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

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…

What Will We Bring to the Table? – Rev. Kristin G. Schmidt

Once upon a time there was a visiting minister preaching a real barn burner about how the church was being called to go to great lengths, do great things. Near the end of his sermon he said “this church has really got to walk” and someone in the back yelled out, “Let her walk preacher!” 

This really got the minister going. “Yes” he said, “this church has got to get up and run.” And someone else in the back shouted “Let her run, preacher!”

Under Construction – Rev. Kristin G. Schmidt

During the pandemic lockdown, one of the ways I cared for my spirit was by listening to podcasts. Of all of the new-to-me-sources of insight, comfort, and wisdom I discovered, the most powerful was “The Confessional” by Nadia Bolz Weber. A Lutheran pastor whose ministry has always been about serving those whom the Church traditionally excluded, Weber called her podcast “a no BS space for people to talk about the moments in our lives we are least proud of.”