The service was led by Rev. Karen Lewis Foley, retired UU minister from New England, now living in Charlottesville, and Bob Gross, Worship Weaver. Opening Words: “The Rabbi’s Gift,” as told by William Houff in Infinity in Your Hand: in which an abbot of a monastery which has fallen on hard times with decreasing members […]

This is the text of the Reflections I offered on Sunday, June 30, 2019 to the congregation I have served for the past 8 years. It is the last Reflection I will offer as their Lead Minister. It is also quite possibly the last sermon I will offer for quite some time, because I do […]

The story is told that on his deathbed, when his closest companions were bereft and asked him, “Who’s going to teach us now?” Shakyamuni Buddha said, “Be ye lamps unto yourselves.” And on his deathbed St. Francis of Assisi was asked by his closest companions, “What are we supposed to do now?” His response is […]

This is the text of the reflection I offered on Sunday, June 16, 2019 to the congregation I serve in Charlottesville, Virginia. A woman is doing some painting in her kitchen. She bumps into a small table and then, in that horrified slow motion way, watches as the jar of paint falls off. When it […]

As always, this text is close to what I said in the pulpit, but not exact, for a sermon is always a present-moment experience with the people gathered. Some of the wise lines in this sermon came from a few women who advised and discussed this topic with me in the past week; I asked […]

This was the Sunday of our annual Bridging Ceremony, the uniquely Unitarian Universalist rite of passage from “youth” to “young adult.”  It might be worth noting that these words were illustrated by project images.  (I’ve put the images at the end of the post, and noted throughout where they came.) Prior to the reflection, we […]

This is the text of the reflections I offered on Sunday, May 26, 2019. Every year until his death in 2012, Senator Daniel Inouye introduced legislation to change the date of Memorial Day from what it is now, the last Monday in May, back to what it had been before, May 30th (regardless of what […]

These are the reflections I offered to the congregation I serve on Sunday, May 19, 2019.  They had just a few days earlier received the news of my decision to bring our eight-year mutual ministry to an end, as well as the decision of our Director of Administration and Finance, Christina Rivera, to resign.  This was my […]

Rabban Simeon ben Gamliel whose words are at the heart of the piece the choir just sang, was a Jewish sage and leader who lived a little less than 2,100 years ago. Rav Muna, the other rabbi quoted in the choral piece, was one of the two rabbi who edited an early version of the Talmud, […]

The theme this month is Awe. It is a grand thing, awe. The very nature of awe is that it defies words. So this brings a dilemma of how to talk about it. So, I decided to break it down into five explorations to share with you this morning: Awesome, Awh! Aaaahhh, Shock and Awe, […]