Every month, from September through June, we and other UU congregations focus on a specific theme.
These are our ‘regular services’
During the summer, we hold services that follow a different format and schedule.
The Schedule for 2024 UUCM Summer Services
This summer, Sunday services will be both familiar and a little different. They will offer opportunities for connection and spiritual renewal, be varied in format or ways to participate, and they will, as always, welcome newcomers.
The Weekly Update will provide the time and location or format for each week.
Here’s the schedule:
- June 16 – Lasting Impressions, Nancy Baker & the Worship Team (10:30am, Sanctuary and Online)
First impressions are important, but perhaps making a lasting impression can help us integrate with new people in deeper ways. How do we value who we are and how do we welcome others into a lasting relationship instead of simply making a first impression. (Today will have a regular worship service format, but be a little shorter in length.)
- June 23 – UUA General Assembly (GA) Livestream (1:00-2:30pm EDT)
In lieu of a service at UUCM, you are invited to view a livestream of the GA Sunday worship service “Weaving Our Lives”. You will find a link to the service as well as a list of speakers and featured musicians at https://www.uua.org/ga/off-
- June 30 – Charlotte’s Web, Rev. Julie Lombard & Erna Johnson (10:30am Fireside Room)
Today’s service will be centered around this timeless classic of rescue and rethinking.
- July 7 – Early summer is a sensory experience. We feel more keenly and let ourselves go in the warmth and wisdom of nature. Enjoy 20 minutes of meditation and music in a video that moves your mind and senses along with it. You can watch the video anytime over the following week. The video will be accessible starting at 7am on July 7th. Click here to watch it.
- July 14 at 9:30am in the Fireside Room – Assumptions — We all make them, but we also judge by them. This simple conversational summer service gives you a chance to check in with others and talk about the tendency to judge before you really know someone or something.
- July 21 at 9:30am in the Fireside Room – Being patient is the greatest gift you can give when others need support and connection. This service will center around a discussion to help us slow down and wait for what will come. We feel enriched when we can just be patient with the process and people.
- July 28 at 9:30am in the Fireside Room – Trust is precious in our country’s divided atmosphere. How do we trust others? Why would they trust us? The answer is in being together and finding the pathways to connection that lead to trust. Let’s discuss how we can build trust in a collaborative way, rather than a combative one.
After the service we will watch the live stream from the Monadnock Lyceum as our Music Director, Amy Conley, offers the ingathering music for that service.
- August 4 at 10:30am – Join us on Zoom for a brief discussion of today’s Monadnock Lyceum topicand then watch the livestreamed program together. Laurie R. Shaffer will be talking about the Deaf Community, reminding us that the deaf are often invisible and labeled first by what others consider a disability.
- August 11 at 10:30am – Join us on Zoom as we watch today’s Monadnock Lyceum program. Peter Zheutlin will tell us how he went from being a reluctant pet owner to an advocate for canine rescue. His yellow lab, Albie, changed his life, leading him to discover how rescuing dogs from the problem of overpopulation in some areas can end up rescuing those who do this work.
- August 18 at 9:30am in the Fireside Room – “Just do it!” How many times have we backed off from trying something new because we feared we’d fail or that it was dangerous or silly? We’ll use Monty Python as a springboard for embracing the new and silly and spiritually empowering things that we sometimes don’t embrace out of fear or social squeamishness.
- August 25 at 9:30am in the Fireside Room – Life Goes On. We’ll talk about how loss, disappointment, or regret can linger and limit us as we attempt to re-energize and rebuild our lives.
- September 1 – A video Labor Day service that you can watch anytime over the following week. All the work we do is important no matter how we get paid for it. UUCM is one of the beneficiaries of our longing to make a difference. This will be a short, upbeat video to prepare us for the beginning of a new church year.
Click here to view the service. It will become available on Sept 1, 2024, at 7:00am. - September 8 at 10:30am in the Sanctuary An Invitation to Wonder with Nancy Baker and members of the Worship Team who are not at Ferry Beach. It’s that time of starting over – school begins, the election heats up, and we embrace the possibilities of a new church year. We get tense and focus on details when maybe we just need to embrace the wonder of it all. This service is about the potential of wonder to open us up to the essential goodness of what lasts, no matter how we mess it up.
[More summer service details to come…]
For more information, contact the Church Office.
Below are descriptions of our upcoming regular services. If you see none, that simply means that the descriptions are not yet available.
Your One Wild and Precious Life (In Person* and Online**)
The Worship Team
This Sunday we will meet at Peabody Mill Environmental Center on Brook Rd. in Amherst (see directions below), a home away from home right here in the Souhegan Valley. In the woods, nature holds you to a different standard. You feel smaller, but your spirit grows bigger. Join us for a morning of spiritual renewal, contemplation, simple soul enriching activities, and thoughtful conversation. Your life becomes precious when you fill it with what sustains and enriches you. Bring a lunch, enjoy friends and family, and take a break from the already hectic pace of a new season.
This is a Family Sunday service
* Please note that this service will not be held in the Sanctuary. It will be held at the Peabody Mill Environmental Center in Amherst, NH. (Note also that the Milford Pumpkin Festival will be in progress, so traveling through the Oval will be problematic.)
** The Zoom meeting will not be supported by our Sanctuary technical equipment. It will be more limited.
We hope you’ll bring a lunch, enjoy friends and family, and take a break from the already hectic pace of a new season.
Find directions to Peabody Mill Environmental Center here.
The theme for the month of October is The Practice of Deep Listening
To attend in person:
Masks are optional.
To attend virtually:
Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/91293689668?
Meeting ID: 912 9368 9668
Passcode: 949071
Link will be active starting at 10:15 AM, to allow everyone to log on.
Everyone was Listening (In Person and Online)
Rev Julie Lombard and The Worship Team
Today’s worship is about a time when a Unitarian Universalist church had to make a difficult decision. We think that people should be free to believe what they believe instead of professing a belief in what they are told to believe. This is what we mean when we say our faith is “creedless”. James Luther Adams was a theologian and social ethicist who taught at the Meadville Lombard Theological School, right across the street from the church where this hard decision was made. As a member of the congregation’s board, Adams challenged the leaders to listen. Join us for worship that expands the human horizon.
The theme for the month of October is The Practice of Deep Listening
To attend in person:
Masks are optional.
To attend virtually:
Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/91293689668?
Meeting ID: 912 9368 9668
Passcode: 949071
Link will be active starting at 10:15 AM, to allow everyone to log on.
Listening is Caring (In Person and Online)
Rev Julie Lombard and The Worship Team
UUCM’s Pastoral Care team underwent a big change to better meet the needs of our members and friends. While many committees lighten their load during the summer month, Pastoral Care took this time to reorganize their effort and doubled down. Dividing their tasks into four main focuses, team members stepped up to coordinate each specific task they tackle. In addition to all of that, they recruited new members. Come hear how reorganizing helped them share the load of loving up this beloved community and hear how people are impacted and inspired by this part of our shared ministry.
The theme for the month of October is The Practice of Deep Listening
To attend in person:
Masks are optional.
To attend virtually:
Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/91293689668?
Meeting ID: 912 9368 9668
Passcode: 949071
Link will be active starting at 10:15 AM, to allow everyone to log on.