Sunday Morning Services at 10 AM

Summer Lay Led Services

June 20:  Jo Anne Preston, “Global Unitarianism”

The UUA estimates that around 130,000 Unitarians live outside of North America.  As we have learned this past year, the majority of them live in Transylvania.  But one can also find Unitarianism flourishing in such far-flung places as the Philippines, India, South Africa, Hong Kong, Brazil, Uganda, and Kenya.  How and why have our beliefs resonated with so many other and vastly different cultures?  This exploration of Unitarianism in other countries will come to some surprising conclusions, which will help us understand the power of our faith in a world of globalizing religion.

June 27:  Patricia Hawkins, “Friends Meeting at First Parish UU”

A birth-right Quaker finding a new home in Unitarian Universalism, Patricia Hawkins will lead a Friends Meeting service for First Parish.

July 4:  Betty-Jeanne Rueters-Ward, “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood”

Many of us are familiar children’s television host Fred Rogers ("Mister Rogers' Neighborhood") - but not all are aware that he was ordained clergy, called by his denomination to bring love, compassion, and family ministry to the airwaves.  Join us to learn more about, and celebrate, his community ministry.

July 11:  John Burt, “Beauty and Evil:  Listening to the Book of Job”

People often turn to the Book of Job to make sense of the sufferings of innocent people, but the book does not attempt to justify what happened to Job.  When God speaks for himself, he doesn’t defend his conduct, but instead offers a hymn to the turbulent vitality of nature, a blast of stormy poetry unlike anything else in the Bible.  The idea may be not that God or nature is just, but that even with all its terrors this world is still a tremendous and mysterious gift.

Music for the service will be liturgical music and folk songs from the Republic of Georgia, performed by Iveria, an a capella ensemble based in Arlington and well known to First Parish.

July 18:  Anne Goodwin, “Singing with Spirit:  A Folk Music Worship Service”

Let’s sing together!  Anne and friends will share some favorite songs from contemporary and traditional folk genres that strike a spiritual “chord.”  Lyric sheets will be provided.

July 25:  Eric Segal, “Reconciliation and Rwanda”

Rwanda is one of too many places where people have committed crimes so awful that they are almost impossible to understand, much less forgive.  And yet real reconciliation has occurred.  Can that remarkable experience teach us about forgiving the transgressions in our own lives?  (Eric will have recently returned from Rwanda.)

August 1:  Ginny LaCrow and Annette Sawyer, “Stumbling Toward Spirituality”

Annette and Ginny will each tell their personal journey of stumbling toward spirituality, highlighting the key epiphanies (or lack thereof!) they have experienced along the way.  Members of the congregation will also be invited to share a significant epiphany they have experienced.  Humor, music, and drumming will be added to the mix to encourage everyone’s participation.

August 8:  Anna Watson, “Redefining Radical Activism from the Driver’s Seat of My Minivan”

We all know that minivans are tangible evidence of evil.  So, obviously, minivan-driving, white, middle-class women who move to the suburbs to start families leave behind their dreams of changing the world and knuckle under to the status quo.  Right?

August 15:  Ken Seitz and Dorothy May, “Our History in Hymns”

Many of our hymns came out of particular moments in history when someone had something to say — or, more precisely, sing.  This service will be devoted to singing hymns, many of them familiar favorites, that capture something important about our Unitarian Universalist heritage and together tell a story about where we have been and where we are now.  If you’re curious about our musical and theological history, or just like to sing, please join us.

August 22:  Tom Hogan with the Meditation Group,
“The Meditation Path: Gateway to Self-Knowing and Transformation”

A sustained meditation practice leads to greater self-knowing, discovery of where one is suffering, and incremental transformation as that suffering is abandoned.  In our service, we will explore this process through readings, hymns, guided meditation, and testimony from experienced meditators.  We are fortunate also to have our own woodwind quintet providing music that enhances the meditative experience.

August 29:  Linda Malik with the Compassionate Communication Group,
“Don’t Be Nice, Be Vulnerable:  Communication that Connects”

Have you ever been afraid to state your needs?  Why do you think that is?  What would your world look like if you were able to honor your own needs as well as those of others?

September 5:  John Hodges and Dick King, “Spiritual Evolution”

In Spiritual Evolution:  A Scientific Defense of Faith, George Vaillant, a doctor, proposes that spirituality’s physical foundation is positive emotions centered in our brains’ limbic systems, which we share with other mammals, as well as the neocortex, a structure unique to us.  Do faith, love, hope, joy, forgiveness, compassion, awe, and mystical illumination add up to spirituality?  Have our brains evolved as these qualities are preferentially selected to survive and intensify over generations?  Can we observe an increase in these emotions through our lives, blossoming as our brains fully mature?

Some general notes

Our children's religious education program happens simultaneously with our Sunday services. On most Sundays, children spend the first portion of the service in the sanctuary with their families and leave for the children's program after the intergenerational sharing time. Some Sunday services are created as intergenerational and children remain with us for the entire service.  Childcare is available on Sunday mornings for children younger than the 4-year olds in our pre-kindergarten class. Often babies are kept in the service with their parents. The service is broadcast in an adjacent room if more freedom of movement is needed to keep a baby content.

Our services vary in format but there are elements found in most services. Here is a description of these typical elements, written in January 2006 by Rev. Carlton Elliott Smith, then our Assistant Minister.

The Prelude: The first notes of the music we hear in the prelude are our cues to turn our hearts toward the service.  Quiet talking ends as we settle into our seats and give our attention to what is being played and/or sung to nurture our souls.

Ringing the Bell:  In the sanctuary is the historic bell from the steeple of our fourth meetinghouse, which burned to the ground in March 1975, as the church was preparing for our nation’s bicentennial.  Though the bell cracked when it fell and could not be rehung, we ring it inside the church each week as a way to honor our connection to who went before us and to create an atmosphere of reverence.

Lighting the Chalice: The flaming chalice is the symbol of our Unitarian Universalist tradition.  Originally the symbol of the Unitarian Service Committee during the World War II, it was adopted by the Unitarian Universalist Association in 1961, at the time of the merger of the Universalist Church in America and the American Unitarian Association.  As in other traditions, fire symbolizes the warmth, fragility, beauty and power of our lives as individuals and as a community.

Intergenerational Sharing: We value the young people who are part of our congregation, and the opportunity for them to be in worship with us.  Most weeks, we take time at the beginning of the service to engage with them in a story, song or other activity relevant to the theme of the service.  At the end the intergenerational sharing, we sing the round “Go Now in Peace,” as they leave for their age specific Sunday School programs for grades K-6.

Sharing of Celebrations and Concerns: As the young people leave for their programs, teens and adults who remain have the opportunity to light candles regarding persons or things that are important to them.  These “candles of celebration and concern” as we call them represent a wide array of matters, from remembering a deceased loved one to announcing an engagement to showing solidarity with people in other countries.  Whatever the content, the intention is to allow time for members and friends to share what’s on their hearts with others in this beloved community.

The Collection: First Parish is sustained primarily through the generous annual pledges of its members and friends.  If First Parish is your spiritual home and you have not yet pledged, please contact Michael Edge at the church office (781-648-3799 Ext. 11) for information and assistance.  If you are contributing toward your pledge in the offering, please indicate that on your check, payable to First Parish Church of Arlington.

The Benediction: Is the closing words of our service were written by our Senior Minister, Rev. Dr. Barbara Whittaker-Johns, and are a simple prayer/meditation:  “May faith in the Spirit of Life, hope for the community of Earth, and love of the sacred in one another be ours now, and in all the days to come.” We join hands as a way of offering our warmth to one another, and reminding us of our first Unitarian Universalist principle, in which we affirm and promote the “inherent worth and dignity of every person” – including ourselves.

The Postlude: We return to our seats at the end of the service to give ourselves the gift of wonderful music once more as we make our transition from the worship hour back into “ordinary time.” The postlude is an excellent opportunity to quietly reflect on the blessings of being in this place at this time.

Friendship/Coffee Hour: As important as anything that happens in the Sunday Service is the opportunity to make new friends and connect with older ones, all of which builds the bonds of our community.  This mostly happens in the Vestry, which is what we call the “Community Room” to the rear of the Sanctuary.  Originally, a vestry was where clergy would put on their robes or vestments.  Today, it is a “room used for church meetings and classes” (Webster).

Flowers
If you would like to give flowers for any Sunday next year (September-June), it's not too early to contact your "Church Flower Lady," Marilyn Jackson via email to flowers@firstparish.info . 

A Sample Order of Service

Summaries of Previous Services:
2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008

630 Massachusetts Avenue, Arlington, MA 02476 | 781-648-3799 | Contact Us