This month we explore what it feels like to belong, and what it feels like when we do not. We ask not just where do I belong, but to whom? Belonging is about relationship and asks, to whom we are accountable? Whose lives are bound up in my own? Who needs me? The true blessing of belonging isn’t that you get to come inside the circle; it’s that you get to participate in expanding it.

Sunday Services begin at 10 AM. Children’s religious education is provided during the service.

October 6: Negotiating Racial Identity in the Upper Valley

Emily Walton, a sociology professor at Dartmouth, will talk about her research on the meaning of belonging for racialized minorities living in the Upper Valley. For people of color, making a home in a culturally white place means negotiating their own sense of worth and value in everyday interactions. Emily will discuss her observations about the cultural context, the negotiation process and mental health consequences, and potential for change to make our communities more inclusive.

October 13: Lose Yourself. Find Yourself. Everywhere, in Everything

With Rev. Jan Hutslar. This is Bring a Buddy to Church Day! Somebody needs us– invite them!

October 20: ‘Love Saves‘ Stories

Pulpit Guest Rev. Sawyer will share stories from the Old Universalists to the present day, reflecting on the saving power of love—many different kinds of love, and many different ideas of what it might mean to be “saved”—in an effort to bring some concrete examples to some ideas we often talk about in the abstract, and to invite you to reflect on the “Love Saves” stories of your own life.

The Rev. Paul S. Sawyer has served as the settled minister of the First Universalist Society of Hartland, Vermont since 2006. Prior to his ordination, Paul worked in education as a fifth-grade teacher, a behavioral counselor for children with emotional-behavioral disabilities, and as a wilderness educator, leading canoe trips, ropes courses, and teambuilding activities as program director at the Hulbert Outdoor Center in Fairlee, Vermont. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College, the Graduate School of Education at Boston University, and Harvard Divinity School. Paul serves on the board of the Northern New England District of the UUA and as a member of the funding panel for the Fund for Unitarian Universalism. He lives in Hartland, VT with his wife Katy and their two children, Emma and Aidan.

October 27: In Sweet Company

With Rev. Jan Hutslar and Chalice Circle leaders