UUFA News

This theme for December is Choosing Hope.

The Fellowship offers many opportunities and invitations to explore and practice the theme. We will be exploring the theme through out the month in worship and Religious Exploration.

December 7: “Defiant Hope” with Rev. Dr. Pippin Whitaker

What does hope look like when optimism fades? What does it mean to you to choose hope when the facts and circumstances unravel what you hope for? Join in this worship service as we tap into a deeper hope untethered from optimism. 

December 14: “Co-Constructing Hope” with Rev. Dr. Pippin Whitaker

Have you constructed a work of art, or a craft project together with someone else? What did you learn about sharing effort, vision, and product? Co-constructing hope calls for strength of spirit to embrace this humbling and inspiring practice.

December 21: “Solstice for All” with DRE Kahla Childers and Rev. Dr. Pippin Whitaker

The moment of solstice arrived at 10:03 a.m., when the sun appeared as far south as we will see it all year. Now, Earth begins to tip back toward warmth in our hemisphere, although colder days are yet to come. What does it mean to know the world if moving in the direction of warmth, whilst anticipating the harshest times are still to come?

December 28:  “Choosing Hope” with Rev. JeKaren Bell 

As another year winds down (and we collectively forget what day it is), Rev. JeKaren Bell invites us to explore hope as more than optimism — as a spiritual practice and an act of resistance. From Greta Thunberg’s climate strikes to young activists fighting for justice across the globe, we’ll reflect on how choosing hope — again and again — keeps us tethered to love, courage, and each other. Expect warmth, honesty, and maybe a few laughs as we welcome the new year with hearts wide open.

Rev. JeKaren Bell (she/her) is a queer Womanist, poet, artist, and UU minister. Additionally, she is a certified Death and Grief Doula. Her ministry centers love through ancestry and creative expression. She is currently an affiliate minister with the UU Church of Las Cruces in New Mexico, where she lives and operates her community ministry, Love in Layers.

Are you seeking more ways to explore the theme of choosing hope? 

Consider reflecting on these quotes:             

What is hope? It is a hunch that the overwhelming brutality of facts that oppress and repress is not the last word. It is a suspicion that reality is more complex than realism wants us to believe and that the frontiers of the possible are not determined by the limits of the actual. – Rubem A. Alves

Hope causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience. It does not calm the unquiet heart, but is itself this unquiet heart in [all of us.] Those who hope…can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. – Jürgen Moltmann

Hope has holes in its pockets. It leaves little crumb trails so that we, when anxious, can follow it. Hope’s secret: it doesn’t know the destination— it knows only that all roads begin with one foot in front of the other. – Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Be careful of who you let regulate your dreaming. All dreaming is dangerous to those who benefit from our hopelessness. – Cole Arthur Riley

Do not fall asleep inside your enemy’s dream. – John Edgar Wideman

Some questions you may use as a prompt for conversation or for a journal entry follow:

• What might it mean for you to “be hope”? It’s one thing to believe in hope; it’s quite another to become it.
• If hope could speak, what do you think it would most want to say to you right now?
• If you could magically infect someone with hope, who would it be and why? 
• We all carry within ourselves the hopes and fears of those we’ve loved. Is it time to put one of those down so you can make your path your own?
• Who carries hope for you when the weariness of the world wears you down? Who needs you to carry hope for them?