Sermon Archive

In a time when power is increasingly centralized and voices are silenced, Unitarian Universalism insists on a different way: shared authority, covenant, and participation. The way we govern ourselves, with power held by congregational members matters.  It is a spiritual practice that calls each of us into responsibility, relationship, and collective courage.

This service invites us to consider what it means to belong, to participate, and to shape the community we long for—together.

First-Sunday Monthly Potluck after Service!

Drawing on the spirit of April Fools, we will play with improvisation. Let's explore how deep listening, presence, and playful curiosity can become spiritual practices that help us navigate uncertainty and build beloved community.

Led by Rev. Leslie and member Ruth Jenkins, we can discover together presence, trust, and the healing power of shared laughter and imagination.

In honor of Earth Day, we gather to explore the theme of Ultimacy and our place within the interconnected web of life. Please bring a small object or photograph that symbolizes your personal bond with the natural world. During the service, there will be a dedicated time to share how these treasures ground you and remind you of our deep interdependence with all living things. Join us as we honor the sacredness of Mother Earth and reaffirm our commitment to the great, beautiful whole that sustains us all.

From our humble beginnings a half-century ago to the present, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, PFLAG Portland, has been a safe harbor for those of us who love and cherish the LGBTQIA+ people in our lives – and for queer individuals themselves.

The two Portland couples who founded Parents of Gays in 1977 – the forerunner to our PFLAG chapter – opened their living rooms to like-minded parents at a time when gays and lesbians were more likely to be shunned than embraced. These days, we hold our chapter meetings in a nondescript room on the campus of a gender-affirming church in Southwest Portland.

Our journey remains the same, even if our paths differ greatly from one another. And in a world that can sometimes make us feel discouraged or lonely, we take comfort in knowing there are people who “get us.”

Special Collection: PFLAG

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We will gather to celebrate the renewal of Spring and the power of Love. Jesus refused to answer violence with violence. In our Unitarian Universalist faith, we honor this as a story of enduring love—one that rises again in us when we choose compassion, justice, and hope, even in the face of oppression.

First-Sunday Monthly Potluck after Service!

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Each church year there are 4-5 months that have a fifth Sunday. As part of our lay-led ministry, we will be using these Sundays to offer an alternative to traditional worship. In lieu of holding a service, either in-person or on Zoom, we will be organizing a group service project we can do together instead.

Our project for March 2026 is a supply drive for the 13 Salmon Shower Project. We will gather at 10:30 on Sunday, March 29th at the Center for Positive Aging for snacks, song, & fellowship. Project Coordinator, Larry Burt will collect your supply drive contributions. See the details below for more information about needed items. 

The 13 Salmon Shower Project

Based at First Unitarian downtown, the 13 Salmon Shower Project is open on Wednesday and Thursdays from 11 to 4 and offers unhoused individuals  a free and secure space to shower, rest, enjoy a warm drink and snack, get clean clothing, and experience refuge from conditions on the street. Based on compassion and an ethic of mutual care, the project seeks to build relationships between the church and our unhoused neighbors.

They are seeking the following items:

• Men's clothes, especially jeans/pants/sweats (30 - 36)
• Hoodies, sweatshirts, coats, and rain gear
• Boxer briefs - NEW (M, L)
• Women's underwear - NEW (S, M)
• New Socks

There will be NO regular Worship service this Sunday. We are gathering in-person for fellowship and to gather our supply drive contributions. There will not be an opportunity to join via Zoom.

Join us for a Spring Equinox service that honors the turning of the season and the wisdom it brings. Together, we’ll explore the theme of balance—light and dark, rest and action—as we take stock of what has germinated within us during the winter months. Let’s notice together what new ideas, hopes, and forms of life are beginning to sprout, both literally and figuratively, and discern which seeds we feel called to nurture in the months ahead.  

Special Collection: Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition.

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Each of us has felt overwhelmed at some point, whether by personal hardship or loss, or by the events of the world outside our windows. The words of our old hope sometimes ring true: Hope is hard to find. Let’s consider together the experiences of finding hope in unexpected places. While we are together, Hope lives. 

This sermon is part of the UUA Recorded Sermon Series and is presented by Wren Bellavance, Grace who serves on the UUA New England Regional Congregational Life Staff. 

Wren loves working with lay leaders and religious professionals serving congregations of all sizes across New England. She serves as the New England representative on the national Safer Congregations Team, which curates best practices for safer church communities and responds to misconduct and ethical breaches.

Before joining the New England Region, wren was a religious educator. Through a fellowship granted by the Fahs Collaborative at the Meadville Lombard Theological School, she authored a paper, Full Week Faith, which proposed a new approach to our ministries of faith formation in response to the social, demographic, technological, and spiritual realities of 21st century America.

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Conflict is an eternal, natural component of life. Our challenge has never been to resolve or eliminate conflict, but rather to transform it from destructive to productive and constructive. The ultimate destructive conflict, of course, is war. Nonviolent people-power can stop war. Kenneth Boulding was a grandfather of Peace and Conflict Studies who asked the rhetorical question, "Can we agree that if something exists, it is possible?" Following that, we ask, "If nonviolent people-power can stop war, show us when it has."

Tom Hastings is Associate Professor of Conflict Resolution at Portland State University and Coördinator of the BA/BS degree and certificate programs. He is Director of PeaceVoice, a co-founder of the Portland Peace Team, author of several books focusing on nonviolence and more than 600 other publications, two-term co-chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Association, board member of the International Peace Research Association Foundation, on the Academic Advisory Council of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, founding faculty with the James Lawson Institute, a former Catholic Worker, and a two-time Plowshares resister.

He was born in 1950, began his peace and justice activism in 1968, and never stopped. His jail and prison experience informs him, as does his experience as a father to two African American sons, and several years working to help defend Anishinaabe treaty rights. His first Plowshares act was done on Memorial Day 1985 to commemorate the civilians worldwide who have been sacrificed to war—and to resist any future civilian war deaths. His second one was done on Earth Day 1996 to underscore the intersectional reasons of opposing the true costs of militarism. He averages approximately 300 students each year, teaching classes such as: Nonviolence in History & Campaign Design, Ecology of War & Peace, Consensus Building, Participating in Democracy, Conflict Resolution Psychology, and Peace Studies.

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Even before the first blossoms appear, sap is already rising. The 12th-century mystic Hildegard of Bingen called this life-force viriditas — the greening vitality that flows through all creation. In Unitarian Universalism, we affirm that we are part of an interdependent web of existence, sustained by that same sacred energy.

As March begins, this service invites us to reconnect with the sources of courage, compassion, and creativity within us. How do we tend our own vitality in weary times? And how might we live in conscious partnership with the life that is already rising — in our community and in the world?

First-Sunday Monthly Potluck after Service!

Listen to the Service Recording