Worship Service at 10:30 AM; Hybrid services have prelude and/or opening music starting between 10:25 am and 10:30 am.

UUCSS holds hybrid services (offering both online and in-person in the Sanctuary). Details about upcoming services can be found at https://uucss.org/event-category/upcoming-sunday-services/

If you wish to attend in person, the sanctuary is at 10309 New Hampshire Avenue, at the corner with Oaklawn Drive. We have a parking lot off Oaklawn Drive Directions can be found at https://uucss.org/contact/campus-locations/. Please follow our UUCSS guidelines, https://uucss.org/uucss-covid-guidelines/.  

To participate remotely, please enter our Zoom room by clicking on Zoom Link for Worship, ASL and Coffee Hour, on Sundays between 10:00 am and 10:30 am during the Slide Show and Prelude, or later while the service is occurring. You can also just click the direct link in the Sunday morning all-church email reminder. 

American Sign Language Interpretation will be available live during the service, either in the sanctuary or remotely. In either case, the ASL Interpreter will be visible two ways – merged into the main video feed from the sanctuary (if present locally in the sanctuary), and as a Zoom participant with their own Zoom window.

For guidance on deaf participation via Zoom, please visit https://www.uucss.org/deaf-access, or view the guidance provided on slides shown prior to the Prelude.

For information about our Religious Education program, visit https://uucss.org/uucss-religious-education-classes/

Coffee Hour begins at about 11:30 am, both in person and on the same Zoom session as the worship service, and can be accessed at this Link: Coffee Hour. The ASL interpreter will generally be available during Coffee Hour, in an ASL breakout room or whichever room deaf participants choose to join.

Past Services can be found at the UUCSS YouTube page, https://www.youtube.com/c/UUCSS.

 

Across the Aisle, Across the Kitchen Table – Rev. Kristin G. Schmidt

Edwin Friedman was a rabbi, family therapist, and leadership consultant who is best-known for his work with religious communities. His book called Friedman’s Fables is a collection of stories he wrote to help explain family systems. I’m going to tell you one of those stories. It’s called “The Power of Belief” and it begins with a man who came home one day and announced that he was dead. 

Imagining Libertatia: Paradise, Pirates, and the Work of Mutual Liberation – Written by Rev. Caitlin Cotter Coillberg, Presented by Rev. Kristin Grassel Schmidt

This morning’s sermon, like the rest of the service, was written by Rev. Caitlin Cotter Coillberg, who is home sick today. It’s my pleasure to preach it in her stead:

“It is hard to be objective about Pirates.” That’s the opening sentence of activist, anthropologist, and anarchist David Graeber’s book Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia.

Empty Altars – Rev. Kristin G. Schmidt

Like a lot of families, mine celebrated our cultural and ethnic heritage in different ways. My mother lovingly made the traditional Hungarian and Slovakian foods her mother had cooked. No Christmas was complete for us without poppy seed stollen and cabbage rolls with sour cream, no family birthday conceivable without Chicken Paprikash and homemade galushkis.…

Who do we serve? A Pi Day Sunday Service – Rev. Caitlin Cotter Coillberg

During my study leave a few weeks ago I went, once again, to the Museum of African American History and Culture.  I went again in part to see the wonderful exhibit on Afro-futurism, eager to experience it without the distraction of two active curious toddlers.  If you missed our field trip to see that last year, it’s not too late! We need to find ways to celebrate imagination.

Celebration Sunday – Rev. Kristin G. Schmidt

Fourteen years ago this July, I went to the DC Marriage Bureau to get a license so that Christian and I could get married. The District of Columbia had passed marriage equality months before in March of 2010, but it wasn’t until July that the Court of Appeals upheld the decision, and the joy among the couples who finally trusted their marriages wouldn’t be invalidated was infectious. I’m pretty sure I was the only woman in line that day planning to marry a man, and I have never experienced such happiness and elation in any government building again since. 

A Third Place – Rev. Christian Schmidt

This pandemic showed us many things: that we are all vulnerable, that we depend on each other for safety, and that we can change and adapt. And being restricted in where we could go, where was safe to go, reminded us of something important, that we need places, physical and virtual, to gather together, to…