Unfolding Faith: Sermons from Foothills Unitarian

Tell It Like It Is: Decolonizing Recovery

We crave growth and transformation – and yet, we will go to great lengths to avoid actual change. We want to know one another more deeply – but when someone else’s truth challenges our worldview, our first move is often to start building a defense of our own position.
Join Rev. Elaine in leading with curiosity and holding your certainties a little more softly as as Lucrecia Medrano, local leader and co-founder of the harm reduction and recovery groups at the Yarrow Collective, offers us the gift of her truth – a story of recovery from addiction, of liberation and de-colonizing recovery. 
When Lucrecia found that a Western model of recovery also snuffed out the spark in her heart, she kept following her inner wisdom — even when it diverged from the advice of the experts.  Lucrecia found healing and liberation on a path that defied conventional norms, yet made all the difference.
After taking in her story, Lucrecia joins Rev. Elaine for a time of conversation and reflection. 
*Lucrecia Medrano (she/her), a proud first-generation Latinx woman, a wife, and mother of three, is a liberatory harm reductionist rooted in culturally sacred practices and psychedelic medicine.  Lucrecia creates transformative spaces for drug users, people of color, those in recovery and those seeking liberation. She co-founded all harm reduction groups and recovery groups at Yarrow Collective, and is a certified Peer Support Specialist devoted to decolonized healing and collective freedom.*
June 1, 2025

Can You Be A UU Conservative?

Today, Rev. Sean asks a question that can feel impossibly complex to some of us - Can you be a UU conservative?
When politics feel like a litmus test for belonging, it’s easy to confuse shared opinions with shared faith. But Unitarian Universalism calls us to something deeper: a covenant that holds space for disagreement, tension, and the holy work of staying in relationship anyway.
Rev. Sean Neil-Barron // May 25, 2025

Earth Magic: Come Alive

Today we explore the ways the Earth is constantly inviting us to move from being observers to full participants in the vibrant, living world...but are we ready to receive the invitation?
Coming alive may demand everything from us, but we receive everything in return -  if only we're able to truly hear the call.
Rev. Christopher Watkins Lamb // May 18, 2025

Earth Magic: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Carbon

We’ve been taught to find the sacred in what’s far away — untouched trails, quiet forests, pure air — but what if holiness is right here, tangled in the places we share, the bodies we inhabit, and the carbon we exhale? This week, we’re diving into that story that lives beyond dualisms. A story that is about much more than carbon, but about the spiritual life, and the common good, and about life in community.
Rev. Sean Neil-Barron // May 11, 2025

Earth Magic: The Wild Swans

Folk tales are more than just entertainment. They contain within them seeds of wisdom that help us live with purpose and meaning. In accompanying a sister on a quest to rescue her eleven brothers, what will we learn about ourselves? Join Rev. Christopher Watkins Lamb in an immersive, musical morning as we discover how the Danish tale of The Wild Swans connects us to awe and inner strength. 
Rev. Christopher Watkins Lamb // May 4, 2025

Earth Magic: Awe and the Ecological Self

Today, we’re diving into the spiritual gifts of awe — that sacred pause that draws us out of ourselves and into the vastness of everything. We’ll remember together that awe isn’t a luxury, but a core human experience that offers us healing, connection, and guides us towards right action.  In these times when despair and disconnection encroach, practicing awe is more essential than ever.
Rev. Elaine Aron-Tenbrink // April 27, 2025

Earth Magic: Unfinished

This Easter Sunday, we began our new series Earth Magic, rooted in the messy, relentless wisdom of the living world. Rev. Sean began with the Easter story — not the sanitized one, but the version that ends in silence, in fear, in the ache of what’s still unresolved. Because if you’ve looked around lately, you know: we are living in the middle of unfinished stories. The story of justice. The story of democracy. The story of who gets to belong — and who still doesn’t.
Rev. Sean Neil-Barron // April 20, 2025

Made For This: Stand By Me

When caregiving feels invisible, impossible, and isolating, the truth is still this: you were made to care and be cared for. You are part of a sacred human story—one of mutual belonging and deep connection—and your love, your presence, your compassion, are not only enough; they are holy.
Rev. Elaine Aron-Tenbrink // April 13, 2025