Pat Johnson)   Poems I: To everything there is a season For a...

Disrupt Church © Reverend Janet Parsons Gloucester UU Church August 13, 2023   At our UU General Assembly back in June, there was a lot of conversation about the future of church. We all know and acknowledge that church attendance is down everywhere. The pandemic...

SERMON  on The Multiverse                August 6, 2023      by Karen N. Bell                                   Gloucester Unitarian Universalist Church Today we live with exploding knowledge about space, the nature of the atom, degradation of the planet, and...

Sermon: 7/30/23 Holly Tanguay Last week from this pulpit our own Dick Prouty explored tears, his and our own. Dick told us he grows increasingly comfortable with tears as he ages and encourages us to do the same. This week I will explore a different, but occasionally...

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...