UU Community Church of Washington County's Podcast
Episodes
205 episodes
October 4, 2026 Chaplain Jesse Ford - Cultivating Courage, Competence and Compassion in Times of Chaos
Times of disruption can become sacred invitations to deepen spiritual practice, strengthen communal bonds, and serve the common good. When the world feels beyond our grasp, how might we cultivate the courage, wisdom, and compassion to transform...
September 20, 2026 Sara Blackthorne - Weaving the Interdependent Web in Times of Disconnection
Life is full of beginnings and endings. From the cycle of the Sun to the rotation of crops, we see examples every day of the ways we are connected – and interconnected – throughout the transitions we experience. But how do we remember this inte...
September 6, 2026 Rev. Rivka Gevurtz - Return to Beginning: Love Is the Home of Our Interdependence
As we stand on the threshold of a new congregational year as well as the Jewish High Holy Days, we explore the sacred act of beginning. Drawing on the creation narrative of Genesis, we will reflect on how returning to the roots of our interconn...
August 30, 2026 Schann Wysong - How To Be a Spiritual Ghost
After a childhood of attendance at 10 or 11 different schools by the time she hit grade school, an ever-increasing number of siblings and both Christian Science and the Presbyterians, Schann escaped into a long period of floating agnostism. Mea...
August 23, 2026 Rebecca Long - How I Found Peace in a Life of Chaos
After being born into addiction and then being orphaned, I had to raise myself. I learned how to find peace amongst the chaos of living on the streets and having no family to guide me. I sought help and found out that I am truly nev...
August 16, 2026 Bill Ellis - Des Moines, Diversity and Me
You don’t know what you don’t know. Right? Growing up in a small town in Iowa I had no exposure to diversity – until there came times when it slapped me upside the head. When homogeneity became difference, and when not just my...
August 9, 2026 Kerri Nussbaum - Spiritual Journeys Are Not Linear
Kerri's religious life, as opposed to her spiritual life, began in Catholicism, swerved briefly into born-again Christianity, and finally veered clunkily into agnosticism. She'll share how not getting a satisfactory answer from a nun abou...
August 2, 2026 Kym Lamb - Blackboard Spirituality
Kym’s spiritual journey started at an early age after witnessing a miracle. After a lifetime of conservative beliefs and “not enoughness” she used a blackboard image to find and transition to a new path. This path allows for twists ...
July 26, 2026 Lyssa Martin - Truth Is All Around Us
Raise your voice, your spirit, and your smile as we get to know Lyssa Martin - a creator, a caregiver, an advocate, and your newest UU sibling! Explore the wonderful winding path life takes as Lyssa shares stories about the moments that helped ...
July 19, 2026 Bernal Cruz - Reclaiming the Sacred: How Kind Spirit Found Me
The long shadow of colonization brought my people Catholic Christianity, and in that history it became the dominant spiritual framework around me, overlaying but never fully replacing ancestral connections to the earth and the cosmos. Over time...
July 12, 2026 Kevin Rex - A Straight Man's Eulogy Turned Gay
If you’ve never thought you were Doris Day and could seduce Rock Hudson to kiss you, then you’re in for a treat as I turn the world upside down with music, TV, Hollywood, and some literature, too. Let’s see if we can award a Tony, Emmy, Grammy,...
June 21, 2026 Helen Rivers - Say Gay, Y'all
Did you know that having just one affirming adult in their life can decrease a LGBTQ+ youth’s risk of devastating mental health outcomes by up to 40%? What does it take to earn the title of ‘ally’ when the stakes are so desperately high? What d...
June 7, 2026 Rev. Julián Jamaica Soto - Blooming Together
What do people need to grow and thrive? This service explores the beauty of each of us being ourselves and what we can provide one another to grow.
May 24, 2026 Rev. Julián Jamaica Soto - The Magic of Jazz
This service explores the spiritual wisdom of jazz—what it teaches us about trust, collaboration, and making meaning together without certainty. We’ll reflect on how improvisation invites us to be present, how dissonance can become beauty, and ...
May 10, 2026 Rev. JeKaren Bell - What We Owe Each Other in the Wilderness
We have always known how to carry each other. This sermon is about what happens when we forget that, and what becomes possible when we choose to remember, not as an act of charity, but as an act of love.
April 26, 2026 Rev. Nick Sanchez - Say Yes: Embracing a Life of Purpose
Modern life can be an exhausting barrage of things clamoring for your attention. Having access to 'more' puzzlingly enough often leads us to doing 'less.' We can easily become overloaded and stuck. And with current events, finding the motivatio...
April 12, 2026 Rev. Julián Jamaica Soto - Learning a New Response
In a famous set of experiments, psychologist Albert Bandura helped people unlearn their fear of snakes—not through reasoning, but through watching others gently touch what they feared.Sometimes transformation doesn’t come from within. So...
April 5, 2026 Rev. Julián Jamaica Soto
When Jim Henson died, people didn’t only speak of loss. They spoke of presence—of how his voice, his characters, his particular way of making meaning and mischief in the world continued to live in them. Easter tells a story l...
March 8, 2026 Rev. Julián Jamaica Soto
Not all transformation is about becoming new—some of it is about the ability to adapt that allows us to continue forward. We reflect on the forces, seen and unseen, that bind bodies, communities, and worlds. What if holiness is less about...
February 22, 2026 Rev. Julián Jamaica Soto - There Will Your Heart Be
“We are held by what we hold in common.”— Robin Wall KimmererAs we take the opportunity to pledge support to this community, we look more deeply into the rewards of generosity for ourselves and one another.
February 15, 2026 Rev. Julián Jamaica Soto - Who We Know Ourselves To Be
"We are not what other people say we are. We are who we know ourselves to be, and we are what we love. That's okay." — Laverne Cox What does it mean to be a welcoming Congregation? UUCCWC has a great variety of beloved folks ...
February 8, 2026 Rev. Elle Dowd - Jesus: Enemy of the State
Drawing on the prophetic witness of Martin Luther King Jr., Fred Hampton, Archbishop Oscar Romero, and the radical story of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel, this sermon reframes “taking up the cross” not as private suffering but as collective resistance...
February 1, 2026 Rev. Julián Jamaica Soto - Halfway There
Let’s lean into the wisdom of the calendar, as we land halfway between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox. What are the lessons of looking forward to the coming of Spring?
January 26, 2026 Rev. Julián Jamaica Soto - The Sweetness of Giving
“The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose.”– Hada BejarWe’re going to really lean into what we love about our congregation: what we know from the past, choices for the present, and what we dream for the future.