by UUAvl-WebAdmin | Nov 7, 2016 | Sermons
Rev. Mark Ward As we look ahead to the coming Election Day, our topic today builds on a line from the poem that Elizabeth Stevens wrote for Barak Obama’s inaugural seven years ago. Speaking to our General Assembly in June, interviewer Krista Tippet seized on that line...
by UUAvl-WebAdmin | Nov 2, 2016 | Sermons
Joy Berry, Director of Lifespan Religious Education and Rev. Mark Ward, Lead Minister A beautiful story of a girl and her grandmother forms the center of our annual intergenerational Day of the Dead service. Please plan to bring pictures or memorabilia to place on our...
by UUAvl-WebAdmin | Oct 17, 2016 | Sermons
whos-white-trash SERMON Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â J.D. Vance says he knew when he was growing up in the coal country of Kentucky and a city in southern Ohio that life was a struggle for the people he was raised among. Â In his recent book, Hillbilly Elegy, he tells of how...
by UUAvl-WebAdmin | Oct 10, 2016 | Sermons
Rev. Mark Ward There are scripts that run unquestioned through our cultural memory, and one of those is discovery: the idea that Europeans had dispensation to murder, oppress and uproot peoples in North America and elsewhere for their own benefit. What might be the...
by UUAvl-WebAdmin | Oct 4, 2016 | Sermons
Rev. Mark Ward, Lead Minister Again and again, we return to the hard work of forgiveness that forces us to confront our errors and inadequacies: no fun, but what relief to be freed of that burden, as the hymn reminds us, to be born and reborn again. SERMON Is...
by UUAvl-WebAdmin | Sep 26, 2016 | Sermons
Rev. Mark Ward, Lead Minister What is required of our religious movement to make it the change agent it hopes to be? Today, at the anniversary of the Universalist John Murray’s landing in the U.S. I will address how we might respond to this question in the...
