Unfolding Faith: Sermons from Foothills Unitarian

Water Ceremony 2025

This Sunday we share a re-imagined and reinvigorated Water Ceremony ritual for all ages. This tradition was born from UU women 45 years ago who got tired of being told how to worship and decided to create their own ceremony, and this year we take up their mantle as we reinvent this piece of our living tradition in our own way. We explore what it means to be dammed up and what it feels like when those dams finally break, practicing the radical act of letting barriers come down.
We'll look at the Klamath River, where the largest dam removal in U.S. history just happened. After a century of being blocked, salmon are swimming home. The river remembers.
We're made of that same stubborn, remembering water, and its gifts are also ours:
The wildness of the water is a current alive in within you, within us, flowing in a way that needs no permission, no apologies, no restraint.
The power of the water is ours, together - a force within us like a river that's been gathering behind a dam of lies for decades, finally free to carve new channels through everything that tries to contain us.
Wild belonging, as innate as the belonging of a river in its bed of stone and soil, is ours to claim when we only remember that we’ve always been part of this current.

Truth Won't Hold Still (Rev. Justin Schroeder)

We gather to celebrate and honor the extraordinary Eleanor VanDeusen, who is retiring after 26 years of ministry in religious education and family ministry at Foothills. 
Revs. Gretchen, Sean, and Elaine, along with guest minister Rev. Justin Schroeder guide us. Rev. Justin grew up at Foothills and worked with Eleanor as a youth coordinator.  He reflects on both Eleanor, and also on what our children, youth, and families need from the church now, as truth refuses to be still, continuing to unfold and reveal new understandings and possibilities.
This Sunday we also bless backpacks for all our kids and school employees about to start their new school year! Plus, we’re joined by musical guest Adam Podd!

Answering YOUR Questions

Beyond Belief: Love Demands Everything

In these days of fear, we must keep asking: what sacrifices must we make to make belonging real? Not just pretty words, but actual bodies fed, actual doors opened, actual love lived out loud.
That's the work. That's the fight. Building a belonging so fierce, so wide, so stubbornly inclusive that even our enemies find themselves home.

Beautiful and Broken: The World as it Actually Is

The world is so beautiful - and in the beauty we see the fullness of what is broken. Our living practice invites us to answer the call of beauty, which is justice.
This Sunday as part of our Beyond Belief series, The Rev. Mary Katherine Morn joins us at Foothills to dive into that invitation - that tug toward wholeness, even (especially) when everything feels broken - and the tools that love and beauty offer us as we hold this work in community. 
The Rev. Mary Katherine Morn has led the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) as President and Lead Executive Officer since 2018, and has been in faith-based leadership and justice work for over 30 years in Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, and far beyond.

Beyond Belief: Hope Is An Unfinished Story

Join us as we explore the spiritual practice of hope-making—where faith isn't belief or proof, but the stubborn insistence that we belong to each other, and we're not letting go.
In June, Rev. Sean addressed UU General Assembly, where the Liberal Religious Educators Association asked him to share how we approach social change here at Foothills. How we do the work when everything feels like it's breaking.
In this service, as part of our Beyond Belief series, Sean brings pieces of that sermon home. Because we need to remember how to make hope follow us when the way forward disappears under our feet. How to trust that what emerges through raw, real relationship will transform us through trust, rupture, and repair into something the world desperately needs.
Rev. Sean Neil-Barron // July 13, 2025

Beyond Belief: No One Is Disposable

In our series that starts this Sunday, Beyond Belief: The Living Practice of Unitarian Universalism, we aren’t offering easy answers or spiritual platitudes. We're asking, what if faith isn't about believing the right things, but about living with courage, curiosity, and radical love?
This Sunday, join Rev. Elaine as we begin the series "Beyond Belief: The Living Practices of Unitarian Universalism" with a dive into what we really mean when we say “everyone is worthy of love and belonging, without exception,” and how we got there as Unitarian Universalists.
Come for the questions that won't let you go. Stay for the living practice of our faith that emerges through the struggle.
Rev. Elaine Aron-Tenbrink // July 6, 2025

Tell It Like It Is: Why I'm a Veteran in the Anti-War Movement

Allowing yourself to receive information that explodes nearly everything to which you’ve dedicated your life takes tremendous courage. Rev. Shawna Ambrose knew she had to do it, even though it meant letting go of a proudly held identity, a way of understanding the world, a mode of serving the greater good with pride, and connections with family and community. Witness Shawna’s story of military service transforming into a powerful commitment to the anti-war movement.  
June 29, 2025