Unfolding Faith: Sermons from Foothills Unitarian

Learning: How We Move

Join us in a very special conversation with Rev. Sean and Dr. Cori Wong, Experimental Public Philosopher and a member of our Fort Collins Community. 
In her uniquely playful and creative style, Dr. Wong reminds us that movements for liberation ask us to follow the lead of those most impacted, and that the best followers are good learners. Together we'll ask ourselves:
From whom do you learn?
What are you willing to learn?
How does what you learn inform what you choose to do?
Dr. Wong is a dynamic and experimental public philosopher, educator, speaker, consultant, writer, and community builder known to bring creativity, humor, and authenticity to all facets of her work. 
With her personable, playful, and expansive style, Dr. Wong shows how to make meaning of complex ideas and real feelings that are inherent to movements for collective liberation. Learn more about her work at coriwong.com

Beyond Casual Neigboring

What does it really take to join the Movement?
Rev. Gretchen explores the difference between casual activism and accountable neighboring — and why real transformation asks more of us than good intentions.
In Unitarian Universalist language, this is covenant: making promises in love, staying in relationship, and helping tend the whole.
If you’ve been longing for deeper belonging, wondering what this moment asks of you, or feeling frustrated by how slow change can be, this service is for you.

Blessed Bad Behavior

"Sometimes you have to be a little bit naughty!"
Even for the most polite and least confrontational among us, love can call on us to disrupt and create tension in service to justice.  Rev. Elaine Aron-Tenbrink leads us in an exploration of where our collective power lies and how we might create “good trouble” together.

The Movement Needs You

What are you tending? Are you squash, or beans, or corn? Does gardening align with fascist ideology?Rev. Sean tells a story about an overheard conversation at a botanical garden, that provides a winking insight into how we might find our place, our role, in The Movement to resist the authoritarian breakthrough that is happening right now. 

Meet The Movement - The Practice Of Radical Neighboring

"It's okay to change your mind."We’re living through a critical moment, when democracy is being tested, as is our capacity to see one another as fully human across real difference. 
A few weeks ago, a group of our ordained and lay ministers traveled to Minneapolis thinking we were going to help them. Instead, they helped us - offering an immersive learning experience in how to respond with our values at the center: courage + humility, strategy + creativity, care + resolve.
This sermon kicks off a 8 week series where we will practice what it means to become neighbors in a deeper way, building spiritual resilience, making meaning together, and learning the practices a movement for courageous love requires.
 

Swords into Plowshares, Weapons into Tools

At the recent protest at the Minneapolis airport, clergy knelt on frozen ground, prepared to be arrested… and prayed the Lord’s Prayer in unison. One UU minister told Rev. Gretchen that, for the first time in her life, this prayer felt exactly right.
How would the words have felt for you? Comforting? Curious? Off-putting? Empty? This Sunday we will explore our relationship to Jewish & Christian scripture and how it relates to us as Unitarian Universalists in this moment - what we can reclaim, refuse, and carry forward in the work of courageous love? How can we turn these texts from weapons used for division, into tools for community?

Radical Neighboring

In this moment, we are called to inhabit one of the most ancient stories: the story of being good neighbors to each other, in love and in protection.  Rev. Elaine explores how being a neighbor is more than a moral concept—it’s an ancient, relational practice that calls us to listen with humility, cross lines of difference with compassion, and remember our deep interconnection with one another. "Won't you be my neighbor?"

The Old Story Needs Your Cooperation

There is an old story that has a hold on us, and it needs our cooperation to stay alive. The old story that says "nothing changes". The one that says "stay in your lane". It can't survive without you. Which also means, it starts to break the moment you stop repeating it. 
This message from Rev. Sean is an invitation to practice. Not heroism, but faithfulness in the struggle. Small moments of being willing to tell the right story wrong. To say the right thing though your voice may shake and crack. So that when it matters most, when your neighbor needs you, when the stakes are real, you've already been exercising the muscle. 
Courage isn't something you find alone. It's something we practice together.