Capital Unitarian Universalist Congregation

In story, song, and reflection, international touring performer, songwriter, and itinerant preacher Joe Jencks explored what it means to embrace the everyday as sacred, to embrace others with compassion, and to seek healing for ourselves, and others through our daily practices. Influenced by Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Humanism, and other spiritual traditions, Joe weaves wisdom and teachings from several world religions into a message about personal growth, recovery, social justice, and community. Jencks is an award winning songwriter and long-standing Unitarian Universalist from Chicago, IL. He has shared the stage with numerous folk luminaries including Pete Seeger, Holly Near, Utah Phillips and John McCutcheon.

Michael Servetus was an early 16th century anti-Trinitarian.  He founded no religion, established no churches,and spent much of his life in hiding.  The service examined why he was condemned to death by three separate religious establishments.

Canada has undertaken to resettle a number of Tibetans here from third countries. Susanne shared the significance of this project.

Touring Croatia with an ethical travel company: an ESL teacher’s perspective.

Rev Antonia Won “Confessions of a Perfectionist” Growing up as a Unitarian, I was aware of highly held values it was assumed would naturally result in a better society – if we lived into them adequately. I try to be a good person and live out those values, including acceptance of others as our first principle affirms (the one about inherent worth and dignity). And yet I still struggle with people whose views I can’t understand. I feel they are wrong, even if I don’t say so. Did Unitarianism get me into this pickle? More importantly, can it help get me out?

Rev. Antonia Won is a third generation Canadian Unitarian and a minister working for the Canadian Unitarian Council, overseeing Western Region and BC. Antonia has worked in congregations large and small in New Mexico, Montana and BC. She was a theme park planner and project manager in a former life. Antonia lives in Vancouver, has two young adult children and a partner who has taught her to sail.

Susanne presents the ideas of Franciscan Father Richard Rohr, whose book “Breathing Underwater” discusses where to find the spiritual.

This service will also include a New Members Welcome.

There is a great gulf between being alone and being lonely. Are they even related? Can we be alone without being lonely?  Can we be lonely without being alone? Reverend Brian Kiely explored loneliness in this sermon for the Unitarian Church of Edmonton and has welcomed Dyanne to present it to us.

Now that the Gay Rights Movement has led to the legalization of same-sex marriage in nine states and the District of Columbia, it is time to re-examine the history of this practice and recover past precedents.

This talk examines diverse evidence of the existence of same-sex marriages in North America from the 16th century through the twentieth century. Unfortunately memory of this history of marital variability has been erased, owing in part to the tendency of contemporary descriptions to describe such unions as “impossible.” The rhetoric of impossibility allowed communities to accommodate couples who transgressed the rule that marriage should be cross-sexed, without redefining the category of marriage.

Rachel Hope Cleves is Associate Professor of History at the University of Victoria. She is the author of the forthcoming book, Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America (Oxford University Press, 2013), which examines the lives of two ordinary women who lived in an extraordinary same-sex marriage in Vermont, from 1807 to 1851. Originally from New York City, Cleves is a happy transplant to B.C.’s beautiful capital city.

What came first: the chicken, the egg, or the Easter Bunny? Join us as we resurrect the sources of our European spring festival traditions!