Recent Sermons

Listen to Recent Sermons

Gifts, Magic, and Portals


Date:   August 2, 2026
Speaker:   Frannie Joseph
Length:   10:27

Frannie Joseph details what she believes, and the formative gifts she has gathered through her life's journey so far. 

Love, Poetry, and Other Mountains We Climb


Date:   July 26, 2026
Speaker:   Matt Bernier
Length:   18:47


My Spiritual Journey


Date:   July 19, 2026
Speaker:   Roberta Latham
Length:   17:28

 Roberta offers the spiritual questions we all ask - what we believe and why. And she touches on the existential realm of death, grief, and loss - and is there afterlife? What an opportunity we have during the summer to learn what our peers and fellow congregants wonder about when they are sitting beside us listening to the wisdom of our leaders at other times of the year!

Writing for Bread, Writing from the Heart


Date:   July 12, 2026
Speaker:   Ruth Cash-Smith
Length:   10:25

We welcome to our pulpit Ruth Cash-Smith, professional writer, along with Worship Arts member, Marsha Donahue, in another of our offerings to help you get to know our community better. The title illustrates two ways writing may be a spiritual journey, hoping to inspire you to write, too. In this part, Ruth Cash-Smith recounts her life journey as a writer.

"Writing from the Heart", Excerpt from "Little Sister" Memoir


Date:   July 12, 2026
Speaker:   Marsha Donahue
Length:   6:01

We welcome to our pulpit Ruth Cash-Smith, professional writer, along with Worship Arts member, Marsha Donahue, in another of our offerings to help you get to know our community better. The title illustrates two ways writing may be a spiritual journey, hoping to inspire you to write, too. In this part, Marsha Donohue shares part of her spiritual journey.

Do Anniversaries Matter?


Date:   July 5, 2026
Speaker:   Rev. Amy McCormick
Length:   12:53

On this weekend when our nation celebrates our 250th anniversary, we'll take some time to honor what is good and right about this place we call home. We'll also dive into the importance of honoring anniversaries of all kinds and the ways in which they can be complicated and challenging, but worthy of our attention. It is through this ritual acknowledgement that we make meaning, through reckoning and reflecting one what brought us together in the first place.

Bends in Our Paths


Date:   June 21, 2026
Speaker:   Susan Coe
Length:   18:17

At what age does it seem I had the best friends? And then, when did that start to break down? In the media, we see the innocence and love of toddlers, youngsters playing sports and music with their besties, those in their twenties and thirties looking as though they’re having the times of their lives.  College, weddings, reunions, even divorces where people thought they’d met the love of their life and then they find love again. There’s TV series about Friends, Thirtysomethings, Parenthood, the Gilmore Girls, Grace and Frankie. But what about when it doesn't happen that way? What if one’s health starts to decline, their family starts to fall apart, or death starts taking away people that were once the center of our lives? How do we jump back in and get another chance where “The Best Is Yet To Come”? And what if it doesn't happen? Ironically the years go faster as we get older, but loneliness comes in slow motion. This starting over happens way differently than it did the first time.
And yet that word friendship - you know it's something that you don't put a dollar sign on, you don't attach a geography, it isn’t always at home, and it really doesn't matter about your job. Friendship is it's own thing that has meaning above everything else. We learn about it early from parents and teachers, and ultimately we are on our own to build our lives around the friends we find and lose along the way. These paths bend to be narrow, wide, steep, or smooth and fretted with gems and rocks. Memories and futures. What’s your friendship story? I’ll tell you mine today.

Did the Bible Say That?


Date:   June 14, 2026
Speaker:   Rev. Amy McCormick
Length:   30:13

As we embrace the value of pluralism and the importance of religious freedom, in a denomination rooted in Christianity, which is rooted in Judaism, being a Unitarian Universalist can be freeing. It can also be confusing. As we step ever closer to the 250th anniversary of the signing of the declaration with our country’s highest leaders wanting to claim a Christian nation, I think it’s important to ask ourselves on what do they base this belief? On what are many of the beliefs of Christian Nationalism based? How can we as UU’s give respect and reverence to a religion like Christianity while still countering messages of hate so often promoted by those who call themselves “True Christians”. What does the Bible have to say about gay people? What does it say about the rapture? What does it say about caring for the earth? What doesn’t it say? This service will not be comprehensive in any way … but perhaps we will learn something together. 

A Beginner's Mind


Date:   May 31, 2026
Speaker:   Rev. Bob Johansen
Length:   14:36

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind there are few.” So writes Shunryu Suzuki in his classic Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. What would it be like to approach life with a beginner’s mind, the clear-eyed wonder of a child? UUCB member Rev. Bob Johansen, who leads the Wednesday morning mindfulness meditation group, shares wisdom from the Buddhist tradition and from personal experience on embracing the world with openness and curiosity. 

Loving Growth and Renewal


Date:   May 24, 2026
Speaker:   Thean Hart, Chaplaincy Institute of Maine student
Length:   11:56

Thean Hart and Cayla Miller are Belfast locals who are students at the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine (ChIME). In this service, they explored growth, renewal, radical relationality, and deepening relationship with others and ourselves.