Past Services

Join us for weekly worship this Sunday (and every week)! We meet in person in the heart of our nation’s capital and online using Zoom. We look forward to seeing you!

Join us for weekly worship this Sunday (and every week)! We meet in person in the heart of our nation’s capital and online using Zoom. We look forward to seeing you!

Join us for weekly worship this Sunday (and every week)! We meet in person in the heart of our nation’s capital and online using Zoom. We look forward to seeing you!

Even before the election happened, one of the strong themes emerging at All Souls is a renewed desire to make an impact in our immediate neighborhood. Our building is in the heart of Ward 1, which is both the most ethnically diverse and the most compact ward in the city. With the new administration coming in, fear has already increased significantly. How can we re-commit ourselves to loving our neighbors?

Those who have confronted injustice have had a direct view of evil, and the most transformative leaders have responded with love, and that love calls us to draw the circle wide. Let us consider how love is prompting us to show up.

The campaigns are over. The votes have been cast. The results have been tallied. The US House of Representatives and the US Senate both have new members. And, in 71 days our new President-Elect will stand on the steps of the US Capitol to be sworn into office. Hmmm? What Do We Do Now? The World is watching. Our children are watching too. Let’s talk about making meaning, staying resilient and the next steps we’ll take as we move forward and claim our history.

UU Theologian James Luther Adams believed in voluntary associations and their essential role in creating, sustaining, and renewing democratic societies. All Souls is such a voluntary association, but not the only one for most of us. In this time of polarization, what challenges and promises might voluntary associations hold for us.

In these last weeks before the election, let’s celebrate how democracy is a participatory process and recognize that history is made by those who show up. Come hear All Souls’ community partner and democracy organizer Andrea Miller lead us in claiming the work of this moment.

In August I preached about the Unitarian Universalist tradition of asking questions (it’s why our religion exists!) and the kind of questions we need to ask ourselves today. It was an invitation to lean in to curiosity. Making change, however, inevitably requires action as well. The word “disruption” has a negative connotation, but sometimes that’s exactly what is needed to make progress! Can we claim disruption as a positive concept—and perhaps even a spiritual practice?

On this day we honor the Jewish Days of Awe, that peak with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. “Atonement” can be broken down into: “At-one-ment,” implying that when we forgive and are forgiven, we are brought back into relationship. Let us come together to reflect on and experience how we can reach for reconnection and forgiveness. As is the Jewish custom, our All Souls community will celebrate with all the generations in the sanctuary together.