UU Grass Valley On the Go!

Kurt Gray claims, in his book Outraged, that across the socio-political spectrum we share the same moral foundation – an ancient psychological need to protect the vulnerable from harm. It’s just that we have differing perceptions as to who is being harmed! Let’s examine our own moral outrage and surface our compassion at the same time, even as we learn to set fiercely compassionate boundaries to prevent the harm that we perceive.Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Randy McKean, Worship Associate

This Sunday, beginning our month-long invitation to “pay attention,” we celebrate the nature and power of community and the rising, nay surging and converging waves of energy and possibility being generated these days. 

Kristin Neff advocates Fierce Compassion: balancing tender self-kindness (yin) with assertive strength (yang). We’ll draw on Neff’s insights to help us cultivate our resilience for the sake of our personal lives and the sake of the world we seek. Plus, the UUCM choir, under the direction of Ingrid Holman.Rev. Kevin Tarsa, with the UUCM Choir, Marlene Bottenfield, Worship Associate

The whole idea of “resistance” pushes people’s buttons. Sometimes our response comes from a discomfort with or rejection of the idea of resistance, and sometimes the button that’s pushed is a “Hell yes, let’s go!” button. Together, we’ll dive into the complexities of “resistance,” framing resistance not as rebellion for its own sake, but as an expression of faithfulness to our shared values. Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Carol Nimick, Worship Associate

For the past several years Rev. Kevin has invited people to choose a word for the year. Some of us travel with the word all year, engaging it in active conversation with our lives. Others of us forget our word within a few weeks. This year, in the swirl of “resolutions” energy, we’ll be invited to enter the next 12 months with a question for the year, a question that meets your life where it is and asks for an ongoing conversation. Rev. Kevin Tarsa

As our Soul Matters authors write, “Hope doesn’t just whisper ‘It will be different,’ it also shouts, ‘It should be different’ and ‘It can be different.’ . . . In other words, hope doesn’t just promise us that change will come in the future; it also changes who we are in the present.” Come celebrate the possibility of choosing hope, and honor the Holy Impatience and hope in you. Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Cheryl Morris, Worship Associate

Transitioning from the gifts of November’s focus on cultivating gratitude, to December’s theme of choosing hope, we draw on the tradition of Advent (meaning “arrival”), a season of anticipation, reflection, and preparation in various Christian traditions, to check in with our own personal and collective anticipations. What arrivals are you awaiting? 

One year out from the 2024 presidential election, many of us feel the weight and the worry of the unmaking of so much of what evidenced or supported, if often imperfectly, our values in the life of the nation. We like to say and believe that disintegration, though painful, can open up rare space for something powerfully new. Are we there yet? Rev. Kevin Tarsa

Thich Nhat Hanh stated: “To look deeply into the suffering of those who have caused us to suffer is a miraculous gift.” Gift?  Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Gail Johnson Vaughan, Worship Associate

Both empathy and compassion begin as inside jobs, empathy being our feeling of what someone else is feeling, and compassion being the action we take in response to those feelings. This Sunday, we cultivate our self-compassion, powerful medicine for good within and without, and we notice some of what gets in the way. Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Gail Johnson Vaughan, Worship Associate

Many of us were taught to be cautious of strangers. As we go about our day, we usually interact with family, friends and coworkers. These relationships can help us feel cared for and connected. But what if there’s a whole category of people in our lives whose impact is overlooked? What if these interactions hold a key for current times? Rev. Kevin Tarsawith Gail Johnson Vaughan, Worship Associate

Erik Walker Wikstrum writes, “Common wisdom holds that people come to church for a sense of belonging, and that getting involved with a committee or task force is a great way to meet people and feel more connected.” But what if we come for an even deeper reason, he asks: “to have our lives transformed.” What if we understood our participation in the life of this community as a key source of spiritual sustenance, and a source of deep joy? 

Picking up on the themes of the previous Sunday’s service, we ask more deeply why it matters that UUCM is here, why being part of such a community matters now in particular, and what the upward movement of energy, interest, and number of searchers at our doors is asking of us, teaching us, and gifting us. 

It's time to put together all the learning we've done about ourselves and start using it to dig into tough topics. Rev. Kevin took time at a recent service to open the conversation about the conflict in Gaza and our spiritual call to find both clarity and complexity.Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Sophia McKean, Worship Associate

Enneagram Series - Type Nine (9): Our final Enneagram type, the Nine, the Peacemaker, is the part of us that is driven to seek inner and outer peace for ourselves and others. This is also the part of us that embodies the fundamental challenge of all spiritual or inner work – being awake rather than asleep to our true nature. Whew. Sounds exhausting. At least to a Nine. Maybe I’ll sleep just a little bit longer.Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Lindsay Dunckel, Worship Associate

Enneagram Series - Type Five (5): Our year-long look into aspects of our personalities is meant, in part, to strengthen our ability to live the pluralism our tradition claims as important. We begin this month’s pluralism theme with a dive into Fiveness. The head-centered “Investigator” is the part of us that wants to find out why things are the way they are and to understand how the world works – always searching, asking questions, and testing truth for ourselves. Sounds like many a Unitarian Universalist. Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Randy McKean, Worship Associate

Enneagram Series - Type Seven (7): Sometimes the fun-loving, spontaneous, high-energy, upbeat, enthusiastic part of us is exactly these things. And sometimes these are ways to cope, ways to avoid feeling a deep pain beneath the surface. It is no accident that the Laugh Factory in Hollywood has a Psychologist-in-Residence for its comedians. This Sunday, we look into the Enneagram 7 – the Enthusiast - in all of us.Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Randy McKean, Worship Associate

The Four in us (Enneagram-speak again), the Individualist, is the deeply feeling part of us that sees our self as fundamentally different from others. In our search for our own clear identity, this sense of uniqueness sometimes anchors us and sometimes leads us to feel perpetually misunderstood, or that something is missing or deficient in us. At heart, this is our search for significance, a journey we travel as individuals in community. Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Beth Karow, Worship Associate

The Enneagram 2-ness in us (The Helper, the Altruist, The Lover) is the part of us that longs to be loved, and loved for exactly who we are. This can be the part of us that is most genuinely and generously helpful to other people or, sometimes, the part of us that is most highly invested in seeing ourselves as helpful. In our pursuit of justice and equity – and in so many other areas of our lives – we and those around us benefit when we’re able to know and notice the difference.Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Worship Associate, Gail Johnson Vaughan

Enneagram Series: Type Three (3)The Three-ness in each of us (in Enneagram-speak) responds to our learned tendency to base our value on what we do or achieve or how we appear. Our UU values call us to recognize and honor the inherent goodness and value of every person, including each other, and including ourselves. Sounds a lot like love. Maybe even liberating love.  Rev. Kevin with Sophia McKean, Worship Associate

Enneagram Series: We each take in the world, process what we’ve experienced, and make decisions through a combination of instinct, feeling, and thinking, though most of us over-rely on one of those three. The rub is that the one we rely on most is also where we are stuck and least free. And that means there is hope.  Worship Associate Gail Johnson VaughanReading by Beth KarowMusic by Toby Thomas-Rose, Kate Canan, Randy McKean

Enneagram Series- Type Six (6): We enter the world absolutely dependent upon those fallible humans who are caring for us, and so when we are young, we cannot help but be afraid, at times, that we won’t have the support or guidance we need or be able to survive on our own. This sends some of us on a life-long search for security, and sends some us in what looks like the exact opposite direction. Come, consider your own (Enneagram) sixy self.Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Gail Johnson Vaughan, Worship AssociateReading by Ruth GhioMusic performed by Kate Canan, Leonna Sapphire, and Tom WerniggToby Thomas-Rose, piano

Enneagram Series- Type Eight (8): In the midst of current and confounding “strong man” energies in national and world politics, we draw on Enneagram insights (Type 8) to consider the ways that strength, power, and control sometimes arise in each of us as ideals to protect ourselves from feeling vulnerable, uncertain, powerless. Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Lindsay Dunckel, Worship AssociateScottie Hart, reader

Enneagram Series: In this second service in Rev. Kevin's Enneagram series, worship associate Sophia McKean and Rev. Kevin invite us to consider our personal paths toward emotional and spiritual wholeness, paths of growth that invite our self-acceptance, above of all, paths that lead us home.

Enneagram Series: Wisdom from numerous sacred and secular traditions teaches that each of us has in some important ways fallen asleep to our true nature, to our essential self, to who we really are. The key for each of us is to learn to notice the ways we keep ourselves asleep, to realize that so much of our habitual searching prevents us from getting what we truly seek, and to discover, with compassion, that the box we are in is of our own making.   This is the first in a year-long series of services drawing on the Enneagram as a tool for our internal journey, our self-acceptance, and thus our well-being and our growth.Rev. Kevin Tarsa, ministerCheryl Morris, worship associate