Rituals explain the world to people and enact what the people value and know as truth. Super Bowl Sunday is a great opportunity to look at the place that rituals hold in our lives and how they reflect the meanings that we give to our life experience. Today is Soup and Bread Sunday. Everyone is invited to partake in this First Sunday Fellowship ritual and have a “Super Bowl” of soup. Visitors, please be our guests!

Greeters: Michael and Tina Elliot /Coffee: Amy and Wayne Johnson

The third UU Principle commits us to “acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations.” But what does it mean to accept and encourage individuals whose spiritual quests are always taking them in new and surprising directions? Dan will share the stories of Adin Ballou and Ammon Hennacy, two social activists whose spiritual journeys were unusually “wayward,” and identify some of the ways their communities walked with them in those journeys. Dan chairs the theology department at the College of Saint Benedict/Saint John’s University, and serves the St. Cloud Unitarian Universalist Fellowship as treasurer. He is the author of three books on religion and social transformation in the United States.

February 17: “Sex and Love: Romantic Illusion or Ultimate Ideal?” Rev. Michelle Tonozzi

A belated valentine. So much of conservative religion tries to control our sexuality by way of its “genital theology.” It recognizes that our sexuality has powerful consequences for creating and upholding life, and also for the diminishment and/destruction of life. A liberal religious perspective on sex and love. .

Sandy Barnhouse, who originally became UU by joining this Fellowship in 1972, will present her plan and book, wherein she lays out a fantasy pathway to end child apartheid and save public education by closing the schools while keeping the teachers. Keeping full employment while changing everything spells a bloodless revolution and this principle can be applied elsewhere. Bringing children back into the village will transform our society for the better. Sandy is now retired to her rural art gallery/studio and attends the Underwood Unitarian Church, near Fergus Falls.