What’s Happening: The First Parish Blog

Every Tuesday your staff team meets, and whenever we stand at the precipice of a new month’s theme, we make extra time to consider how it might inform and guide our work. I’m deeply grateful for this staff team. I learn so much from them and feel blessed to have such...

We will usher in October by considering the Courage it takes to hold together life’s paradoxes, contradictory truths, and the kaleidoscope of human feelings and expressions. We tend to want things to be ‘black and white’ but know, as people striving for spiritual wholeness, that the ‘grey’ is where the magic happens.  Let’s explore this together! We will also hear some beautiful music offered by our choir and celebrate St. Francis by holding a stuffed-animal blessing. 

We will close out this month’s worship and faith exploration theme of ‘Beginnings’ by considering the spiritual challenges and gifts that being a ‘beginner’ invites us towards. We will also sing one of our faith’s favorite hymns, “Blue Boat Home,” which celebrates life’s mysterious path and those ‘kindred pilgrim souls’ who walk it with us. Let us come together to seek, find, and draw courage from church and one another.

We will dive into our year’s theme of Living Our Faith by working to understand what faith means as Unitarian Universalists, and what ‘living it’ demands of us. We will also celebrate some good beginnings by blessing our kids’ backpacks,  learning our new children’s processional song, “Know that You are Loved,” and singing a hymn out of our new hymnal Sing Out Love called “Ours is a Living Faith.” Bring your griefs, bring your longings, bring a friend. Come to church and let’s be faithful, together.

We begin our church year through the gathering, blessing, and communing of waters. We will hear the story of this ritual, sing songs of coming home to ourselves and one another, and listen to the silent stirrings of our hearts as we mark the beginning of a new rhythm together.