Worship Associate: Sherry Benton

Today UUSP will host the Interfaith Community of Tampa Bay in recognizing World Peace Day as begun by the United Nations on September 21, 1982.  We are also at the autumn equinox, bringing balance to days, nights, and weather, and marking the beginning of harvests and bounty in many parts of the world - all auspicious ingredients for peace.

Our service this morning will offer the question of whether we can bend the arced Source of our potentials toward a just and moral peace.  In other words, can we grow enough in faith and love - understanding and caring - for justice and peace to have a chance?

Sermon and Readings

order of service

Worship Associate: Sarah Craig
 

And so now the new church year begins - along with Rosh Hashanah (September 9), beginning the Jewish New Year with the High Holy Days - along with Labor Day marking the return to work and school after summer vacations -along with our Sunday service marking our new beginnings with our annual Ingathering Service, celebrating with our traditional Water Communion ceremony (created and introduced by the UU Women's Federation decades ago). 

We invite all to help mark our Ingathering and reconnecting for the new church year by bringing a tiny bit of water representing the oceans, lakes, streams or faucets from where you spent some time this summer.  Our Water Communion ceremony is a few moments to pour in our gathered waters and to name the interconnected sources and spirits they represent.

The basic purpose of our church, one might say, is to be an on-going community that helps us and all people grow spiritually, that is, in understanding of life and caring for it.  Our pastor's Sunday sermons mainly focus on our potentials and how they may be fulfilled from the beginning of life through its end.  Today's sermon asks what is the connection between our Source and our potentials.

2018-09-09-.pdf

2018-09-09-.pdf