Rev. Elizabeth Bukey is the minister of First Church in Jamaica Plain.
The Jewish holiday of Passover, celebrated later this month, commemorates the story of Exodus, of the Israelites’ deliverance from slavery in Egypt into freedom in the promised land. On this Sunday, we tell a part of the story and consider the tools of liberation.
Prayer, meditation, walking, journaling, chanting, yoga…all these can be spiritual practices. On this Sunday, we explore individual spiritual practices and their role in shaping us toward the life we want to lead.
Compassion for others is a key virtue of the world’s religious traditions. But we sometimes neglect its corollary: compassion for ourselves. This Sunday, we revisit the concept of self-compassion.
We are a congregation of people who don’t believe in God, people who love God, people who find a higher power deep inside, and people who find it in the interconnectedness of all existence…and people in between and who don’t know exactly what we believe. This Sunday we explore the idea of God.
As we witness the war and violence in our world, this Sunday we share prayer and contemplation for peace.(note: Daylight Savings Time begins this Sunday, so remember to set your clocks lest you be late to church!)
Even God rested, say the scriptures shared by Jewish and Christian traditions. How might we incorporate practices of rest and Sabbath in a culture that refuses to rest?
Our experience of this pandemic time has been fragmented. Parents, elders, health care workers, food workers, workers-from-home, folks in retirement…we have had different and contradictory experiences of these last two years. This Sunday, we hear from each other about what our piece of the picture has looked like.
We are a Unitarian Universalist church. Why does that matter? What does that identity mean and where does it call us?
We promise to take action to accountably dismantle racism and other oppressions. What might this require of us?
In a time of change and struggle, we need to replenish our wells of resilience. This Sunday, we reflect on holding on, honoring grief, and finding joy.
