Welcome to Soul Matters –

This month we kick off our Soul Matters Program with the theme renewal.  September is a season of homecoming for us UUs. And renewal is central to that. At the opening of each new church year, we renew our commitments to each other and our church community. We renew our energy for another year of journeying together.   You can find lots of materials for reflection on our Soul Matters page.

And we renew our thinking about what is meaningful and important in our lives by asking ourselves questions.   In our culture and secular lives, the questions we ask about renewal focus mainly on health (Are you drinking enough water? Are you getting enough sleep?) and work/life balance (Are you making enough time for family, play and rest?). Those are fine questions, but they don’t take us very deep or push us very far. They don’t enable the kind of transformation that religion wants for us.

There’s a box with an entirely different set of renewal questions that nobody’s opened yet. Questions like:

• Are you sure it’s your body that’s tired, or could it be your soul?
• Is it time to renew your responsibility to those who will come after you?
• Is it time to renew your commitment to carry on the work of those who came before us?
• What if you saw your daily living and loving as an opportunity (even a calling) to renew others’ faith in humanity?
• Could it be that continual self-improvement is not the path to renewal but instead compassionate acceptance of who you already are, warts and all?

Our Soul Matters small groups start up next month, but you can explore this theme with the individual materials posted here.  Also join us for services on the theme this month.  There are lots of way to engage.

September Renewal for Individual Reflection (PDF)