This Sunday’s service will be a collaboration between First Unitarian Portland and First Unitarian Rochester, NY. Rev. Sinkford and Rev. Halliday-Quan from Rochester will offer a sermon in dialogue, asking and answering questions about our faith. Some of the music will be done in partnership as well, by Rochester’s Music…

Rev. Bill will be joined by three mothers who will offer their personal stories of the complex and challenging and beautiful experience of motherhood. We will celebrate mothers (and all who parent) with gratitude, on a day which is so much more complicated that those Hallmark cards ask us to believe.

This is an annual tradition at First Unitarian—a service led by our high school youth in YRUU (Young Religious Unitarian Universalists). It’s a wonderful opportunity to experience what our church nurtures in young people. The service will include musical talents and insightful homilies. We will NOT gather for Service on…

Call to Worship Words of the Persian mystic Rumi: Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to…

Homily: Prayers for the Earth and Her People “To be a human being is an honor” Chief Jake Swamp spoke the traditional Haudenosaunee morning prayer. “We offer thanks for all the gifts of life.” That prayer begins and ends with gratitude. To be a human being is an honor…not an…

“And he shall reign forever and ever and ever. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.” You know, the theology…and the gender message…the hierarchy… they are problematic for most of us from start to finish…King of Kings and Lord of Lords…??? Good Lord…as my grandmother used to say… I disagree with so much of it.…

https://vimeo.com/420418462 “All you can do is to walk into Jerusalem, with the Hosannas ringing in your ears, and the palms coming at you in every direction…” The words of our reading remind us, in the midst of our self-isolating…in the midst of our fears…in the midst of our financial anxieties…even…

Rev. Sinkford will answer questions from both our young people and adults about our faith, our church and our place in the world. We will NOT gather for Service on Sunday, but live streaming will be available. View livestream here: https://boxcast.tv/view/sunday-worship-277044

https://vimeo.com/420358365 Words of Wendell Berry: When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the…

https://vimeo.com/398003397 Anger, disappointment, pain, conflict -- it can be hard to hold humility and perspective when things get rough. What are some practical ways that we can bring our best selves and our UU values into moments of tension and disagreement? How do we come back to covenant when things…

https://vimeo.com/397996403 James Baldwin wrote: “If you can’t love anybody, you’re dangerous. You have no way of learning humility, no way of learning that other people suffer…” If you can’t love anybody, you’re dangerous. “One month before Mama turned 59 and two-months before Jan van Hooff’s eightieth birthday, these two elderly…

https://vimeo.com/395009313 “…humble never really registered for me,” wrote Brian Doyle in our reading. It never really registered “because I was not humble, and had no real concept of humble…” Humility was something that he had to learn…that he had to be taught by the living of life with his spouse and…

 The orientation of time and place, who we came from and where we are, can provide a needed sense of belonging in this chaotic and uprooted world. Rev. Bert is minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Vancouver, WA.

https://vimeo.com/392978847 Looking back. Looking forward. Ancestry asks us to take that view from the mountain top that sees not only where we’ve come from but also where we are going… a vantage point that can hold both memory and hope. Nelson Mandela wrote: “…I have discovered the secret that after…

One of the privileges I have as a minister is officiating at memorial services. “That must be so hard,” people sometimes say to me. And yes, sometimes it is hard, especially when the circumstances of any given death are particularly difficult. But mostly there’s a tremendous sense of privilege, being…

https://vimeo.com/389065720 “We are our grandmother’s prayers We are our grandfather’s dreamings (Singing) We are the breath of our ancestors…” The breath of our ancestors…is that who we are? Is our living just the continuation of their story? Just the next chapter?  A story in which we will…all of us…at some…

https://vimeo.com/387741705 So friends, I have a confession to make.  I cannot preach to you this morning the sermon that I had intended to.  The sermon printed in your bulletin.  The one that Bill and I have discussed now for many months; the one I had packed neatly in my suitcase…

This weekend we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King Jr. He would have turned 91 years old were he still alive. And imagining what King would have to say in the age of Trump we can only guess. Just what would he have to say about the divisions of…

https://vimeo.com/385129787 Throughout history and up until this very moment, life has been characterized, at least in part, by suffering. What has kept people going through these hard times? What grounding can we, as UUs, rest upon to move forward together? (readings: excerpt of Nehemiah 9:28-37; “Love Dogs” by Rumi)

https://vimeo.com/385127772 …till [you] anchor in the promised land. It takes a long pull… You have to persevere…to get there… To fulfill responsibilities in our personal lives and to live out our commitments to love and justice in the world… We need to be long haul people. Perseverance is our spiritual…

https://vimeo.com/385131435 Call to Worship I am running into a new year and the old years blow back like a wind that I catch in my hair like strong fingers like all my old promises and it will be hard to let go of what I said to myself about myself…

'Each night a child is born is a holy night.’ On this night when we light candles against the dark, we come together to affirm that each child born can be a redeemer and that all of us can be redeemed.

All are warmly welcomed at this wonderful and joyous service put on by the children of our congregation.  Originally presented in 1924 in honor of the first Christmas in our then-new church on the corner of SW 12th Ave. and Salmon, this pageant in its various iterations has been an…

Winter Solstice is a time of darkness moving toward light. What can we learn from this time of rest, renewal, and looking forward? Join us for this special annual service.

The child, sleeping in the night, will bring us goodness and light. Rejoice! Goodness and light…hope…is on the way. Rejoice. In the Christian calendar, we have reached the mid-point of Advent, the season that points toward the coming of hope. This middle Sunday is called Gaudette Sunday. Gaudette means Rejoice.…

Our Chancel Treble Choir (formerly The Women’s Choir), directed by John Boelling, will be leading this year’s Winter Music and Worship service featuring Benjamin Britten’s beloved  A Ceremony of Carols.  These beautiful and stirring medieval carols will be accompanied by renowned Portland harpist, Denise Fujikawa, and will be interwoven with…