Minister's Message: Love Notes for Valentine’s Day

Happy Valentine’s Day weekend, First Church Community!

This seems like a good time to remember that “love” is not a feeling reserved only for romantic partners or a saccharine sentiment used to sell Hallmark cards and candy hearts. Love can be a radical and active force in the world—holding us in our most despairing moments, calling us back to our sacred centers when we feel lost, and driving the work of justice and liberation.

Love, in fact, is the central tenant of our faith. It is at the heart of our theology and the origin of our historical heresies. The new articulation of our Unitarian Universalist shared values, place “love” at the center of six interconnected values that encircle it (justice, equity, pluralism, interdependence, generosity, and transformation). The language reads,  “Love is the power that holds us together and is at the center of our shared values. We are accountable to one another for doing the work of living our shared values through the spiritual discipline of Love.” In a reflection on love as our central tenant, Rev. Dr. Sheri Prud’homme reminds us that is not just our present commitment but our theological inheritance, writing, “The great Universalist heresy—the one that so threatened evangelical and Calvinist groups in New England in the late 18th and early 19th century that they vehemently opposed it, denying Universalist preachers access to their pulpits and to positions of public power—was that the nature of God is Love.” Our ancestors believed in a love so powerful it was deemed heretical. That’s not exactly the stuff of hallmark cards!

We can know this intellectually. We can memorize the language of our values and parrot them back in conversation. But it is a different matter altogether to know the radical power of love in our hearts and in our bodies—to practice it and live it and organize our life around it. Love as a theological concept always feels squishy and undefined until we witness it in practice. 

Nevertheless, there are a number of thinkers who have helped me understand more deeply what love looks like. I share a few of them with you this Valentine’s Day and invite you to choose one or two of these quotes to spend some time with. Perhaps journal about one that moves or perplexes you. Repeat one yourself on a walk as a form of moving meditation. Or choose one to discuss this weekend with a person you hold dear. And if you have favorites that aren’t included here, please share them with me!

  • “At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love. When we rise to love on the agape level, we love men not because we like them, not because their attitudes and ways appeal to us, but we love them because God loves them. Here we rise to the position of loving the person who does the evil deed while hating the deed that the person does” - Martin Luther King Jr. 

  • If love is really the active practice — Buddhist, Christian, or Islamic mysticism — it requires the notion of being a lover, of being in love with the universe… To commit to love is fundamentally to commit to a life beyond dualism. That’s why love is so sacred in a culture of domination, because it simply begins to erode your dualisms: dualisms of black and white, male and female, right and wrong.”- belle hooks

  • "Justice is what love looks like in public" - Dr. Cornel West

  • “What else do we all want, each one of us, except to love and be loved, in our families, in our work, in all our relationships. God is Love. Love casts out fear. Even the most ardent revolutionist, seeking to change the world, to overturn the tables of the money changers, is trying to make a world where it is easier for people to love, to stand in that relationship to each other.” - Dorothy Day

  • “The beginning of this love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image.  If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.” - Thomas Merton

  • “Love is the motive, but justice is the instrument.”-Reinhold Niebuhr

  • “We’ve made it private, contained it in family, when its audacity is in its potential to cross tribal lines. We’ve fetishized it as romance, when its true measure is a quality of sustained, practical care. We’ve lived it as a feeling, when it is a way of being.” - Krista Tippett

  • “Is it strange to say love is a language / Few practice, but all, or near all speak?” - Tracy K. Smith

  • “When we were sitting in, it was love in action. When we went on the freedom ride, it was love in action. The march from Selma to Montgomery was love in action. We do it not simply because it’s the right thing to do, but it’s love in action. That we love our country, we love a democratic society, and so we have to move our feet.” - John Lewis

In faith and love,
Rev. Danielle

Sermon: “Put Your Money Where Your Faith Is” (Rev. Danielle)

First Reading: 1 Timothy 6: 2-10

Second Reading: “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” by Wendell Berry

“… Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant…”

Sermon:

As a child, apparently disappointed in the going rate for lost teeth in the early 90s, I decided to hang on to one of my teeth for a while before putting it under my pillow. When my parents inquired as to why I wasn’t cashing in right away, I told them I thought I’d get more money for an antique.

I love that I thought this magical flying fairy, who travels the globe sneaking into children’s rooms unseen and leaving coins behind in exchange for lost teeth operated under our earthly economic system. That she would have had the same definition of what’s valuable as I did. I’ve talked to some parents recently and it does seem like the tooth fairy is keeping up with inflation, so you know, I wasn’t entirely wrong.

And I was, as it turns out, in good company. I joined in a long line of humans throughout history who have tried to financially transact with divine beings. In the ancient Greco-Roman world, the spheres of religion and economics were deeply intertwined. Temples housed banks and deities had their own bank accounts, managed by religious officials. People leased lands that belonged to gods and the gods were parties to those lease contracts. Statutes of gods and goddesses were used as weight standards in the marketplace. You would buy 10 zeus’s worth of grain. If you want a fun academic word to throw around at cocktail parties, New Testament scholar Jennifer Quigly calls this entanglement “Theo-economics.”

Quigly was my professor for “Letters of Paul,” and she was interested in this ancient entanglement because it was the context of the earliest Christian communities. Paul was writing his letters, the basis for so much modern Christian theology and doctrine, in a society that saw no separation between religious life and economic life. So, now, when you’re at home with your Bibles reading the Pauline letters for fun, as I’m sure many of you do regularly, you might start noticing how much economic language Paul uses. In his letter to the Philippians, Paul refers to the gospel “venture,” and describes the community in Philippi as being “joint-shareholders in grace.” So Paul is using the language of his context, but he does something a little transgressive. Paul, by and large, is not writing to wealthy communities. His followers make up the 99% in the Roman Empire. So he says, yes, religion and economics might be interlinked, but we’re going to use a different accounting method. Our ledger sheet looks different from the Romans. This is what he’s doing when he asserts that Christ has come to turn death into profit, writing “living is Christ, dying is gain.” We are the wealthy ones, despite what our bank accounts indicate, Paul tells the early Christian communities.

So obviously, I’m not up here to preach that Christ came to turn death into profit. So why am I telling you this? We might think it absurd today that people once set up bank accounts for Gods, but I don’t think we’re as far away from that world as we might think. If you think Paul’s letters don’t impact us, I invite you to watch house speaker Mike Johnson’s press conference where he uses Paul’s letter to the Romans to defend immigration crack-downs. So Paul’s context continues to inform our context. And I think knowing this history prompts us to starting looking for our modern theo-economic entanglements, the ones that might be a bit more hidden. Religion and economics have never been separate spheres and they still aren’t today. We can decide what we want to do with that: embrace it, transgress it, subvert it, try to sever it, but before we do any of those things, we need to see it.

So when do we invite God into our financial transactions? What are our modern equivalents of Athena’s temple bank account? It’s easy to point to all of the examples we don’t like. Televangelists embezzling money and exploiting vulnerable believers. Prosperity gospel preachers who ignore the beatitudes and promise that Jesus actually wants you to be rich and if your aren’t, you must not be praying hard enough. Or a “God Bless the USA” branded Bible that earned Donald Trump $1.3 million in royalties for his endorsement.

But religious and economic entanglements aren’t solely the domain of conservative religion and Christian nationalism. Did you know that the phrase "cleanliness is next to Godliness” is not in the Bible, it’s a phrase attributed to John Wesley that found its way into popular vernacular in the 19th century through advertisements for the brand new commercial soap industry who decided to use clergy like Henry Ward Beecher to help convince Americans it was their moral duty to buy soap.

And have any of you ever taken a yoga or meditation class at work? Or downloaded a mindfulness app as part of an employee wellness benefit? In her book, “Work, Pray, Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley,” sociologist Carolyn Chen argues that, “Work is replacing — and in some cases, even taking the form of — religion among many of America’s professionals.” She writes about how, in Silicon Valley, “tech companies have taken up pastoral and spiritual care as a way to make their employees more productive.” She shares the example of one tech start-up that implemented an employee meditation program, drawing heavily from Buddhist thought, and saw a two-dollar return on investment for every dollar spent on the program. The company concluded that “Personal conversions…translate to higher organizational returns across the board.” Talk about the-economic entanglements.

The examples I’ve given so far are pretty cynical, but this relationship isn’t always negative. It isn’t always in service of capitalism and corporate greed. As Unitarian Universalists, the way we financially structure our churches is a direct expression of our relationship to God. This is not a stewardship sermon, but I don’t think our stewardship team would mind me reminding you that your financial pledges to the church are connected to our theology. We descend from traditions that believed we needed no intermediary between us and the divine We hold as one of our values the idea that each person has a right to freely and responsibly search for truth and meaning for themselves. We are non creedal and non dogmatic. No one tells us what to believe, or tells who is allowed to preach in our churches, or what they can preach. And part of maintaining that autonomy means being financially independent. Money is power, and in our churches power rests with the congregants and no one else, so it is the congregants who fund the church. We value freely exploring and defining our own relationship with the sacred, so that means not giving up our financial control to anyone else. When the stewardship campaign rolls around this year, you can view your pledge not as a donation but as a theological commitment. That is our Unitarian theo-economics.

Once you see it, it’s hard to stop seeing it, all of the ways our economic lives are shaped by religious beliefs and values and vice-versa. And for those of us who distrust religious movements that seem too preoccupied with wealth, It’s easy to become jaded. But when I remember the sacred freedom that comes with our own tradition’s financial structure, when I look around and see all of you as joint shareholders in a common venture, I feel earnest pride and joy. And I see powerful possibilities. I wonder if, like Paul, if we can see this intersection of religion and economics, not as reason for cynicism but as a site of transgression and re-imagination. A place to redefine what we consider profit, gain, and worth in a way that aligns with our most sacred values.

Isn’t that what Wendell Berry is arguing for when he writes,

Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit.

Call that profit.

I’m reminded of Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 speech at the University of Kansas where he too questions what we call profit. This is a much longer quote than I usually use in a sermon but I think it’s so powerful, so bear with me. In this famous speech, Kennedy says, “Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.” He continues, “Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”

Friends, we live in an era where the fundamental values we hold as people of faith, as people living in America, are being tested. It’s becoming riskier and riskier to protect our neighbor, defend democracy, and side with love. So what we consider of ultimate worth and what price we are willing to pay for it have become questions of fierce urgency. Like the Apostle Paul, like Robert Kennedy, like Wendell Berry, we too are invited to ask, “What do we call profit?” Paul’s faith called him to proclaim the powerful paradox that “dying is gain.”Our congregationalist ancestors decided freedom of conscience, freedom of thought, freedom of the pulpit was worth paying for. They decided that the return on investment, which couldn’t be measured in dollars, was well worth the upfront costs. What is our generation’s defiant restructuring of the divine accounting ledger?

In a society that tells us our worth is tied to our economic productivity and we need to monetize our hobbies and pick up side gigs to make ends meet, can we say “Rest is gain.” In a society that glorifies individualism and wants us to fear our neighbor and build walls and fences can we say “community is gain?” In a society that wants to monetize every natural resource, clearing our forests, polluting our oceans and stripping our mountain tops, can we say “conservation is gain?” In a society that tells us immigrants are taking our American jobs and driving down wages and making it harder for us to buy groceries, can we say, “Radical welcome is gain.” Peace is gain. Humility is gain. Mercy is gain. Love is gain.

We may never be able to entirely divorce prayer from profit, but as Paul and Wendell Berry suggest, we can decide what we call profit. May we choose carefully and courageously.

May it Be So.
Amen.

© Rev. Danielle Garrett, 2026

Minister's Message: Honoring Black History Month is a Sacred Act

This month marks the 100th anniversary of Black History Month. In 1926, in a deeply segregated America, journalist and historian Carter G Woodson designated February as a month for celebrating, teaching and learning about the history of black Americans. He chose the month deliberately, to honor the birthdays of Frederic Douglas and Abraham Lincoln.

Finding ways to honor the month feels especially important this year, as our government continues efforts to erase and rewrite history, in particular the histories of marginalized populations. For example, National Parks have been ordered to remove dozens of signs and exhibits about the history of slavery and mistreatment of Native Americans in the US. The moves are more than simply symbolic. It becomes that much easier to dismantle civil rights legislation and protections when we’ve erased from our collective memories the reasons why we needed that legislation in the first place. 

So this year, I think we have a particular ethical and political obligation to help keep that history alive and present—and not merely as a way of “sticking it” to the Trump administration. Honoring the stories and histories of black Americans isn’t about scoring political points but about grounding our commitments to equity and justice in the real, lived experiences of our neighbors and ancestors. It’s a way of furthering our commitment to telling the truth and understanding that our future as a nation depends on our ability to be honest about our past. Many of the most effective movements for resistance and justice throughout history have understood the power of memory and storytelling. 

Honoring Black History Month can be an act of political resistance but for us, as Unitarian Universalists, it’s also an act of faith. I might even venture to say it is sacramental—meaning an outward sign of that which is sacred. One of our sacred values is a belief in the inherent worth and dignity of every person. One way we make that value real is by ensuring that people’s stories are told, their humanity is honored, and their lives are not erased. We also believe each person has a sacred right (and perhaps obligation) to engage in a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. One way we make that value real is by opening ourselves up to new encounters and sources of knowledge. Our understanding of the divine is enhanced, not threatened, by knowledge. Our faith calls us to learn and tell the truth. More recently, we have come to understand that our journey towards spiritual wholeness involves the work of dismantling systems of oppression, including racism. 

So this month, I invite you to make it part of your spiritual practice to learn and share more about the black history of our nation, our community, and our faith. Perhaps begin here, with some stories of the black leaders, writers and activists who have shaped Unitarian Universalism. I’d love to hear what you learn and how you’re remembering and celebrating black history this month. 

In faith,
Rev. Danielle 

© Rev. Danielle Garrett, 2026

Special Sunday Service: Pastoral Care Team

Call to Worship:
In Need of Healing by Maureen Killoran

Reflections: On Pastoral Care

Good morning. I’m Sally Millice.    The Pastoral Care team is all about service to members of our community who need help.   This may involve bringing a meal, providing a ride to a medical appointment or making a call to one of our elderly or shut in congregants.

We all need help once in a while.  This committee is currently made up of me, Pat Small and Debbie Sylvester.   There is a team of over 20 care volunteers who provide the services.  If you want to be part of this ministry, let us know.  We’ll put you on a list of those to be contacted when needs arise.  If someone needs a ride, we’ll contact you with the details and you can let us know if you can volunteer.    When meals are needed, you’ll see a link in the order of service  or online news and you can sign up on the meal train website.

Let’s hear from one of our congregants who received meals this past year…

During the past year, our congregation provided 40 or so meals and gift cards to those in need through the Meal Train program.  

DEBBIE:    Taking care of our elderly and shut ins is part of our Pastoral Care ministry.  Each holiday, a group of crafters prepares gift bags for these folks.  Nancy Peluso coordinates this effort.  One of the crafters is Penny Bigmore, who will explain how it works…

When we deliver these bags, they are a source of joy and surprise.  The act of someone remembering them brings joy.  Sometimes the person making the delivery does not know the receiver and may feel awkward.  But there’s the opportunity  to expand our circle and feel the connection.    

PAT:  In this New Year, we are beginning a new mission and vision for our congregation as we move forward.  Now is a great time to expand our circle of friends and activities, to try something new.  First Church offer many opportunities to keep learning and growing.

Research in Positive Psychology reveals that 80% of all people interviewed say that helping someone gives them joy.  And studies in community effectiveness show that the happiest, most connected communities are those where members care for one another. Providing help to each other is a win-win.  It benefits both and the giver and the receiver.

On the other hand, asking for help is very difficult for a lot of people, especially those of us who take pride in their own independence.  Yet I have learned that however humbling it is to ask for help when needed, becoming vulnerable in that way shows me that people are, indeed good and are quite cheerful about helping out.  In asking for help, we are giving someone else the opportunity to find joy in giving.

We are looking for more people to engage with us in this shared ministry.  We want to make more calls to our elders, send card and make more visits.  If you have interest in volunteering, please stop by our table at coffee hour.  Give us your contact information or call one of us.

If you have provided a meal or a ride or participated in any care activity this past year please raise your hand.

Thank you for doing your part. We are deeply grateful.

See us at coffee hour if you want to be added to the volunteer list.  May we continue this important ministry.  Thank you.

Reflection: What does it take to make a community?
by Tiffany Magnolia

Faith — Trust -- Vulnerability

There is a now famous Mr. Rogers quotation that shows up when we are facing unimaginable tragedy: “Look for the helpers. There’s always someone willing to help.” And I think that when we think of community, when we think of what the Pastoral Care team or the Religious Education Committee, or maybe even the Church itself does, we focus on the helpers; we see ourselves as the “helpers” that Mr. Rogers told us to look for, to focus on. But what I want to offer in my reflection this morning is the flip side of the helpers, and it is this other part of community that is just as essential, and one which we don’t often discuss: the vulnerable. Because there are no helpers without folks who need help, which means these two are inextricably linked.

You see, faith and community have something very fundamental in common: they require the vulnerability of not “knowing.” When folks find themselves on the “helping” side of the community equation, yes, they don’t know how their help will be received, but they know their own capacity to bake a lasagna or to drive to Danvers. They know their capacity, and there is a kind of power in being able to “deliver” for someone else, in short, there is little vulnerability in doing these actions. For the person asking for the help, though, there is only vulnerability. Will I get the help I need? Am I asking for too much? Will the help be there when I need it? What will happen if I don’t get it? For the vulnerable, there is no certainty. For the vulnerable, there is only faith.

I have a good friend who is quite high up in a branch of government in DC. She is as close as it gets to DC royalty, having grown up with an ambassador as a father and a famous senator as a step father. She has moved in the kinds of political circles that most of us could never imagine. And, she hides the fact that she is deeply involved in the Episcopalian church in DC. You see, if her colleagues found out that she teaches Sunday school, that she never misses a service, they would ridicule her as a person of faith. She guards that vulnerability because she recognizes that those of us with faith, with strong faith, are not always in the mainstream. We are “quaint” to folks who are confident in their Atheism or Agnosticism. Something about the vulnerability of “faith” doesn’t sit well with others, so in claiming it, we are performing an act of resistance.

And this is the confluence of community and faith that I want to leave all of you with today. There is an inherent vulnerability in how we define our faith community. We are living at a time where religion is used as a blunt instrument. To declare ourselves part of a religious tradition is in many ways to draw a line in the sand that connects how we help with a recognition of faith at its core. It is vulnerable because it exposes how we move through the world in ways not often understood or valued by those outside our community. In turn, though, it cements us as a community, it reveals how we are interdependent–just like the care I mentioned at the opening, there are no helpers without the vulnerable. There is no faith community without seeing in one another the foundation of this place, this service, this history, this connection we all share as one of mutual dependency, as one of vulnerability. Let us value it for all its complexity, its mystery, and let us nurture it whatever side of the equation we find ourselves in at any moment. Blessed are the helpers and the vulnerable, for they shall find community with one another.

© Tiffany Magnolia, 2026

Minister's Message: Taking our Faith Seriously

Before I followed the call to ministry, I was a very active lay leader, spending many of my evenings in the meeting rooms of All Souls in Washington DC. One day as I was leaving work to head to church, the young woman I supervised quipped, “Off to your unpaid side hustle?” She had a biting wit, but we shared a mutual respect for one another and for our commitments to our respective faith traditions. It was said in good humor. I’ve often recounted the story in a self-deprecating way, to poke fun at myself, but this week I’m reminded of it for different reasons. The joke only works because the behavior was unusual. We were not of a generation and social circle where people spent much time at church. Lately, I’ve been reminded of the ways we’re often discouraged from prioritizing our spiritual lives.

As I prepared for last week’s Thirsty Thursday Theology discussion on spiritual practices, I was struck by how often we (myself included) conflate self-care with spiritual deepening, collapsing the two into an efficient “two birds one stone” block of time. Some of the articles I found while digging around for resources talked about spiritual practices not as valuable in and of themselves, but as a means for improving health or increasing productivity. We call our morning workouts a spiritual practice and meditate to reduce anxiety, as though a well-regulated nervous system circumvents our very human need to ask why we’re here, where we’re going, and what is sacred.

This week I’m attending a conference of the UU Minister’s Association and am enrolled in a learning track focused on the minister’s role in supporting religious education, faith formation, and family engagement. We’ve been discussing the many demands on parents and kids in this day and age and the ways church often takes a back seat to sports, rehearsals, recitals and school projects. It becomes almost an act of care to be the one thing overwhelmed families are allowed to skip, but we all lose something in the process. We don’t benefit from the curious, joyful, wise presence of our children and youth, and our children and youth learn their spiritual lives aren’t worth prioritizing.

As liberal people of faith in an increasingly unchurched world, it can feel almost embarrassing to make caring for our spiritual lives non-negotiable. I once taught a “Building Your Own Theology” class for young adults and one student, who was attending church while stationed on a naval ship in the area, requested time off to attend the class citing religious obligation. The class was shocked! As good Unitarians, the thought of anything at church being a “religious obligation” felt nearly heretical, but we were all moved and even changed by the sense of commitment. It gave everyone their permission to also take their own faith lives that seriously.

And I think more than ever we need to give ourselves that permission. As I’ve written before, we are living in times that demand deep discernment, moral clarity, and courage. Sociologist Liz Bucar writes, “In a political moment when opposition politicians won’t even name the stakes, religious language might be the only language that’s radical enough. Not because it’s comfortable or comforting. But because these traditions have been thinking about costly commitment for millennia. They’ve got frameworks for what it means to trust something absolutely.” When I watch so many of my colleagues and people of faith in Minneapolis, Boston, Portland, ME and beyond kneeling in prayer, getting arrested, and raising their voices in opposition to ICE’s violent and oppressive tactics, I see people who are taking their faith seriously. That kind of risk-taking and prophetic witness only comes after taking time to deeply connect with the source of our most sacred values and listen for the call of the holy.

So friends, give yourself permission to take your religious and spiritual life seriously. When I say this, I’m not saying don’t have fun. I’m not asking for some kind of fanatical commitment to dogma. I’m not even asking you to feel guilty when you miss church. What I am telling you is that your soul is worthy of care and attention. The questions you bring to church are worthy of exploration. Experiences of wonder, awe, devotion, and community are necessary for our flourishing. Worship and faith formation aren’t extracurricular activities, but central to the human experience.

So let’s support each other in prioritizing spiritual care and religious community. Let’s resolve to be a community of people who take our faith seriously—who carve out time for attending to it and aren’t ashamed to let it take up real, substantive space in our lives.

In faith,
Rev. Danielle

© Rev. Danielle Garrett, 2026

In Our Community: Vision & Mission

Hello everyone,

Thank you to Rev. Danielle for encouraging me to reach out to you this week about our Vision Mission Survey.

Vision and Mission are incredibly important to the life and work of any organization. We have an opportunity to craft something that was not thought of when our forefathers and mothers founded this congregation – inclusive and authentic public expressions of who we are and what we are committed to in our community, the world, and with one another. 

A Vision Statement may not be accomplished in many generations. It has a long-range outlook for the people who come to the community. It is almost a romantic notion of who we will become slowly and incrementally. One could say it is how we will operate in response to the divine inspiration that guides the future.

The Mission Statement is a guide for us to do the work, set goals and achieve them, and operate with one another as we wish. It guides our decisions about who we will be for the city of Salem, our country, and our planet. It informs us how we want to operate and work together and how we wish to be seen.

From here, we can also align our community’s values with the UUA’s to create a shared purpose.

The Standing Committee wishes for this to be as participatory as the rest of our work over the past few years has been. That work has been important and, frankly, bound us into a stronger commitment. While we have had 47 people overall in workshops, this survey is vitally important. There are extra questions in there that will give us a little more grit to craft these statements. 

The surveys done for the Transition Team and the Search team garnered more than this level of participation.  One had over 75 people respond. These statements are just as important, if not more so. It gives Rev. Danielle and church leaders the seeds to plant, root, and grow. I have a vision of a beautiful garden growing from the seeds we plant, inspiring growth, expansion, and transformation beyond what we think we can do.

Click on this sentence to link to the survey. Please take a few minutes to fill it out. If there are teens and young people who wish to add their voices, we welcome that! 

May we come together and dream again and DREAM BIG!

Blessings to you all,

Jerrie Hildebrand
Vision Mission Liaison 
Standing Committee

In Our Community: UU Common Read

A Message from Theo, LRE Director

Dear friends, I am excited to take over the column this week to tell you all a little bit more about our UU Common Read for 2026. Each year, the UUA picks a book for UUs across North America to read and discuss. This year’s pick is Social Change Now: A Guide for Reflection and Connection by Deepa Iyer.

I have always been a sucker for a personality quiz. It started with American GIrl Magazine, where each issue would feature a quiz where the number of As, Bs, and Cs, would tell you something about yourself. In high school I discovered the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, and became deeply invested in my identity as an INFJ. Then, during lockdown, online personality quizzes had a resurgence in popularity, and I was suddenly learning which character I was most like on television shows that I had never watched.

So when I looked at this year’s book and saw what looked like a giant personality test, I was thrilled. Social Change Now, by Deepa Iyer, explores the idea of Social Change Ecosystems—groups or organizations with a set of shared values, who want to create social change. The author identifies ten different roles that people can play within a Social Change Ecosystem, all of which rely on each other. There are Visionaries who dream up big ideas about a better world, Disruptors who put themselves on the line to change the status quo, and Frontline Responders who show up with supplies in an emergency. All of these roles interact and rely on each other in different ways, much like the organisms in an ecosystem.

So when I sat down with my copy of Social Change Now, I couldn’t wait to check off characteristics and find out which role I play. But as I read, I discovered that this book was not going to just tell me what I was—I was going to have to work for it, using the reflection tools the book gave me. And while I have to admit that this was a bit of a disappointment at first, it made sense. This is something that takes much more discernment than figuring out if you are an early bird or a night owl. We could all probably play a variety of roles, but Iyer encourages us to choose the one that is speaking to us the most and focus our energy.

And right now, that focus feels particularly needed. In a world where we are learning about new tragedies and injustices everyday, many of us feel spread thin. It is easy to feel a sort of decision paralysis, where there is so much that we feel like we must do that we can’t end up doing any of it. Or, we might go in the opposite direction and try to do everything, pulling ourselves in too many directions and quickly wearing ourselves out. If we can choose one role to focus on right now—knowing that we can always shift to another role in the future—we are much more likely to actually accomplish something meaningful.

Last Sunday, I introduced these ideas to the children and youth using We Are the Builders, a picture book companion to Social Change Now. I was impressed—but not surprised—by how seriously the children took this work. They compared characteristics of different roles, and deeply considered what role they might take on here at church compared to other ecosystems they might be a part of. But even more than that, they made me realize the importance of taking this work out of our own heads and into community. They listened to each other, and helped their peers find clarity by describing the strengths they saw in each other. They began to explore the ways that these roles could interact and support each other.

I would like to invite all of you to engage in this work in community as well. On March 8, we will have a UU Common Read discussion group after the service. I encourage anyone who attends to read the book ahead of time and try to determine your role within the Social Change Ecosystem of First Church. When we gather, we will focus on the shared values of our ecosystem, and how we can use these different roles to support each other as we create change.

If you haven’t yet, you can fill out our book order form here. I will be placing the order on January 21, so please put in your order before then. If you cannot afford to purchase the book, free and reduced-rate copies will be available.

Please reach out to me if you have any questions or would like to know more about the history of the UU Common Read.

In Faith,
Theo Burbank

Sermon: "Guided by Love, Tethered to Truth" (Rev. Danielle)

Call to Worship:
Friends, I call us to worship this morning with these words which have been on my heart this week. They come from WH Auden’s poem September 1, 1939:

”All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie…”

First Reading:
Proverbs 12: 17-22
Amos 5, 10-15; 24

Pastoral Prayer:
Dear ones, this has been a heavy week in our country, and I know many of you bring your own personal worries, losses, and fears. Let us take a moment to just be together in silence. To hold space for the memory of Renee Good who was killed by an ICE officer in Minneapolis this week and to feel the presence of the sacred and this gathered community holding us in love.

Will you pray with me?

Spirit of life, God we know by many names, hear our prayers this hour

Some days we come before you with prayers composed of nothing but calm, clear silence, content to listen for your voice and to the wisdom that comes in the quiet

Some days we come with prayers of joyful song, like the prophetess Miriam, lifting up our praise with tambourines and ecstatic dance

Some days we come with prayers like poetry, words carefully chosen, flowery and intricate, crafted for the pleasure of hearing them roll off the tongue

Some days we come requesting detailed intercessions, feeling attuned most clearly to our individual wants and needs

And some days, like today, we come with simple words and deep longings

We pray for an end to violence

We pray for mercy

We pray for justice

We pray for answers

We pray for healing

We pray for peace

We pray for courage

We pray for love to prevail.


Dear God, we pray.

Amen. 

Will you join me in reciting the Lord’s prayer, this week using a Latin-American paraphrase. The prayer is associated with communities committed to Latin American liberation theology although I have not been able to find a single author. 

Our Father, Mother, Creator,
     who is in us here on earth
     and in heaven,
Holy is your name
     in the hungry
     who share their bread and their song.
Your Kingdom come,
     which is a generous land
     flowing with milk and honey.
Let us do your will,
     standing up when the rest are sitting down,
     and raising our voices
     when the rest are silent.
You give us our daily bread
     in the song of the bird and the miracle of the corn.
Forgive us
     for keeping silent in the face of injustice,
     and for burying our dreams;
     for not sharing bread and wine,
     love and the land
     among us now.
Do not let us fall into the temptation
     of not loving our neighbors,
     of shutting the door through fear,
     of resigning ourselves to hunger and injustice,
     of taking up the same arms as the enemy.
But deliver us from evil.
Give us the perseverance and the solidarity
     to look for love,
     even if the path has not yet been trodden,
     even if we fail,
So we shall know your Kingdom,
which is being built forever and ever.

Amen.

Second Reading:
Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars) by Muriel Rukeyser

Sermon:

Friends, I will be preaching today about the events this week in Minneapolis, striving to tell the truth about what happened there. I think it’s important for us to hear, even when it’s hard. But if you have little ones who have stayed in the sanctuary today or you aren’t in a safe space, mentally or emotionally to hear about violence, know that it’s okay if you need to step out.

I’ve talked before about the moment I first felt called to ministry, but in reality, my journey to ministry began in earnest the day after the 2016 election, when I didn’t know what to do, so I got some friends to meet me at a bar and then convinced them to go to church. My home congregation in DC was having an evening vespers prayer service. There were no calls to action and no fiery sermon, just prayer, music, simple chants, candles, and silence. That was the first time I sought religious community as the answer, when I didn’t know what else to do. And it unlocked something inside me that eventually led me here, to this pulpit with all of you.

And now I find myself again at a loss—for words, for understanding, for the clear next steps, and for any idea of what the future might hold for our nation. This Wednesday, an agent from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement shot and killed 37 year old mother of three Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis and then denied her immediate medical care. The agent involved was one of 2,000 agents deployed to Minnesota in what the agency called the “largest immigration operation” ever, focused mainly on the state’s large Somali community. While the full details of what happened are still emerging, and might never be fully known given the FBI takeover of the investigation and the refusal to include state and local officials, it appears Renee Good and her wife were joining with other community members to warn their immigrant neighbors of ICE’s presence and document their conduct. 

Almost immediately, white house officials began painting a picture of the incident that is directly contradicted by video evidence and analysis by a variety of legal and law enforcement experts, labeling Good a domestic terrorist, claiming she “violently ran over” the officer, and attacking her character, with Vice President JD Vance calling her deranged and labeling her death as “a tragedy of her own making.”

A decade later, heartbroken, full of grief and righteous anger, and once again unsure of what to do with it and my response is the same. Go to church. Go be with my people. This time around, try to preach a good word, yes, but mostly just go be with you all. Sit. Pray. Lament. Worship together.

A decade ago, I worried that my response was akin to retreat—that I was seeking the safety of a candle lit sanctuary as a way of avoiding what was happening outside. 

I am not worried about that today. Our work doesn’t end in these pews, but it’s got to start here. Especially right now. Because the power of this place in this upside down world we’re living in is that it gives us a space, away from all the noise, to remember our humanity, to recalibrate our moral compass, to stay in relationships with the holy and with one another, and to stay tethered to deep, eternal truths that temporal powers would rather us forget. 

This place is a sanctuary, yes, but that doesn’t mean a site of escape or avoidance. It doesn’t exist to protect us from hearing about and confronting difficult things. It exists to protect our souls and spirits from being degraded, from being worn down by a constant stream of lies, dehumanization, and fear-mongering that makes us distrust our neighbors and distrust ourselves. It exists to ensure our souls have space to hear the call of the sacred, so we can respond with discernment, moral clarity and courage.

In this space, together, we can resist efforts to disconnect us from our humanity. I’ve been thinking about how the language coming from Trump, Vance, and Kristi Noem immediately after the shooting was so blatantly false and upsettingly dehumanizing. There was no show of thoughts and prayers, no hedging, no “let’s wait and see what the facts reveal.” The falsehoods were extreme and immediate. It was hard not to think about Geroge Orwell’s famous quote from 1984,“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

They know they’re lying and they know we know they’re lying. But in an effort to disprove their lies, we immediately start analyzing the evidence. We get drawn into a political debate before we’ve had time to process the full moral and spiritual weight of what happened—before we’ve had time to grieve and mourn the loss of life. As we watch experts and talking heads zoom in on the video, slow it down, freeze the frame and circle key areas in red, it becomes easy to forget what the videos actually show. They show the death of Renee Good, a person with a name and a family and friends and a whole life ahead of her cut violently short. Whatever angle you look at it from, whatever other conclusions you draw, the basic fact is that the videos show a human being shot by a US agent at point blank range. And most of us have watched it multiple times at this point. That is not normal. It shouldn’t feel normal. So even if we don’t believe their lies, engaging with them is still doing damage to our souls. They are serving to desensitize us to violence and disconnect us from fully feeling and comprehending the tragic loss of life. 

Here we can resist that. We let ourselves take a break from frame by frame analysis and lean into the human response: grief and lament. We can make space to mourn and honor the dead. We can remember that as Unitarian Universalists, one of our core beliefs is that each and every person has inherent worth and dignity and anytime a life, any life, is cut short by violence, that is a tragedy that leaves a tear in the moral fabric of the universe. We don’t need a forensics expert to tell us that. 

Here we resist efforts to disconnect us from our humanity and, we resist efforts to disconnect us from our ethical commitments and our moral centers. One thing that has been so alarming to me this week are the moments I’ve found myself doubting my own moral compass—my own capacity to differentiate right from wrong, justice from injustice. As I read the news, listen to various pundits and try to understand different perspectives, I’ve found myself starting to ask things like “Was she actually interfering with operations?” rather than the question I should be asking: “are those operations worthy of interference?"I find myself beginning to wonder “why didn’t she just comply with orders,” without asking whether those orders were morally legitimate, rather than asking “should the price of non-compliance with an unjust system really be death?” I see the ways those in power are shifting the terms of the moral debate to make me question my own sense of right and wrong, to make me forget my commitments to my immigrant neighbors, to democratic principles, and to non-violent resistance. 

So I need to come here to recalibrate my moral compass, to this place where we don’t have to accept their terms of debate. Where we can draw on deeper sources, and try to access more lasting truths about the nature of goodness, and justice, and respect for human life. Where we can ask different questions, like the one inspired by journalist Peter Birkenhead, not “did this officer have cause to fire his gun,” but rather “did he have moral authority to carry one and be on that street in the first place?”

And we have generations of ancestors—activists and prophets and theologians—to help us answer those questions and find our moral center again. From biblical teachings that implore us to welcome the stranger to the example of abolitionist Unitarian ministers like Theodore Parker who funded John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry. One I’ve been returning to this week is Henry David Thoreau who wrote:

“Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil…Why does it not cherish its wise minority?...Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults…? Why does it always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?” Thoreau says if the law “is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.”

Here, when we worship together we can reconnect with the sacred, drawing on our own direct experience of transcendence and wonder to guide us in knowing what is right. We can enter into a centuries-long conversation about our moral obligations in the face of unjust powers. We can ask ethical questions together that feel too big to confront on our own. And when we find that our sacred values compel us to transgress civic orders, we can take courage in knowing we aren’t alone. 

When we come here to worship together, we resist efforts to disconnect us from our humanity, we resist efforts to disconnect us from our moral compass, and we resist efforts to disconnect us from one another. These violent tactics, and the government’s endorsement of them are meant to force us back inside, to stop us from showing up for our communities, from acting in solidarity with our neighbors. And the dehumanizing language, against Renee Good and immigrant communities, is meant to further divide us, to make us distrust and fear one another. This is why, several months ago, I reminded you all of Hannah Arendt’s assertion that totalitarianism is “organized loneliness.” In the face of these isolationist tactics, communal worship is a direct expression of the power of gathered community. The word liturgy means “the work of the people.” Jesus told his disciples, “where two or more or gathered, there I am.” To continue to gather voluntarily, collectively in the name of love and justice is a powerful thing. As long as we keep coming together, we can keep the presence of righteousness and the light of truth alive among us. When we sit next to each other on Sundays and share in our joys and our pain, we are reminded we are each others keeper. 

And in doing all of this, in resisting their efforts to disconnect us from our own humanity, from our moral compass, from one another, we resist efforts to disconnect us from God—from the sacred power of love and justice that is the very ground of our being, guiding our feet and lighting our way. 

This is why, when we don’t know what else to do, we show up to worship. And this is why showing up here is never a waste of time. It keeps us connected with what is most holy and maintaining the connection is an urgent and radical act right now. Every hymn we sing, every word we pray, every moment of silence we hold, everything we do here in this sanctuary should be done with the intention of tethering us to truth and goodness and to our shared human obligations. 


I was talking to a friend and teacher about these events and one thing she noted that deeply moved me was the fact that Renee Good was in her neighborhood when she was killed. A neighborhood she had recently moved to in order to find home and welcoming community. ICE was disrupting the home life of her and her neighbors. Blocking the roads they used to go about their daily tasks, targeting schools where their children were learning, enacting violence in their streets and front yards. Following these events, JD Vance promised that ICE would begin extensive door-to-door operations, violating the sanctity of people’s homes with tactics terrifyingly reminiscent of 1930s Germany. 

It served as a reminder that there are fewer and fewer places left that lie beyond the control of this administration’s lies, violence, and fear-mongering. But, so help me God, this church, this sanctuary will remain one of them. 

Here we will tell the truth and we will speak truth to power. We will confront reality and bear witness to all the beauty and brokenness of the world. We will not become desensitized to violence. We will keep our hearts open and tender. We will not fear our neighbor. Here we will revere life as sacred and recognize love as our highest law. And it is from that place that we will move out into the world and work for peace and justice.

May it be so.
May we make it so through our living.

Amen.

Now let us rise in body or in spirit and sing Hymn #318: We would be one. 


© Rev. Danielle Garrett, 2026