Near Death experiences

Sunday, MVUUF member, Michael Becerra, will discuss “the good, the bad, and the ugly of Retirement.”  Retirement is a time of life that most look forward to.  And, it can be wonderful for some.  Now three years into retirement, some unanticipated issues have emerged, despite preparation.  Join us as Michael discusses the journey.  This is not just for elders, there will hopefully be something for all ages.

Worship Associate Melody Lenkner

This week Associate Professor of Psychology David Chambers helps us explore how humans process an overwhelming amount of sensory information and how attention serves as the gateway to perception and memory. This talk will consider the neurological foundations of focus, the role of novelty and adaptation, and how these processes shape what we remember, especially our tendency to prioritize negative or threatening information. Ultimately, it connects these ideas to how we construct meaning and how an individual’s intention supports their search for truth.

Worship Associate is Perri Gardner

From the time that we are children, we are taught the importance of paying attention; whether it is crossing the street or learning in school. Being aware of what is going on is one aspect of paying attention. However, during times of duress, it is easy to tune ourselves out, to try ignore when your body is trying to tell you something, ignore what is going on around us, and close ourselves off from bad things happening around us. Unfortunately, tuning out is only a way of ignoring our challenges and doesn’t do anything to resolve our issues. Paying attention to what’s going on cannot only protect us but it can benefit others as well. Join us this Sunday for our monthly discussion and our topic will focus on the importance of paying attention.

Presented/ Worship Associate Don Morishita

Drawing inspiration from Tiya Miles’ award-winning book, All That She Carried, this Women’s History Month service explores the stories that survive outside official history — lives, memories, and acts of love carried across generations.

Together we will reflect on how feminist approaches to studying history helps us recover voices too often overlooked, honoring our Unitarian Universalist commitment to the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

Perri Gardner will present.

“As with Eustace in C.S. Lewis’s book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Christine Geisel, MVUUF Member, is finding the answer is not having thicker skin, or more armor, but a bigger heart: just a bigger wide-open heart of love. An open heart not afraid to break.” Join us Sunday to learn more.

Don Morishita is the Worship Associate

Award-winning hospice social worker and author, Lejla Becirovic, will discuss resilience based on her life’s journey and professional work supporting individuals and families through hardship and loss this Sunday at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. 

Worship Associate is Erica Hopkins

When we are battered by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, by serious illness, loss of a loved one, loss of a job, financial crisis, betrayal, rejection, or depression, where do we find the strength to keep going, to have hope? Join us this Sunday as Tom Schwartz, retired professor and international consultant, will talk about those seasons of affliction and how they can lead us either to disillusionment and bitterness or to empathy, compassion and love. He will suggest ways in which suffering can bring with it compensation blessings and spiritual growth.  

Worship Associate is Don Morishita

This Sunday, we gather for Chocolate Communion, a sweet and sensory ritual reminding us that nothing that nourishes us is made alone. From cacao bean to shared table, chocolate carries a story of interdependence — of many hands, many lives, and many differences woven together. As we taste, we’ll reflect on love of neighbor, the gifts of diversity, and the truth that sweetness in our lives so often arrives through one another. Come ready to savor, to notice, and to remember that we belong to a web of connection far wider than we can see.

Presented by Perri Gardner.

Worship Associate Jonathan Thompson

Finding Faith in the Space Between is Liyah Babayan’s personal testimony of faith, resilience, and transformation shaped by displacement, trauma, and trust in the Creator. Liyah was born in Baku, Azerbaijan, and grew up amid ethnic violence and forced migration, learning early about fear, loss, and survival. Raised in an Orthodox Armenian Christian household under communism, faith was practiced quietly and inwardly, becoming a source of protection, guidance, and inner strength. As a child, she witnessed faith in action through the Salvation Army, where dignity, empathy, and unconditional care were extended to people in need. These experiences reshaped her understanding of faith from something merely believed into something lived and embodied. After settling in the United States as a  refugee, hard work, adaptation, and journaling became her pathway to gratitude and deeper trust in the Creator, even when she lacked full understanding. Through the concept of liminality, explored in her book Liminal and her coaching work, Liyah reflects on life’s in-between spaces, moments of uncertainty, transition, and instability as sacred thresholds for growth. She has learned that faith is not a destination or a certainty, but a daily practice of presence, self-awareness, and trust. Ultimately, resilience has become a spiritual practice for her: the choice to rise with purpose, remain open-hearted, and align mind, body, and spirit through life’s challenges. She invites others to see their own liminal spaces not as detours or disruptions, but as places where faith deepens, strength expands, and peace becomes possible.

Worship Associate Pam Blankenheim