A Month of Services

In-person worship services: Saturdays @ 4:30 pm & Sundays @ 9 & 11 am Online worship service: Sundays @ 9 am

JANUARY 1 @ 10 AM

BEGINNING THE WORLD OVER AGAIN

Rev. Kelly Asprooth-Jackson, Co-Senior Minister Awake, arise, and greet a new beginning! The start of anything new benefits from letting go of (some of) what came before and setting an intention for the work ahead. On this New Year’s Day, join us for a ritual of releasing the year now past as we look toward the one to come. Music by Benjamin Britten and Norman Dello Joio.

JANUARY 7 & 8

THE REST AND REPLENISHMENT OF WINTERING

Rev. Kelly Crocker, Co-Senior Minister Here in Wisconsin, January is the time we can fully sink into winter. This season can be the respite our bodies require, and a state of mind as we remember how to be still, how to rest, how to travel inward once again. This is not our usual state of being, as we are always trying to avoid the wintering period of our lives, those fallow and bleak times we all experience. We will look at how we can invite winter in and how we can best lie within the winters of our lives. Music will include Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Studies in English Folksong featuring FUS member Terri Felton on clarinet with Assistant Music Director Linda Warren on piano.

JANUARY 14 & 15

COMFORT THE AFFLICTED

Rev. Kelly Asprooth-Jackson, Co-Senior Minister The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” Comfort and challenge are both key functions of religion and of religious community--sometimes they seem to be complements to each other, and sometimes they seem to be in conflict. On this MLK weekend, we will reflect on the place of comfort in our era of controversy, and what it means for a spiritual community such as ours to be both a comforting and challenging place. In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, the music for today’s service will be piano solos by historic Black composers Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, William Grant Still, Oscar Peterson, and Margaret Bonds.

JANUARY 21 & 22

A GLACIAL PACE

Rev. Kelly Asprooth-Jackson, Co-Senior Minister While we have four whole seasons in Wisconsin, the larger world often thinks of us only in terms of the one. The particulars of the landscape of this state, this city, and this little plot of land where we make our spiritual home were largely defined for us long ages ago, by the motion of ancient ice. And of course in winter, many animals go to ground, making temporary homes in the earth. In this service, we will continue to explore our theme of Wintering by exploring our own place a bit, and the meaning to be found in it. In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, Society Choir will sing settings of Langston Hughes poems by Black composers Rollo Dilworth and Andre J. Thomas.

JANUARY 28 & 29

THE EMPTINESS OF WINTER

Rev. Kelly Crocker, Co-Senior Minister This is a time of year when we consider who we are and how we want to be. We make resolutions, we resolve to change in some way, we want to add things into our lives. Yet perhaps a lesson of the wintertime is in the letting go, the subtraction, the making room for change to occur. This can be a time, if we let it be so, of getting ready, just as the earth is slowly gathering to emerge green and glorious and new. How do we prepare ourselves for new growth and what lessons of these winter days can we hold on to as we do? Linda Warren will play music by classical Jewish composers, in honor of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Music of Mendelsson, Mahler, Gershwin, and Previn.