Wavelengths: A WUU Podcast

Come listen to a WUU service!

Each of us can tell the personal stories of our lives. But we're also held in the much larger stories of culture, religion, and the cosmos itself. On this 60th anniversary of the merger between the Unitarians and the Universalists, we'll celebrate the liberating stories of our historic faith...and tend to their shadow sides.

• Rev. Laura Horton-Ludwig, Minister
• Nicki Peet, Worship Associate
• Dave Robbins, Assistant Director of Music, Piano
• WUU Choir, directed by Dr. Jamie Bartlett, Director of Music

The YouTube version is here.

Thank you for listening. For more information about the Williamsburg Unitarian Universalists, or to join us on Sunday mornings, visit www.wuu.org.

Come listen to a WUU service!

Please join us virtually in our annual May Day Gathering! We will be celebrating Spring, flowers and gardens. Please share photos and short videos of your gardens, family, outdoor movement, color, joy, flora! Come let us blossom together!

• Liz Wiley, Worship Associate
• Dave Robbins, Assistant Director of Music, Piano
• Hayda Jinmaku-Brown, Offertory Music

The YouTube version is here.

Thank you for listening. For more information about the Williamsburg Unitarian Universalists, or to join us on Sunday mornings, visit www.wuu.org.

Come listen to a WUU service!

Social worker JoLillian Zwerdling writes, "From Starfish I have learned that if we keep our core intact, we can regenerate. We can fall apart, lose limbs, and re-grow them as long as we don’t let anyone threaten that central disc’s integrity." How can we keep our own center strong in this time when so much change and creativity is needed?

• Rev. Laura Horton-Ludwig, Minister
• David Hopkinson, Worship Associate
• Austen Petersen, Director of Religious Education
• Paulette Amory, Piano

The YouTube version is here.

Thank you for listening. For more information about the Williamsburg Unitarian Universalists, or to join us on Sunday mornings, visit www.wuu.org.

Come listen to a WUU service!

It's human nature to create new things--crafts and tools, arts of all kinds...and, in the last 150 years, industrial technologies that, along with their many undeniable gifts, have also brought our planet to the brink of collapse. On this Earth Day Sunday, how can we shift our dreams of "more and better" toward being content with what is sustainable?

• Rev. Laura Horton-Ludwig, Minister
• Nan Hart, Worship Associate
• Austen Petersen, Director of Religious Education
• Dave Robbins, Assistant Director of Music, Piano

The YouTube version is here.

Thank you for listening. For more information about the Williamsburg Unitarian Universalists, or to join us on Sunday mornings, visit www.wuu.org.

Come listen to a WUU service!

All around us we see signs of new life emerging from the stark landscape of winter. Flowers, birdsong, the drone of bees. The world is coming to life again. In the Northern hemisphere, spring happens to align (helpfully) with the Christian celebration of Easter - the essential and foundational event of the Christian community. Easter is really a story about new life - a story against despair and about the possibilities of rebirth and change. And it can also be read as a story of human friendship. Often when we try to say something meaningful about these deep experiences we find that they are very hard to put into words. A human life is not an idea or concept. We are more than the language that we use can adequately contain.

But we can tell stories about being human, and listen to what those stories can tell us about our own lives. Stories have the capacity to hold and reveal what it means to be human without clean and simple answers. Join us this week as Steve DeLaney leads us in a meditation about resurrection, about new life, but through the lens of a story of friendship and forgiveness.

Steve DeLaney has worked in ministry with young people for over 20 years - in outdoor education, jail ministry, urban service, parish ministry, and as a high school teacher and campus minister. He has an MFA in Creative Writing and an MA in Theology. His passions include literature and writing, hiking, and gardening. He lives with his wife, Allison, and their three kids (and their dog Peach!) in Williamsburg, VA. He blogs at somedelaney.wordpress.com.

• Steve DeLaney, Guest Worship Leader
• Ben Thacker-Gwaltney, Worship Associate
• Austen Petersen, Director of Religious Education
• Dave Robbins, Assistant Director of Music, Piano

The YouTube version is here.

Thank you for listening. For more information about the Williamsburg Unitarian Universalists, or to join us on Sunday mornings, visit www.wuu.org.

Come listen to a WUU service!

It has been a long, hard year...but in this season of Easter and spring, hope is rising at last. Today we celebrate the new life awakening in us and beckoning us forward.

• Rev. Laura Horton-Ludwig, Minister
• Susan Marcinkus, Worship Associate
• WUU Choir, directed by Dr. Jamie Bartlett, Director of Music
• Austen Petersen, Director of Religious Education
• Kaya O’Brien-James, From the Heart
• Dave Robbins, Assistant Director of Music, Piano

The YouTube version is here.

Thank you for listening. For more information about the Williamsburg Unitarian Universalists, or to join us on Sunday mornings, visit www.wuu.org.

Come listen to a WUU service!

What if to "side with love" meant making bold, faith-full choices? What if it were even a little bit scary? This worship service brings together worship leaders and musicians from across the country to offer hopeful, moving, challenging reminders about what we, as Unitarian Universalists, are called to do, and BE, in the world.

Side with Love is an interfaith public advocacy campaign promoting respect for the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Side with Love confronts issues of exclusion, oppression, and violence based on identity. With the goal of creating beloved community, the campaign pursues social change through advocacy, public witness, and speaking out in solidarity with those whose lives are publicly demeaned. Our core issues of focus include, but are not limited to: LGBTQ equity, immigrant justice, racial justice and intersectional movement building.

• Everette R. H. Thompson, Side With Love Campaign Manager
• David B. Smith, Rick Fortner, & Matt Edwards Prelude
• Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray, Dr. Takiyah Nur Amin, Dr. Tuli Patel, Rev. Michael Crumpler, Julica Hermann de la Fuente, Laura Conkle, & Rev. Erika Hewitt, Worship Leaders
• Dr. Tuli Patel, Time for All Ages
• Choir of First Unitarian Society, Brooklyn

The YouTube version is here.

Thank you for listening. For more information about the Williamsburg Unitarian Universalists, or to join us on Sunday mornings, visit www.wuu.org.

Come listen to a WUU service!

Today we celebrate the story of Rev. Olympia Brown, the first woman to be ordained a Universalist minister, and her most famous congregant: the one and only P. T. Barnum, creator of the Greatest Show on Earth--and staunch supporter of his Universalist congregation. And though we might not have tightrope walkers or flame-swallowers here at WUU, we'll still cheer for everything that makes congregations worthy of our support, love, and commitment.

• Rev. Laura Horton-Ludwig, Minister
• Bob Edwards,, Worship Associate
• Austen Petersen, Director of Religious Education
• Dave Robbins, Assistant Director of Music, Piano
• WUU Choir, directed by Dr. Jamie Bartlett, Director of Music

The YouTube version is here.

Thank you for listening. For more information about the Williamsburg Unitarian Universalists, or to join us on Sunday mornings, visit www.wuu.org.

Executive Producer Jonathan Newby as interviews Jodi Fisler of WUU about her efforts with UU the Vote, a Unitarian Universalist initiative to promote voting and expand voter rights. Learn more about WUU at wuu.org.

Come listen to a WUU service!

Unitarian Universalists have long valued our spiritual freedom. But freedom has a shadow side: it's easy to walk away rather than stay and do the hard work of working it out in community. Today we'll explore what the ancient monastic virtue of stability might have to teach us today.

• Rev. Laura Horton-Ludwig, Minister
• Susan Marcinkus, Worship Associate
• Austen Petersen, Director of Religious Education
• Dave Robbins, Assistant Director of Music, Piano

The YouTube version is here.

Thank you for listening. For more information about the Williamsburg Unitarian Universalists, or to join us on Sunday mornings, visit www.wuu.org.