Sermon Archive

Can we combine a fierce pursuit of justice with humility, kindness, and a conviction that "the moral arc of the universe does indeed bend toward justice”?

Originally from Louisville, KY.  David has degrees from Yale University Divinity School (M.Div.) and the Graduate Theological Union (Th.D).  Pastoral ministry including First Baptist Church of Los Angeles and First Baptist Church of Portland.  He’s had teaching positions at Central Baptist Seminary (Kansas City); Fuller Seminary; San Francisco Theological Seminary, Southern California; and Palmer Theological Seminary.  David was also a guest professor in Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Russia.  He’s had 40 years of bilingual ministry.  He had been an Organizer for CLUE (Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice), Los Angeles.  Currently, David is a member of the Faith/Labor Committee, and Portland Jobs with Justice.

There will also be a Special Collections this Sunday benefiting "PDX NAACP"

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Each church year there are 4 months that have a 5th 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.

Join us on October 30th for our Inaugural 5th Sunday Day of Service. Wy'east Members Diane Ingle and Larry Burt have partnered with SOLV to do a neighborhood cleanup in the Hollywood Neighborhood. Our goals are to help make the area a safer, cleaner, more pleasant area to visit and to help build community spirit among our members. Volunteers will pick up litter in the Hollywood neighborhood business area within a four block radius surrounding our meeting placeThis is a private event for Wy'east Unitarian Universalist Church Congregation in lieu of the regular Sunday October 30th Service. 

The details: 

• We will meet in the parking lot at the back of the Center for Positive Aging at 10:30am (masks encouraged) and finish at 12:00. RAIN or SHINE!
• SOLV will provide trash bags, trash pickers, disposable gloves, and high-visibility vests.
• Volunteers should wear clothing appropriate for the weather including closed-toe shoes and long pants; also bring a filled reusable water bottle, and an umbrella if it looks like rain. A small backpack is also suggested to carry any extra clothing and the water bottle.
• Parking and transit are available the same as for our regular Sunday morning church service.
• Bathrooms are available at the Hollywood Library and at various businesses in the area.
• All participants must sign a SOLV waiver to participate - Click Here to Sign the Waiver. Paper forms will also be available at the meeting site. You don't have to sign up ahead of time. You can just show up!

Children are Welcome!:

• Childcare will be provided at the Center for Positive Aging
• This is an all-ages event. Children under the age of 13 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.

If you have further questions, contact Diane Ingle at 503-936-6947 or Larry Burt at 503-329-6397

There will be NO Virtual Service nor Multi-Platform Sunday at 10:30.

In December 2020, the Portland City Council convened an independent Charter Commission to review and recommend amendments to the City of Portland Charter (City's Constitution). After a year and a half of research and public listening sessions, on June 14, 2022, the Charter Commission resoundingly approved a proposal significantly changing Portland’s form of government and method of electing representatives. On the November 2022 ballot, voters in the City of Portland will get to decide whether or not to pass this amendment. As part of our Social Justice Speaker Series on the Health of Our Democracy, Dr. Melanie Billings-Yun will share with us some of her insights and experience in working on this project.

Dr. Melanie Billings-Yun (PhD, Harvard) is past co-chair of the Portland Charter Review Commission. Professionally, she is an international negotiation consultant and professor, having taught for 16 years at Portland State University, as well as at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Georgetown University, and colleges overseas. The author of Beyond Dealmaking: Five Steps to Negotiating Profitable Relationships, Melanie has worked throughout Asia, North America, Europe and the Middle East, to help organizations and individuals resolve disputes and build more cooperative relations. For her work in bridging cultural differences, she was awarded the 2020 Simon Benson Alumni Achievement Award.

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Each week we practice love by reading our covenant together which begins with the line, "We covenant with each other as a community of Love." This Sunday, Wise Heart Pdx founder, LaShelle Lowe-Charde' invites us to explore "Love AS a practice."

LaShelle Lowe-Charde' found Wise Heart with a mission to help make a shift in consciousness about how we relate to life. She dreams of a world in which we value and thrust the quality of connection with ourselves and others as the primary way to build and maintain a thriving life for all. Learn more about her and Wise Heart at www.wiseheartpdx.org.

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Wy'east worship services and many public gatherings open with a statement acknowledging the ancestral and territorial lands of first peoples. In this lay-led service falling the day before Indigenous People's Day, we will explore the practice of land acknowledgment through the lens of personal experience and inquiry about how we move this practice from statement to action.

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The mainstreaming of psychedelic medicines, from psilocybin to MDMA to ketamine, holds promise for treating mental health conditions, easing end-of-life anxiety, and augmenting personal growth and exploration. What does this conversation offer to communities and people of faith, even those with no plans to personally try these medicines? What does this modern research and ancient wisdom tell us about consciousness, mystery, spiritual practice, and right relationship? 

Rev. Miranda Kepler (née Mickiewicz) is a UU minister and a Zen Buddhist student based in rural northwestern Oregon. She currently works offering organizational support to a Native American drug and alcohol recovery center. Mira’s training includes many years of teaching and leadership at outdoor schools and camps, a Master’s of Divinity from Starr King School for the Ministry, and a residency as a hospital chaplain. She is passionate about rites of passage, trauma healing, birth and death work, and tending land and family.

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Understanding the political orders we have been through, and are now in, are crucial to getting a perspective on the future of American Democracy. The City of Portland has changed a great deal through the evolving national political order. From the New Deal and Neoliberalism, to the Presidential policies of Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, Obama, and Trump, we will explore those changes with a particular focus on homelessness.

Lenny Dee is a long time Portland activist. He was instrumental in developing and passing the Portland Clean Energy Initiative. In addition, Lenny led the first campaign against Urban Renewal in Portland, played a key role in building a region-wide coalition that positively impacted regional development, and published a journal that won one hundred awards from the National Society of Professional Journalists.

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As civic life in America grows more and more polarized, many of us struggle with how to bridge the gaps in our communities and sometimes even our own families. How can we "call in" those we disagree with, rather than merely calling them out? 

Stephani Skalak is a Master of Divinity student at Meadville Lombard who is currently an Intern Minister at UUC Willamette Falls in Oregon City. In her career to date she has been an educator, an artist, and an activist. She has more than fifteen years of experience teaching media literacy and video production to youth and adults alike, encouraging them to use their voices for change. Earlier in her career, she worked for the Peace Corps both as HQ staff and as a volunteer in West Africa. Her undergraduate degree is in International Relations from The American University in Washington, DC. Stephani has experience in small group ministry within the UU tradition and has had a life-long love of learning other cultures. She lives in Portland, with her love, Mark, and their two teenage children, Kai and Seneca. 

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The second Sunday in September is the traditional date for our annual Water Communion and Ingathering, and marks the beginning of our "church year." Join us joyfully in person or virtually on Zoom and bring with you a small amount of water that represents water that was important to you this summer: water from somewhere you traveled or from your own backyard. Come, let us gather together and refresh our shared commitment to our beloved community. Service led by Wy’east member Linda Macpherson.

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This Labor Day, we'll hear from two participants in our local labor movement: Becca Ryan Roberts, crisis line worker and union leader at Lines for Life, and Hannah Sloane-Barton, long-time union activist and organizer with AFSCME. They'll share, through stories and song, about the experiences and values that led them to become union activists and about their recent successful campaign to win union representation at a local crisis nonprofit. 

Normally, the 1st Sunday Service is Multi-platform and the 2nd Sunday Service is Virtual only, but due to the Labor Day holiday, the 1st Sunday (September 4th) and 2nd Sunday (September 11th) are switching formats. 

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