Unfolding Faith: Sermons from Foothills Unitarian

This week, we did something a little different. We felt that there were two different messages that our congregation needed to hear this past Sunday. So this week we are releasing two messages for you. This one, is from our 11am service.
 
What if the most defiant thing we can do right now is to be unmistakably, joyfully alive? This Sunday, we find out! This service is a celebration that hands the hour to queer and trans joy, the kind that's contagious and liberating and reminds us that all of us need all of us.
Joining Rev. Sean, local poet and composer Silen Wellington will share their poetry, and drag artist Kitty Androgenie will bring their talent to our stage.Come witness it, come celebrate it, and know that the "us" in all of this includes you.
And yes, this means you, our straight and cisgender friends. Queer and trans joy isn't a spectator sport, and it isn't a favor you do for someone else. It spills over, and some of what it frees is in you too. So come not just to watch but to celebrate and be transformed!

This week, we did something a little different. We felt that there were two different messages that our congregation needed to hear this week. So this week we are releasing two messages for you. This one, the first, is from our 9am service.In this service we connect the dots and refuse to treat anyone's fight for bodily autonomy as a separate fight. We'll learn how to be part of a broad coalition to protect Colorado families and defeat ballot measures 109 and 110, refusing to see these fights as distinct from the fights for reproductive justice and women's rights.

When I was nine, my mother drove me two and a half hours to enter a beauty pageant. Spoiler alert: I lost. But the "why did we ever think that was a good idea?" of that story still haunts us both.
We got caught up in stories about what "girls" were supposed to like, and do, to make sense in this world — stories that even then had very little to do with who I actually was. And for a minute, it felt good to believe I could fit inside one.
We all have something like that. Something we cling to a little too tightly, mistake for solid ground, build our whole world around — only to find it was a lot less solid, or a lot more partial, than we let ourselves believe. It happens when we talk about what's ultimately true and holy. And it happens when we talk about gender (which, it turns out, is also holy).
Listen as we explore the truths about gender we treat as ultimate — and what happens when we grow past them, and find on the other side a wilder, fuller, more dynamic freedom than those old stories could ever have given us.

Your whole life somebody has been telling you your gender story is simple. A parent. A voice inside your own head. But something inside you probably always knew better. And right now that simple story isn't just incomplete - it's being used as a weapon against real people in real families. 
Rev. Sean invites us to sit with our own gender stories and find out what they're actually made of. Because no matter who you are, how you identify, your gender story isn't simple, isn't finished. And the way you hold yours changes what's possible for everyone else.

When your everything runs out, you don't have to hold it alone. In our final message of this series, we close with the truth that has quietly held the past three Sundays together: that none of us is meant to carry this life by ourselves. We explore the slow, unglamorous work of keeping yourself steady so you can show up for others, and why our deepest need to be held is the very thing that weaves us together. We close with our flower ceremony, a simple, beautiful reminder that there is always more here than any one of us brings. So bring what you can. Take what you need. 💐

There is more to us than we know. These hidden selves live in the part of our psyche known as Shadow. In a time of deep struggle, Shadow may offer hidden treasure. In this sermon, Rev. Christopher asks, What if we respond to our pain and struggle not by trying to fix it, but by growing bigger and stranger? What if finding the pleasure our Shadow selves already enjoy unleashes something deeply needed? The conscious self wants to avoid pain, and keep its attention averted from the parts it has rejected. Yet doing the opposite is what moves us from the breaking point to something far wilder. 

One Day, One Hour, One Breath at a Time
Most of us have said it. "I'm just taking it one day at a time." But there's a version of that sentence you say casually, and a version you say when you actually mean it. When your back is against the wall. When you can't see past the next hour. When one more day is genuinely all you've got.
Listen, as Rev. Sean talks about what it means to be human at your limit, and why that place is not a failure. It's actually where we find out what carries us.

Rev. Gretchen begins a new series: Rock Bottom Spirituality. Listen as Rev. Gretchen shares reflections from her own experiences of "rock bottom," including what happens when we try things we never thought would work - since, when the usual tools stop working, sometimes the next step is simply to start trying anyway.
We have all faced that moment when you realize you can’t do it on your own.
You’ve tried your tools.You’ve had the conversations.You’ve tried to think your way through it.
But nothing shifts.  And you start to realize—I’m going to need help.Not just help with the tangible things, but the kind of help that connects you to something greater— something beyond what you can see, or imagine, or understand.