Upcoming Worship Services
All of our services are Multi-Platform and you have the option of attending either In-Person or on Zoom.
In person we meet for worship at the Community for Positive Aging, 1820 NE 40th Ave., Portland, OR.
Every worship service is streamed online on Zoom.
Click here to join our service on Zoom
Meeting ID: 275 194 110
Phone In: (669) 900-6833
Wy’east UU is a shared ministry. Our quarter-time minister, Rev. Leslie Becknell Marx, leads one service most months and also often contributes elements to one other service each month. Our lay-leadership collaborates to bring a variety of guest ministers, other speakers and special programs on the remaining Sundays. These include regular appearances by Guest Minister Rev. Stephani Skalak with her focus on Personal Spiritual Practice, as well as a series of speakers and special collections related to our Social Justice focus for the year “We are Stronger Together.”
In months when there are 5 Sundays, which happens 4 or 5 times each year, we will typically gather for a service project rather than a worship service.
"I am a UU Mystic” Jessica York, Director of Congregational Life at the UUA
Unitarian Universalists draw wisdom and guidance from various sources. UU mystics often draw upon direct experience of transcendence and personal connections to the Divine. Jessica York, Director of Congregational Life at the UUA, shares why she claims mysticism as a faith path. This service is part of the 2025-26 UUA Sermon Series and was recorded earlier this fall.
Jessica York is the Director of Congregational Life at the Unitarian Universalist Association. Previously she was the Co-Director of Ministries and Faith Development. During her fifteen plus years as a religious educator she has served on the Liberal Religious Educators Association’s Integrity Team, the MidSouth District’s RE Committee, and the MidSouth District Board, and as an advisor for the Birmingham Alliance of Gay, Straight, Bisexual, Questioning and Transgender Youth. She is the author of the Tapestry of Faith programs Signs of Our Faith and Virtue Ethics, and she is co-author of Bridging: A Handbook for Congregations, Creating Home, and Sharing the Journey: Small Group Ministry with Youth. She currently lives in her native Birmingham, Alabama.
First-Sunday Monthly Potluck after Service!
"Bring Out Your Bread!” A Spiritual Practice Service, Guest Minister Rev. Stephani Skalak
This is our monthly spiritual practice service with Guest Minister Rev. Stephani Skalak.
The word companion literally means “one with whom you break bread.” In November, Unitarian Universalists all over the country celebrate a “Festival of Bread” or “Bread Communion.” In doing so, they acknowledge the challah of Jewish Shabbat, the wafers of Christian Eucharist, as well as the importance of breaking bread in cultures all over the world. Humans break bread in order to offer hospitality to visitors, to offer solidarity to fellow laborers, to offer gratitude for the harvest and generosity toward neighbors, and, yes, sometimes as a sacrament. This week, we will break bread together thanks to the work of volunteer bakers from our community (let Linda M. know if you would like to be one of our baking benefactors with an email to worship@wyeastuu.org)!
"Playful Resistance: Trusting Love at the Center” Rev. Leslie Becknell Marx
In a world that urges us to tighten, defend, and despair, we Unitarian Universalists affirm that Love is at the center. Choosing love over fear is a radical act. Play can be protest. Joy can be defiance. Trust can be revolutionary. Together we’ll explore how putting love at the center calls us to embody freedom through laughter, creativity, and connection. This service lifts up play as a spiritual practice that keeps our movements for justice alive, human, and whole.
"The Medicine of Grief and Gratitude” Alyssa Rose Ackerman, a Grief Tender & Death Doula
We were never meant to carry sorrow alone. Grief and gratitude are not opposites—they are companions on the path of love. When we gather to honor what has been lost, we also remember what still connects us: our shared humanity, our breath, our belonging to the living Earth.
In this service, Grief Tender and Death Doula Alyssa Rose Ackerman invites us into an ancient remembering—that grief, when held in community, becomes medicine. Together we will explore how welcoming both sorrow and gratitude can restore intimacy with ourselves, with one another, and with life itself. For it is only by honoring what we have lost that we discover what cannot be taken from us.
Meet Alyssa Rose Ackerman (she/her)
Alyssa Rose walks with those navigating life’s most profound transitions. As a Grief Tender and Death Doula in Portland, Oregon, she bridges ancient ritual practices with modern somatic therapies to create sacred spaces for those facing loss, death, and deep change.
Drawing from her work with hundreds of families and communities, Alyssa’s approach to grief care honors the somatic, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of the grieving process. She is devoted to restoring a grief-literate culture—one resilient and compassionate enough to hold us through life’s challenges and uncertainties.
Through her work, Alyssa reminds us that grief is not a problem to solve, but a practice of love—and that in community, what breaks us open can also connect us more deeply to life.
5th-Sunday Day of Service!
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.
The project for this day is still TBD. Please return for updated information.
5th Sunday Day of Service, 10:30 AM - 12:00 Noon
There will be NO regular service (either in-person or online) this Sunday.