Today we kick off Religious Education classes with [over number registered] children and youth in our congregation. [Number of volunteers] adult volunteers carry the sacred privilege and responsibility of journeying beside them on our behalf....

As we light this chalice [this evening], may it serve to give us clarity of purpose and illumine our way as we set about doing the work of this congregation, in commitment, in cooperation, and in love.

Our [congregation name] ancestors are the ones who physically bought this land*, built some of our buildings, raised the money to create this space. They're also the ones who made sure there was a safe and welcoming community, who created a religious education program to promote justice and...

May each one among us have skin that longs to touch other skin: fingertips that long for other fingertips or whole hands and even arms; bodies that want to stand next to other bodies, not alone, while singing and bending, stirring soup. May ones whose skin doesn’t cry out for other skin wish it...

Today, you join in membership. This is a moment of excitement and possibility. And although I don’t wish to pull you out of this moment, I need to talk to you for a bit about a moment in your future....

When we light our chalice everyone focuses on the flame. Yet it is the paraffin of the candle, the cotton of the wick, the potassium chlorate and sulfur of the match, and the oxygen in the air around us that makes that flame possible. As leaders we are not called to be a lone beacon on a hill.

All summer, workers have been building a brick wall along the road by my neighborhood. Against the brutal heat, they stretch a tarp overhead to get a little shade. I’ve watched them take bricks in their dusty brown hands one by one, butter them thickly with mortar, line them up, and tap them...

Imagine with me that you’re going along a trail in the woods in Vermont and you come across a steep gorge with a river rushing at the bottom. There is only one way to get across. You see a bridge and it’s made of… this: [show basket of grass… long overgrown grass, and pass it around so kids...

We extinguish this flame, But we keep its light in our hearts, with its message of love and justice, Taking it outside these walls to the world we live in, until we are together again.

Imagine yourself on a wide, flowing river in a small boat, You are one little speck of being in a wide expanse of water bordered by rocky cliffs, towering trees and bright blue skies. Ahead of you are boulders and white water rapids, but also calm pools and sand bars for picnics. Around you are...

O God of life, help us make this church a refuge from the world, a place where the rules are different....