Unfolding Faith: Sermons from Foothills Unitarian

This week on the podcast we're diving into a new series called "Your Best Life," exploring how we don’t need to have it together, to do it together. What our consumer society tells us we need to live our best life is a lie... so what the heck does it mean to live your best life? Join Revs. Sean and Elaine as they explore a possible answer to this big question. 
2:49 - Reading from No Cure for being Human by Kate Bowler
6:12 - Conversation with Revs. Sean and Elaine

In the final week of our series Re-Assembly Required, which is all about repairing broken relationships, we're zooming out to focus on communal relationships — specifically, the relationship between settlers and native peoples. Rev. Sean interviews indigenous activists Christinia Eala and Elissa Tivona about Hughes Land Back. Land back movements seek to restore stewardship of land to indigenous people, and Hughes Land Back specifically seeks to return the former site of Colorado State University's Hughes Stadium.

We all share the longing to be known and embraced for who we are, messy parts and all. Yet, humans are experiencing loneliness at record levels (and this was true even before the pandemic hit!). So what is it we really want in friendships and how can we find it? Rev. Gretchen draws on friendship research to help you start opening up and forming deep, authentic friendships no matter your walk of life (2:03). Then Rev. Sean converses with his close friend and fellow Unitarian Universalist minister Rev. Joe Cherry about patterns and experiences within their friendship and friendships generally (24:19).

Rev. Sean interviews couples therapist Jennifer Dunkle on how we can simplify conflicts to make them more productive. We distinguish solvable and perpetual conflicts and explore how unpacking our personal histories can help with navigating conflicting values and goals.

Rev. Christopher Watkins Lamb explores the hit movie Encanto through the lens of Gretchen Rubin's four tendencies (The Obliger, The Upholder, The Questioner, The Rebel) to help us better relate with the inner and outer characters that make up our lives.

Rev. Gretchen explores the mechanics of a good apology and how whole-hearted attempts at repair have the potential to heal and set us all free. Rev. Elaine also guides us in a prayer that integrates the four parts of a good apology.

This week we continue our series on how to strengthen relationships. Rev. Elaine joins Rev. Sean to guide us in exploring the loneliness many of us are experiencing during the persistent pandemic.

Rev. Sean Neil-Barron talks with Dr. Dan McKanan, Ralph Waldo Emerson Unitarian Universalist Senior Lecturer at Harvard Divinity School. They explore how the current trend of increasing economic inequality affects progressivism across religion and politics, how people rise up seeking to come to terms with America’s white supremacist and colonialist legacies, and the complex place that Unitarian Universalism occupies as a progressive religious tradition that is primarily made up of white folks. What is our role to play in movements for change?