Unitarian Universalist Church West

A person walks into a chuch on Sunday morning, planning to attend a worship service legally and openly carrying a fully-loaded gun. What happens next? What should happen next? What is our faithful response to guns in the church?

We all know we need water to drink and maintain our comfortable way of life, but are there other ways we need water? Lynn Broaddus will explore the ways in which water feeds us even more fundamentally, and what happens when we dam our rivers, pollute our lakes, and bury our streams beneath city streets.

Of all the emotions that drive human behavior, fear can be the most potent and debilitating. It can control and even destroy a person's life. While fear can be addressed at a psychological level, it is primarily a spiritual disease. We will examine the experience of existential fear, how it takes hostage the soul, and what we can do to overcome it.

Failed terrorist attacks, oil spill disasters, earthquakes, floods, financial crises - and more. What is happening in our world? Seems like things are moving from bad to worse at a rapid rate. Universalism helps us respond, both spiritually and practically.

How does growing up in a radically open religious tradition like Unitarian Universalism shape a person's worldview, spritiuality and life choices? Is being a "religious minority" a point of pride or pain as a child, youth and your adult? Today we hear intriguing thoughts and ideas from folks who grew up at UUCW or as UUs elsewhere

The power to decide which path to take in life is a power we cherish.  But have we ever considered the ways in which “the road not taken” and the things we choose not to do shape our destiny?  In each moment of decision waits the power to transform ourselves and our world.  What might it take for us as individuals and for our American system overall to choose a different road?

Marc Gorelick, a member of UUCW since 2000, is a pediatric emergency physician at the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. He is also a member of Physicians for a National Health Plan. His interest in health care reform is stimulated in large part by his inside observations of the US health care "system". In this semon, he will explore the moral dimension of health care reform, focusing on the question of whether Americans have a "right" to health care.

William Young’s bestselling novel “The Shack” has captured the imagination and drawn the ire of Christians around the globe with its unorthodox images of the Trinitarian god (“the father” is an African American woman, “the son” is a big-nosed Jewish carpenter, and the “holy spirit” is an ephemeral Asian American woman) and its unconventional theology. Does “The Shack” have something important to say to Unitarian Universalists? Can we meet “god” there?

We Unitarian Universalists have a vision of environmental justice. We affirm and promote the interdependent web of all life, of which we are but a part. But are we willing to change how we live our daily lives so that we are truly in alignment with our values? Ethical Eating – adopted by the UUA as a Study Action Issue for 2008-2012 asks this question, among many others. Eating our values – how delicious might that be? Come today and find out.

Today we seek the wisdom of Buddhism in honor of Vesak, a holiday informally called “Buddha's birthday,” but which actually encompasses the birth, enlightenment, and death of Gautama Buddha. We ask today what is eternal, and what is not? What can be destroyed by wind or fire, and what cannot?