Three Kings Day/Día de Reyes

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All Ages Worship Sundays
Gather in the Sanctuary for our all-ages worship. All ages worships are an opportunity to worship together as a family and in community. We include interactive elements to engage and encourage youth and children’s participation. There is a rug in the Sanctuary for young children and a caregiver/nursing chair. Children can sit with families. In the Sanctuary foyer, we have bags to gather seasonal and themed worship tools students can take to their seats. We strive to make these services inclusive of learning styles and needs. With your help, we can envision a meaningful and loving Sanctuary. We do not have other programming for children and youth on these mornings, except where otherwise noted.

If you don’t have a chalice, but want to light one, check out our Making a Chalice at Home page.

Both virtual and in person services are followed by coffee hour.

Children’s Story

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Sermon Text

Happy New Year! Feliz Año Nuevo! How many of you have new year’s rituals? anybody? In my family we celebrate the new year with a variety of rituals that include taking baths with fragrant flower petals, eating 12 grapes at the strike of midnight, eating lentils, and doing some sort of divination ceremony with runes, seashells, or cards. We review the past, reflect on the present, and name the obstacles for the future journey ahead. This year I received the teachings of the star OC, which in the Mayan oracle signifies breakthroughs, new beginnings, spiritual strength, and the gift of the recognition of our companions of destiny. OC the star teaches us that other beings with the same longings are waiting to meet us. beings who can see us as our authentic selves. OC the star says that when we have been truly seen, we feel empowered and the remembrance of a shared sacred trust is ignited, free from personal expectations. Our companions of destiny are all around us in spirit, purpose, connection, and support…just take a look around. If you have already recognized your companions of destiny,you are being asked not only to support each other but also to lovingly remove emotional obstacles and be heale. OC the star is an access point for developing relationships, allies, and co-conspirators. It’s a useful construct is viewing our allies as ourselves, as part of our own life stream that yearns to be integrated. OC the star tells us that there is no other. That in this journey we call life, we are being asked to embody all that we are…OC the star provides nourishment and represents the soul feeding offered by companions on the same path. Profound insights are garnered through shared purpose and relationship with others who are willing to be in their truth and integrity about the light and shadow aspects they perceive in themselves. Being in relationship with our companions of destiny is a unique opportunity to bring forward deep emotional patterns to be transformed. OC the star says that we are invited to look deeply into the truth held within our hearts and to express our true selves as a gift of love. Sharing our stories in beloved conversations, in holy listening mode, and honest communication has the potential for healing. When we lack the willingness to open our hearts it is time to reevaluate. OC the star reminds us that we have the power to recast our past, to change those deep emotional patterns that have shaped us and that we identify with. We can release ourselves from our own self, the small self. We can become unencumbered, and our true and best self can emerge. The shadow wisdom of OC the star teaches us that we may get caught up in the emotional drama of life: fear, anxiety, anger, jealousy, possessiveness, control. We are encouraged to apply the same intensity to the magic of our lives for a clearer intent towards spiritual growth. Explore the foundations of your relationships and the purposes they serve. Which ones are asking to be nurtured and appreciated? Which would benefit from reexamination or release? The wisdom of OC the star is the magic of intentional transformation. When we meditate, strategize, work, pray, march, build, learn, sing, cry, and laugh together, we strengthen our connection, we deepen our relationship with each other and with our true best selves. Our hearts call out to the “One heart” that beats in powerful concert. This is the song that beckons our community to unite and journey together. 

For my family, the New Year announces the coming of the three kings, los reyes magos, on January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany. A celebration of the journey of the Wise Men,  their resiliency in following the star, and their faith and courage to change direction on their way home. In Latin America  “Los Reyes” the kings eagerly awaited the eve of January 5th with children placing under their bed boxes filled with grass and bowls of water for the camels carrying the magi. In gratitude for the grass and water, the three kings leave presents for the children to be opened in the morning. Magical!  Do you believe in magic?  I don’t mean a card trick or the magic of Samantha Stevens in Bewitched or the power of Genie blinking herself into another time or place. Although I confess I used to practice all these tricks in front of the mirror when I was young. I grew up in a neighborhood where only one family owned a television set. They saved for years to invest in a black and white set that transformed their humble home into our neighborhood movie theater. They built wooden benches, sold home made candy, and charged us the equivalent of 10 cents for us to watch Bewitched, I Dream of Genie, and Lost in Space. We were mesmerized by the magic tricks and went home to practice. But I was neither Genie nor Samantha and our lives then were echoes of a robot lost in space flailing his arms as he warned us:  “danger Will Robinson! danger!”  In those years, there was danger at every turn. And yet we found magic in books, in music, in loving. Sometimes the magic comes from prayer, from someone giving us a second chance. Sometimes the magic comes from change, a different path, a different way of thinking, a shedding of old patterns and new words to live by. Like the kings who went home a different way, a change of heart is filled with possibility for transformation of our reality. If our reality is that we are stuck in a rut, blaming ourselves or someone for our suffering, if we cannot find enough compassion to forgive, if we are carrying the weight of old ways of thinking and being in the world, the journey home to our true selves will be extra hard. Changing direction is forgiving ourselves and each other, letting go of images of ourselves and others, awakening to a new light, having a change of heart in order to go home, to return to our true selves. 

What is your heart telling you? What are you carrying that makes the journey so painful? 

Look inside your heart. Listen to your heart. Follow your heart. It is here, on the journey, that we will not only know, but feel that we have precious gifts to offer this broken world. It is here in this community that your gifts will be seen, acknowledged, and celebrated! It is here that we will rekindle each other’s light. A new year and a new light is upon us, a light that shows us  the way home. In this  light we see new possibilities and feel new promises of Love, Community, and Justice. In this light we reorder our priorities, we get courage that we did not have before. Peggy McIntosh would ask: What’s in your backpack? what have you been carrying around from year to year, what is that heavy burden that slows you down, that keeps you from fully living your one precious life, keeps you feeling stuck, makes you ache?

Are we willing to embark on a journey that will transform us and allow us to share our gifts, to be midwives to our own epiphanies, to bring forth new life and vitality to ourselves and to our community? Are we willing to   intentionally create an ongoing  epiphany? It is an epiphany that requires both an individual change of heart and a community to share it with and to bear witness to it. 

This past year we experienced tremendous changes as we embarked on a shared journey. We are following our UU principles, we are following our hearts. We are wrestling with who we were, who we are, and who we want to become as a congregation. We are asking ourselves: What are the gifts that we bring? What are the obstacles that weigh us down? How are we dealing with so much change and transformation? It’s a lot isn’t it? I can tell that some of us are weary. That some of us would rather leave the backpack by the side of the road, or try to drag that heavy backpack uphill rather than stop to reach in and have the hard conversations about our findings. Can’t we just blink really really hard and wish for a better world? Not while the robot’s arms are still flailing and warning us of the dangers ahead.

Epiphanies happen in unlikely places to unlikely people at unlikely times by unlikely means…

Epiphanies can be disruptive, complex, disturbing and inconvenient … Epiphanies need to be shared out loud, just like when the angel spoke,  right in the middle of persecution and war and hard times…
Epiphanies are realized in the places where we struggle
in the in between spaces, in the borderlands, 
Where we fall down on our knees
Where we take detours
Where we change our course
Where we change our minds,
Where we change our hearts
Where our ego shrinks so that our compassion might grow…

Beloveds, let us journey on together guided by our principles, and most importantly, by love. We are all made of stardust and we are the embodiment of transformation and infinite possibilities. How will we find our way home? By letting our inner light shine, healing together, building the beloved community. Together. 

Let us keep on moving forward… Finding new ways of being, humbly taking the detours…allowing our light to shine bright! Look around you, there are epiphanies everywhere…but if you blink too hard, if you are waiting for the magic to happen, or if you only focus your attention on the panic stricken robot, you might miss them… let us make our own magic. Let us dream together and create new paths. Amen? 

O brillante estrella
Que Anuncias la aurora,
No nos falte nunca tu luz bienhechora!
O brilliant star who announces the dawn,
May we never be without your benevolent light!

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