As we let go of the past year what are we willing to give up? What unwanted parts of ourselves can we let go of? We will participate in a ritual of renewal, intending to let go of past thoughts and actions in order to make room for the new.

Our congregation will celebrate Association Sunday 2011 on October 2. As part of our service, we will take a special collection to affirm our common bonds and purposes as Unitarian Universalists. The theme of this year’s Association Sunday is Celebrating Excellence in Ministries.

Our dreams of the future for ourselves, family, church, community and country rise from our values, so differing value systems give rise to visions of very different futures. Rev. Holden will help to discern the principles behind the visions and to make sure our UU visions are clear and realistic.

Popular guest speaker and oncology chaplain, Michael Eselun, will explore through personal reflections the tension between our rational self that yearns for answers, and the spiritual self that can be moved by wonder.

Maybe it is time, as theologian Paul Tillich suggested, to go into the depths of our human existence to rediscover the meaning of sin and grace. Maybe it is time to understand that to see the inherent worth of every individual, instead sinfulness of every individual, is to see perfection in imperfection.

This service will acknowledge the traditional Irish winter feast of Imbolc, a festival dedicated to the figure of Brigit, both pagan goddess and Catholic saint, and amplify her importance as an icon of unity and abundance. As the flame in the chalice sparks meditation and dialogue on themes of unity, inspiration, and community identity, so too does the perpetual flame dedicated to Brigit in Ireland. Rev. Todd Covert is founder and Chief of the Fellowship of Druidism for the Latter Age, was brought up in a longtime UU family and remains deeply sympathetic to the values of UUism.

There is often a tension created for many UUs when we must be in serious dialogue with folks whose choice of words pushes our buttons. Terms like “pro-family” and “moral values” can make us see red when they are co-opted by a political agenda that makes little room for our pro-family, moral values. How can we reclaim our hot button words?

Dr. Carl Sagan referred to the New Testament as: “An amalgam of two seemingly immiscible parts, the religion of Jesus and the religion of Paul.” From Thomas Jefferson to the Jesus Seminar, wise men have attempted to isolate the pure teachings of Jesus from the corruptions of Paul and his followers. These attempts have been scorned by conservative Christians as merely being examples of ’liberal revisionism.’ Ken Schei, the founder of “Atheists for Jesus,” utilizes his 20 years of research into the origins of the Bible to show that Jefferson and the members of the Jesus Seminar present a far more accurate account of the life and teachings of Jesus than is found in the current Christian Bible.

Where do we come from? And what do we hope for? Straight-forward questions that take us down the winding paths of yesterday and into the imagined roads of tomorrow.

This is the story of a chance meeting of two pivotal figures in the history of world religion, in a twenty-first century Los Angeles bar. Why there? Both are known to associate with regular people wherever they congregate. They have much to talk about. Each great teacher finds in the other a talent for listening to others. While they come from divergent cultural backgrounds and speak different religious language, they also share remarkably similar paths and outlooks.