as preached at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston, Museum District, January 5, 2020 Happy New Year! I was not supposed to be in the pulpit with you this morning. But plans change, people get sick, and I find myself with you today on the first Sunday of a new year and a new decade. It is good to be with you. It is good to be with even though the news at the opening of this, what...
I would like to extend to you a personal invitation to join me and Rev. Scott today at 3:00 p.m. at a peace rally on Discovery Green. We will be joining with allies to raise our voices against War in Iran. We will demonstrate our solidarity with the people of the Middle East and against violence that would endanger millions of lives. The Unitarian Universalist Association has issued a statement...
Happy New Year! As I write this month’s column, I am in Michigan visiting my parents for the winter holidays. It is snowing outside – a soft blanket covers the ground and the roads alike. Winter weather brings a sense of peace and respite. There is a fire in the fireplace and I have spent the last few days enjoying my family and relaxing. Wherever you are spending the first days of the New Year...
as preached at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston, Museum District campus, October 20, 2019 When I was twelve or thirteen one of my friends showed up to church in a suit. It was crisp and navy blue. It was paired with a lightly starched white shirt and a butter brown leather shoes polished to a glossy shine. With it, he wore a tie with a classic four in a hand knot that he done up...
Recently at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston we’ve started doing a bilingual reading once a month. It is part of a larger project of using more Spanish in the service. We have a small community in the congregation who are native speakers and Houston has a very large population of who speaks primarily Spanish. Our small effort is an attempt to be a bit more welcoming...
as preached at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston, Museum District campus, October 6, 2019 I am a Yankee. Living in Houston has made this aspect of my identity abundantly clear. I move through the world in distinctively non-Texan ways. I do not wear cowboy boots. I cannot two-step. I do not own a car. I root for neither the Houston Texans nor the Dallas Cowboys–though we...
as preached at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston, Museum District campus, September 15, 2019 In the Christian New Testament, there are a set of words attributed to Jesus that are sometimes called the harshness sayings by scholars. They are called that because, well, they suggest that Jesus was the sort of person who made a lot of other people uncomfortable. He spoke truth to...
as preached at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston, Museum District campus, September 8, 2019 Some years ago, I found myself in the Maricopa County Jail in Phoenix, Arizona. I was there with a group of Unitarian Universalists–clergy and lay folk–who had been arrested while protesting Arizona’s newest anti-human immigration law. Most of us were from out of town. We had...
I am really excited to be with you for another year of interim ministry. I am very much looking forward to what we have coming up! Most of our work together in the next months will revolve around three overlapping tasks. First, we will be preparing for the developmental ministry that will follow my interim ministry. This ministry will last between five and seven years. It will be designed with...
as preached at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston, Museum District campus, August 25, 2019 When I was a kid, maybe in second grade, I was given a homework assignment. I was told to make a diorama of the water cycle. How many of you have had a similar assignment at some point in your schooling? It is a pretty familiar one. I proceeded with it as instructed. I got some blue paint. I...