Sermon Archive

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.

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.

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.

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!

Our "We are Stronger Together" Social Justice Focus Speaker Series continues this month with a presentation by Mariah Rocker, the Public Programs and Exhibits Manager at Oregon Black Pioneers (OBP) titled Preserving Oregon’s Black History.

Black History Month 2026 marks a century of celebrating Black history, nationally and locally. Oregon Black Pioneers emphasizes the importance of this work and acknowledges some of the remarkable individuals who have helped to uplift this history over the past hundred years.

Oregon Black Pioneers is Oregon’s only historical society dedicated to preserving and presenting the experiences of African Americans statewide. For more than 30 years, they have illuminated the seldom-told stories of people of African descent in Oregon through engaging exhibits, public programs, publications, and historical research. This service will include a Special Collection to benefit Oregon Black Pioneers.

Mariah Rocker is the Public Programs and Exhibits Manager at Oregon Black Pioneers. With a bachelor's in Public Relations and a bachelor's in Sociology, Mariah’s passion for uncovering and sharing the stories of marginalized communities is evident in both her professional and personal pursuits. In her free time, Mariah channels the strength and resilience of historical icons by dressing up as them, and also enjoys crafting handmade miniatures.

Special Collection: Oregon Black Pioneers

This week we will write love letters -- to those who nourish us, to our childhood selves, the difficult people in our lives, Mother Nature, who we are becoming -- collaborative letters as well as individual ones. Bring your whole selves and a sense of creativity.

For those attending in person, we'll have materials available. For those online, please gather paper and a writing instrument.

Alana will draw on life as a farmer living in close relationship with land, their study of somatics and the body, plus their ongoing inquiry into how humans and society function in this service.

They will support us to navigate the complicated and interlocking challenges that come from society’s disconnection from the earth, our bodies and each other.

Alana believes it's not about “fixing” or trying harder but instead about building our quality of presence and our ability to work with grief and anger while also cultivating what nourishes us. 

We'll explore the function of the so-called “negative” emotions and how to build lives of balance and meaning without bypassing our pain.

Rev. Leslie Becknell Marx has invited Alana Kenagy to bring their perspective to Wy’east because Leslie’s mind is always expanded when talking to this jack-of-all trades, community organizer, artist/writer, and holistic life education enthusiast.

Fascism demands loyalty to power; our UU values call us to loyalty to love. This service reflects on Timothy Snyder’s warning against tyranny and blind allegiance and explores how UU faith invites us to place our loyalty in compassion, justice, and the inherent worthiness of every person. We ask: what does it mean to choose love for the whole interdependent web of existence when fear tells us to choose sides?

First-Sunday Monthly Potluck after Service!

Rahab's Sisters' Development Director, Beth Madsen Bradford, will join Wy'east UU to talk about radical hospitality, community building, and the healing power of connection.

Rahab's Sisters is a low-barrier day shelter and service hub welcoming women, trans, and nonbinary folks near 82nd Avenue in the Montavilla neighborhood. Beth Madsen Bradford is the Development Director at Rahab's Sisters. She has worked in the nonprofit sector for more than a decade, specializing in organizations dedicated to collaboration, community, and empowerment.

Special Collection: Rose Haven