Worship & Sermons
WORSHIP
Join us for services at 10:30am on Sundays, from the Sunday after Labor Day through Father’s Day. Experience elements of the world religions, including our Christian roots and humanism. Find inspiration in choral and instrumental music (including organ), congregational singing, a time for children, readings, an offering, and meditative silence. Hear a sermon on social justice, spirituality, dealing with life’s challenges, or other issues. We may celebrate a holiday, act out a skit, hold a coming-of-age ceremony, or hear a member’s Journeys of Faith. Services end around 11:30am and are usually followed by a 30-minute fellowship gathering.
For a relaxed service with music from the jazz tradition, come to a Jazz Vespers. Our Christmas Eve service and Christmas Candlelight service are community traditions.
April 2024 Worship Schedule
Download and print the April worship schedule HERE.
Solidarity Not Charity
By Reverend Rebecca M. BryanI came across the photograph and exercise while reading Peter Gabel’s book, “The Desire for Mutual Recognition.” This is a book that I referred to several times in my sermon last week. The author asserts that our world...
Willing to be Transformed
By the Rev. Rebecca BryanWhen have you experienced a deep sense of meaning in your life? Close your eyes for a moment, or look out the window, and take a moment to reflect on that question. Bring to your mind a memory of a time that was deeply meaningful to...
Divine Traffic and Holy Laundry
By Sophia Lyons, guest preacherIf you want a major lesson in humility, do the following. Allow the children in your lives to take over your camera while you busy yourself with normal household to-do’s. While your devices’ memory will become utterly overloaded...
I Don’t Pray
By the Rev. Rebecca BryanHow are you? Really? How is your spirit? Is it full of good cheer? Or are you struggling to feel again the lightness of times when burdens were few and laughter was long? Life is not always easy. It can be hard in the winter time when...
Prayer as Remembering
By Julie Parker Amery, Director of Religious EducationSome years ago, I opened myself up to prayer’s invitation. It had been a long journey to the place where I could put aside all the weird associations I had with the word and give it a whirl. At first, it was...
Girl in the Tree
By the Rev. Rebecca BryanPema Chödrön shared this story in one of her books. She used it in teaching the Buddhist practice of Tonglen. It is a true story. I share it in spirit, not verbatim. For me, this is a third way that I use prayer. There once was a young...
Prayer in the Kitchen
By Julie Parker Amery, Director of Religious EducationIn the fall of 2016, as many of you know, I went on a Civil Rights pilgrimage through Alabama and Tennessee. One of the highlights of what was one of the most enriching weeks of my life was a visit to the...
Martin Luther King Jr.
Sunday, January 20th Worship by Conference CallFor those that missed the church’s first-ever “worship by conference call” you may listen to Sunday’s recording during the snow storm. Go to the two-minute mark to start the service, which opens with a quote from...
Making Ritual: Making Meaning with Orange Communion
By the Rev. Rebecca BryanLast week, we started our two-month probe into the ministry themes of spirituality and service. As I shared last Sunday, these themes are inextricably interconnected. Whether we start our journey in spirituality or in service, when the...
Words on Faith: Why we all need a language of theology
By the Rev. Rebecca Bryan We were at a celebration together where we had both been asked to say a few words. We were waiting for the program to begin. The lights were dim as we stood before the podium, when he turned to me and said, “I’ve been able to...
A Christmas Allegory
By the Rev. Rebecca BryanFor the 2018 Christmas Eve Service at First Religious Society, Newburyport, Mass.And now it is time for a Christmas story. Sit back, relax and take this in.Imagine, if you will, a story, a story not of long ago, but a story of...
Deep Work
By the Rev. Rebecca BryanI was near the top of Mount Kilimanjaro when we heard the news: Bear Stearns had received an emergency bail out. The reverberations went around the world. In the six days that it took us to climb to that point, some 19,000 feet...
The Invention of Air
Reverend Rebecca M. Bryan“That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of men , and improvement of man’s condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she...
Advent as an Invitation to Creativity
Reverend Rebecca M. Bryan I dreamt of welcome mats the other night. Yes, welcome mats, the things often placed in doorways. I love welcome mats. Actually, what I love are thresholds; and, of course, if you love thresholds, you're apt, as I am, to love...
Quiet
Julie Parker AmeryAs I was in the early stages of preparing this sermon, I came to realize that there was too much to say about quiet and silence. There was simply too much to say. I had incredible sources I wanted to use and I was becoming overwhelmed...
Room at the Table
Rev. Rebecca M. Bryan Room at the Table “My awareness of the differences within humanity just keeps growing. Each of us has expanded our understanding of our world as it increasingly acknowledges and embraces differences among us.” (This taken from Jo An...
The Impossibility of Dancing on a Pinhead
Rev. Rebecca M. BryanThe Impossibility of Dancing on a PinheadI knew that we were on to something with this month’s ministry theme of balance when I saw the topic referenced in communications that you were having with one another. For instance, the email...
Wake Up and Smile – A Healing Journey through Meditation
Joyce Haydock Wake Up and Smile - A Healing Journey through Meditation First, I want to show you a poster before I start, which may illustrate why many of us can benefit from meditation (shows a photo of a person and a dog showing how their brains perceive what...
Choosing the Beautiful: An Islamic Vision of Life Well Lived
Rev. Stan Barrett CHOOSING THE BEAUTIFUL: AN ISLAMIC VISION OF LIFE WELL LIVED The first time I knew I’d found a home in an Islamic spiritual practice was about 25 years ago, one September Thursday evening in Brattleboro, VT, with a group of Mevlevi Sufis. The...
Animal Remembrance & Blessing
What in the World?
“I don’t want a long funeral. In fact I don’t even need a eulogy more than one or two minutes. I hope that I will live so well the rest of the days - I don’t know how long I will live and I’m not concerned about that - but I hope that I can live so well that...
To Hear and Be Heard
I want to start off today’s sermon by saying “Thank you.” Thank you to all of you: those of who have been coming for years, those of who have been coming each week of this, my first month with you, and those for whom this may be your first or second visit. Thank you...
That’s Just Extra: How the myth of perfectionism and other stories can derail us.
John Mercer & The Rev. Rebecca Bryan Stories are not only healing and necessary, they also hold risks. How do we know what story is real, or helpful? Is there a time to let go of a story? If so, why?, and how do we do that? Through the lens of Buddhism and social...
Strangers I Wish I Had Known
The Rev. Rebecca Bryan I had planned on preaching about The Epic of Gilgamesh today. I had planned, and then life happened. How is it that the saying goes? “Life is what happens when you are making plans.” (Attributed to many people including, yes, John...
Space for Stories
The Rev. Rebecca Bryan As chaplains, we wore plain clothes – unlike others in the hospital, we had no uniform. The nurses wore blue, the doctors white, those who worked with food wore green. Hartford Hospital was a large hospital with a diverse patient...
Where Do We Go from Here?
The Rev. Rebecca Bryan “Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.”— Gloria Steinem. Have you ever been the manifestation of someone’s dreams? I hope that we...
Love Will Guide Us
The Rev. Rebecca Bryan Good morning, yet again! And what a good morning this is. I cannot imagine a place that I would rather be than right here Thank you for inviting me here to be with you this candidating week. Thank you for opening up your church, this beautiful...
On the Possibility of Interfaith Dialogue
On the Possibility of Interfaith Dialogue Rabbi Benjamin Resnick March 25, 2018 There is no printed copy of this sermon, but the recorded sound is available. Here is the full description of the service as it appeared in The Steeple. From the perspective of world...
Where Angels Fear to Tread: Shall We Risk More Talk About God
The Rev. Stan Barrett, Affiliated Minister Dick and I had been friends for quite a while. We had first known each other in the late 1980’s when attending experiential workshops in a new therapeutic approach called Process Work. Later we were members of the Board of a...
My Heart Can Take All Forms
Amer Latif, guest preacher Though no text for this presentation was supplied, you may hear a recording of it by using the link.