UUMKE Sunday Service Podcast

As our lives, country, and world continue to go through unparalleled uncertainty, it is not heard to conclude we are all dealing with many levels of trauma, not to mention how our personal and communal lives are impacted by many forms of distress that never seem to end. Many of us, sadly, may be living in a state of “hypervigilance”. As our spiritual practice for the month of Marh here at First Unitarian Society of Milwaukee is paying attention, how has your Unitarian Universalist faith helped you to create ease and religious, spiritual sustainability in these difficult times? So, together, on Sunday March 22, 2026, let’s lean into these uncertain times building upon what is possible through even more practices of faithfully Paying Attention.

As complicated as Easter can be, it tells a story of transformation—many stories of transformation if you’re paying attention. In Unitarian Universalism’s understanding of faith and transformation, you get to choose who you are and claim the stories that make you. Join us for this celebratory multigenerational service where we stand together in the place of what was and claim new life, calling each other by our chosen names.

2026-05-03 ● The Rev. Jennifer Nordstrom ● Curioser and Curioser by First Unitarian Society of Milwaukee

Change is the only constant, as the parable goes. If change is inevitable, it is our faithful work to shape it for good. How do we use what we know to ride the waves of what we don’t? How can we balance our work for justice with our spiritual capacity to face uncertainty? Join us for this Octavia Butler-inspired service on embracing possibilities to shape change for good.

Change is the only constant, as the parable goes. If change is inevitable, it is our faithful work to shape it for good. How do we use what we know to ride the waves of what we don’t? How can we balance our work for justice with our spiritual capacity to face uncertainty? Join us for this Octavia Butler-inspired service on embracing possibilities to shape change for good.

The seeds we plant today become the trees of tomorrow. In our time on this earth together, we are creating the earth our grandchildren will play on. If it could talk to you today, what would the year 2050 tell you about how we survived, how we even thrived, on the journey from now till then? Join us for this Earth Day service where we celebrate the joy of the earth and dream of the seeds we will plant to nourish our children’s children.

Buddhist principles teach us to be here now, present to all that is without judgement or attachment. In this intense and full world, how can we be present to what is without spinning in circles? Join us for this worship service where we explore slowing down by paying attention to the beauty in front of us, directing our attention to where we want to spend our energy.

What was your journey into Unitarian Universalism? Was it a smooth journey? For example, some of the members of this church have been life-long Unitarian Universalists (UU) and have not had to endure leaving some other faith traditions that might have been difficult, even traumatic. Yet others have been UU for many years now and have navigated transitions from other faith communities into this one. It is also true that some made their way into this faith tradition and into First Unitarian Society of Milwaukee with little or no formal religious experience. For some of us, transitioning and considering becoming a UU has been difficult, even traumatic

As finite creatures, we cannot hold everything. While we believe in the ultimate transformation and liberation of all people, we cannot pay attention to every single thing all at once. When the pressures of the world feel infinite, we can surrender to the truth of our finitude, take responsibility for our corner of the earth, and let the infinite hold the rest. Join us for this worship service where we commit ourselves to the finite, and let the infinite hold the rest.

Buddhist principles teach us to be here now, present to all that is without judgement or attachment. In this intense and full world, how can we be present to what is without spinning in circles? Join us for this worship service where we explore slowing down by paying attention to the beauty in front of us, directing our attention to where we want to spend our energy.

Creating authentic connections with people means being present to them AND ourselves at the same time. We have to be able to look inward and notice what is going on in our hearts at the same time we are showing up and witnessing the human being in front of us, which is a lot of attention! Join us for this worship service where we explore how to build authentic community by paying attention to self and other.

Resilience is a funny thing in some situations. It does not come out of a bag you can dip into when needed, it is an ongoing practice, a toolbox of sorts. We cannot use all of the same approaches to life’s challenges over and over. Using the same approaches over and over, may lose their effectiveness over time. What practices do you engage in to restore balance in life, resilience, especially when life gives you more lemons that seem possible to bear? How might we explore the power of ancestral wisdom, art, beauty and rest to create even more forms of resilience for the lives we are leading?

When people say, “you’re so resilient,” it means you’ve been going through it. We figure out how to survive hard times, whether we are ready or not. The key to making it through, is to keep going. Join us for this encouraging service where we celebrate our adaptability, name survival tools, and cheer one another on to get to the other side.

In community, we create a shared story which shapes us and the future like magic. Our connection to our people draws us out of ourselves and builds individual and collective resilience. The diversity of our stories and understandings strengthens us and gives us power. Join us for this Pledge Drive Kick Off service where we explore the power of mutual aid to build our communal and collective resilience.

Being steadfast in one’s moral and spiritual convictions despite overwhelming outside pressures to do otherwise is one of the hallmarks of a faithful life, including for Unitarian Universalists. How do the learnings of our spiritual ancestors help inform our own resilience and commitment to Love in these troubling times?

Unitarian Universalism carries deep roots of resistance, grounded in the centering of our values. Our faith ancestors claimed their power by questioning, reasoning, and choosing how to shape a world that bends toward love and justice. Today, as we confront rising authoritarianism, we ask: What messages and movements from our UU past will inspire and guide our resistance now?

In an electrical system, the resistor puts the resistance where it needs to be—most systems would explode if the resistance was in the wrong place. As we practice resistance in community, learning rules and roles and values alignment, let’s make sure we put our resistance in the right place. Join us for this Dr. King Sunday worship service where we honor our resistance ancestors and explore our own community’s recipes for resistance.

In any practice, there is a sweet spot, a balance of strength and release. In practices of resistance, we must discern between resistance and surrender. How do which to choose? What can we change, and what must we try to change even if we fail? When is it time to let go? Join us for this worship service where we explore the discernment dance between resistance and surrender.

We know the power of ritual helps us mark time, honor the past, and step with intention into the future. Together, let us boldly embrace our next adventure. Join us as we release what has been and welcome the new year with joy and purpose. This Sunday, our children and youth will be with us in the sanctuary, sharing in the celebration!

In difficult times, it can help to find hope in what is real and available. In the middle of the darkest night of the year, we can hope to see the moon. In the cold and quiet months, we can hope to plant the seeds of a new life that will bloom in warmer times. Darkness also has a generative beauty. Join us for this worship service where we explore finding real hope here and now, no matter how hard the moment may be.

While we can look at circumstances and make our best guess about outcomes, we never truly know what will happen. This means we always have the opportunity to choose hope over fear. Join us for this service that explores the power we have to affect our own lives and our community with the power of choosing hope.

As we turn toward our complicated national holiday of gratitude, how can we courageously hold the hard truths with an open heart? Let us explore how to be genuinely grateful together, anchoring our hearts in what is authentic as we appreciate life’s blessings.

Some of us are born into a practice of sharing gratitude that can at time feel performative.  Of course, we should show gratitude when shown grace and or generosity, but what happens when life is filled with insurmountable struggle, pain and grief? Is showing/giving gratitude ever a privilege?

What if weeping not only endures for the night, but also stays through the joy of the morning? It can be hard to nurture gratitude in the midst of a season of grief. And yet, authentic gratitude is large enough to hold grief at the same time. Our hearts are big enough to hold the largeness of love and the sorrow of loss. Join us for this service that explores a real spiritual practice of gratitude that does not bypass the losses, but finds a road to a cup large enough to hold all of it. New Member Ceremony.

At GA 2025, our delegates chose Abolition, Transformation, and Faith Formation as our denomination-wide study-action issue. In order to begin thinking about prison abolition, we need to be able to imagine the world in which it is possible. What needs to change in order to get everyone truly free? It starts with theology, believe it or not.

As we approach All Souls Day and Halloween, when the veil between the living and the dead becomes thin, and our part of the world turns toward greater darkness and rest, we gather in our spiritual community to honor our beloved dead. We bring ourselves into compassionate relationship with one another, with the grieving, and with those we have lost in this annual service of remembrance. Join us for this multigenerational ritual service where we honor our beloved dead, those we have lost in the congregation, and those you have lost this year.

When we have compassion for one another, we are moved to act for each other’s well-being. In real relationships across difference, we come to care about the suffering of others, which moves us to act to change it. Join us for this worship service where we explore the power of empathy to till the ground for the seeds of change.

Cultivating Compassion, especially during the times we find ourselves in, can be difficult for ourselves in some of our long-treasured relationships, not to mention those who are learning into fascist tendencies today. As we honor Indigenous Peoples Day 2025, how might we uplift some of our First Nations Communities here in Wisconsin and beyond, who continue show deep compassion towards others in light of this country’s history with and among the many First Nations Communities that still live, and thrive among and around us?

Cultivating compassion in a society wrestling with fascism is tough. And yet, compassion is the doorway to understanding our entanglement with one another. Our separation is just a fear-based illusion. Empathy returns us to the truth of our interdependence and mutuality, making it a threat to authoritarians who would prefer us to remain divided and disempowered. Join us for this service where we explore how cultivating real compassion (with power analysis and boundaries) can empower us to overcome narratives of hate and division.

It takes courage to unlock the heart, to be our authentic selves with one another to truly know and be known. This is what is required to build belonging, though. We must be free to be ourselves and be willing to be open to others’ true selves. James Crews, a poet of connection and compassion, will join us for this worship service where we build belonging through authenticity and presence.

Being a Unitarian Universalist for 25 years and now ordained as a Unitarian Universalist Minister for the last 16, working to understand and nurture a sense of belonging for myself and others, no matter where I go, is an ongoing practice. My hope is to share a little bit of my journey that has brought me to this city and historic church through the song and lyrics of Gregory Porter’s “Take Me to the Alley.” Will you join us?

In Unitarian Universalism, what does it mean to belong to something larger than ourselves, larger even than any individual community? In this service, we will explore belonging to each other, to the water, the woods, the moment, to time itself. Remember to bring water from home or another place that matters to you, as we pour our individual waters together in a water ceremony of belonging in community

Belonging is hard to find in our divided, individualist, post-industrial society. But what if we don’t need to find belonging, but rather need to build it, together? As the oppressive forces try to erase identities, it is counter-cultural to intentionally build belonging with and for one another. In church, we create belonging through radical welcome, showing up for one another, authentic connection, and shared experience. Join us for this worship service where we explore how building belonging fits in the ecosystem of resistance.

Writer John Jay once wrote “A true home requires belonging – both people to belong with and a place to belong to.” In our fractured, divisive world, with its oppressive systems embedding various traumas in all of us, how do we come home to ourselves in order to create home for each other? Let us look to the healers among us – and to our own UU faith – for practices to help us come home to who we need to be.

While positivity and kindness are foundational expressions of our shared faith and humanity, they can also serve as tools that mask inequity, reinforce unjust power dynamics, and delay transformative action. Pardeep Singh Kaleka will share his journey as a first-generation immigrant in America and how his path of healing from hate compelled him to move beyond surface-level conversations around kindness, compassion, and optimism. This service will invite reflection on what it means to pursue justice with empathy and why authentic healing demands both courageous truth-telling and sustained action.

With so much going on, from autocracy to the climate, an individual might be forgiven for losing faith in the value of taking action. What can one person do in the face of overwhelm? Fortunately, we have a say in how these times change us and our communities.

Too often lately many of us find ourselves feeling homeless in a nation and world we hardly recognize, groping for a way forward in the midst of unprecedented events. We want a map that shows us the road to get back ‘home’ to a place that feels, if not safe, at least familiar. In her book, The Journey Is Home, theologian and educator Nelle Morton wrote that “There is no road ahead. We make the road as we go.” In this service we’ll ask if current events really are unprecedented and explore the massive leap of faith required to set off on a journey knowing only that we must build the road as we walk it. We’ll look for wisdom from many sources: Wendell Berry, Rainer Maria Rilke, Aurora Levins Morales, and more. And we’ll explore some ideas about how to prepare for the uncertain journey ahead.

In a world that constantly feels overwhelming, how can we create change in the small interactions and moments of our lives? And how can those small changes be part of our larger vision for a transformed world?

Saying “bless you!” after a sneeze began as a protection ward against evil spirits. How can blessing protect us today? In these trying times of grief and struggle, counting our blessings, turning our attention to gratitude can protect us against the evil spirits of cynicism, nihilism, and despair. Practicing blessing, both through expressing gratitude for the beauty in our lives, and through choosing to bless the world, can fuel us with resilience for the resistance.

2025-07-20 ● The Rev. Kelly Asprooth Jackson ● A Battle of Imagination by First Unitarian Society of Milwaukee

Black futurist and leader adrienne maree brown says we are in a battle of imagination. What does she mean and how do we fight this good fight? Join us to explore future possibilities and avenues for resistance and hope.

We are a nation divided by fear. Some say it is an existential fear of those who have a fundamentally different understanding of truth and reality. Others say it is a manufactured fear, generated by those seeking power playing on the unconscious prejudices of a distracted people. We will explore the various relationships that exist for us in the personal, social, and political dimensions. We’ll take a look at where our current divisions may have originated. We’ll wrap it all up with a reflection on how UU values can become a source for resolving our differences and bringing our nation back to its highest aspirations.

Realizing that holiness/wholeness is not tied to a specific place or person or belief is profoundly liberating. Recognizing that wholeness isn’t something bestowed on us, but is, instead, something we create brings tremendous freedom. In these troubled times, how will we use that freedom?

Our liberation is interconnected. If I am not free, then you are not free, if we truly walk in solidarity. America will only become the “land of the free and home of the brave” when we are all liberated.

LGBTQ+ communities have a lot to teach people about being free. It takes courage and strength to live authentically in a world that does not want you to do so. It also offers a vision of liberation for everyone, and a living challenge to authoritarianism. Join us in this Pride Celebration service where we explore the liberation of authenticity and the power of diversity.

Please join us for Rev. Dena’s last worship service before her retirement when we’ll celebrate the Unitarian Universalist Flower Ceremony, engage in a retirement ritual of blessing and release, and enjoy so much music to honor this transition in the life of our community! Remember to bring a flower from home, your neighbor’s garden, or a weed along the road to add to our community bouquets (we’ll have extra flowers available). We’re invited to take home a different flower to symbolize the freedom of receiving the beauty of love’s abundance.

Kids often have big imaginations, and their games may reflect ways of being and doing that “don’t make sense” to adults who have adopted the practices of society. But sometimes our practices are harmful and destructive. As we face a flood of challenges in our nation, how might we use the practice of imagination to find a better way forward?

Imagination can connect us across generations, building bridges from child to elder, and between the known and the unknown. Imaginative play erodes generational boundaries by giving us shared access to a world we create together. Join us for this Mother’s Day and Child Dedication service where we explore how imagination helps us nurture each other’s dreams, build real connections, and create new possibilities of hope and love.

How are you feeding your imagination? Active play opens the imagination which then helps us envision possibilities. Most things don’t seem possible until we imagine them. Join us this Sunday when we explore the practice of imagination and welcome our new church members.

Accompaniment is the radical act of being with someone even when it is hard and you don’t know how things will turn out. With the increase in fascism across our country, our society often tells us to isolate, take care of our own first, and fear the other. However, our faith calls us to hold love at the center, to recognize everyone as family even if we’ve never met, and to support and follow the lead of those most impacted by systems of oppression. Join us to learn of the ways UUs are accompanying trans and gender expansive individuals joyfully and faithfully even in times like these.