September 19, 2021
Celebration Kick-Off Service
Rev. Anthony Makar, Worship Leader
Vicky Warden, Worship Associate
David Blazer, Music Director
The Free Spirit Band
West Shore's very first service was held 75 years ago, on September 15, 1946. Today's service kicks off our Diamond Jubilee year, in which we celebrate our 75 years of existence, from the beginning to where we are right now.
Special thanks to Abby Rosu for designing the logo for the 75th Diamond Jubilee Anniversary Celebration and to Karen Auer for making the felt banner that will hang on the pulpit for the entire year.
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![Sustainability 101: Ecology as the Heart of Theology]()
August 1, 2021
Reverend Michael Dowd, Guest Worship Leader
Vicky Warden, Worship Associate
David Blazer, Music Director
Rev. Dowd elaborates on his 6-point “Eco-Theo Credo: "Reality is my God. Evidence is my scripture. The Epic of Evolution is my creation story. Ecology is my theology. Integrity is my spiritual path. Fostering fidelity to the future is my mission."
REV. MICHEL DOWD: Rev. Michael Dowd is bestselling eco-theologian, TEDx speaker, and pro-future advocate whose work has been featured in The New York Times, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Newsweek, Discover, and on television nationally in the U.S. and Canada. Michael and his science writer, evolutionary educator, and fellow climate activist wife, Connie Barlow, have addressed nearly 3,000 groups throughout North America over the past two decades, including nearly 500 Unitarian Universalist churches. Their work has been featured on the cover of the UU WORLD twice, in 1997 and again in 2006.
Michael and Connie were honored as “UU Religious Humanists of the Year” in 2016.
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May 23, 2021
by Reverend Anthony Makar, Worship Leader
Vicky Warden, Worship Associate
David Blazer, Director of Music
Our year-long sermon series exploring some of the world religion sources of our Unitarian Universalist spiritual way continues with Primal Religions (specifically, the Yoruba religion of West Africa). Our study text is Huston Smith’s The World’s Religions: The 50th Anniversary Edition (available at your local bookstore, at Amazon, and other outlets). As preparation for the sermon, please read the chapter on Primal Religions (pp. 365-383) before the service.
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May 9, 2021
by Reverend Anthony Makar, Worship Leader
Vicky Warden, Worship Associate
David Blazer, Director of Music
Join Rev. Makar for an art-filled exploration of the "art" of motherhood. From paintings, music, poetry and other forms of artistic endeavor. We will come to learn and affirm what good mothering is all about.
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March 21, 2021
by Reverend Anthony Makar, Worship Leader
Vicki Warden, Worship Associate
David Blazer, Director of Music
“Forward into Light” was a popular rallying cry for the women’s suffrage movement, which culminated in the ratification and adoption of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, in 1920, that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” Today, Rev. Makar explores the drama and complexity of this story, together with the continuing struggle for women’s voting rights.
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![The Journey Towards a Healthy White Identity]()
December 6, 2020
by Reverand Anthony Makar, Worship Leader
Vicky Warden, Worship Associate
David Blazer, Director of Music
Passion for life does not necessarily come when we make huge achievements. But it comes when we know how to see beauty in the smallest things, grace in the darkest hour, and the courage to love when life is at its messiest. The gifts that keep us growing are often wrapped in the most unusual packages.
In her book Good White People: The Problem With Middle-Class White Anti-Racism, philosopher Shannon Sullivan writes, “Whiteness is not a club in which a white person can just decide to drop her membership. Whether a white person likes it or not, at this moment in history she is white and she is implicated in the effects of whiteness. How she takes up and lives her complicity in white domination will help determine the quality of her contributions to racial justice movements.” In other words, how might white people learn to develop psychologically and spiritually healthy white identities, in service to the liberation of all? What does that look like?
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October 25, 2020
by Reverend Anthony Makar
Vicky Warden, Worship Associate
David Blazer, Director of Music
Somewhere downstairs a door slammed, and my father entered the house laughing. Instantly, the whole universe joined in. Great roars of hilarity sounded from sun to sun. Field mice tittered, and so did angels and rainbows. Laughter leavened every atom and every star until I saw a universe inspirited and spiraled by joy, not unlike the one I read of years later when Dante describes his great vision in paradise, ‘D'el riso d'el universo’ (the joy that spins the universe). This was a knowledge of the way everything worked. It worked through love and joy and the utter interpenetration and union of everything with the All That Is." This story comes from psychologist and spiritual teacher Jean Houston, and it adds to an untold number of similar stories about people encountering the infinite. Let’s take a closer look.
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August 9, 2020
by Reverend Michelle Ma and
Vicky Warden, Worship Associate
Why go to church? What do we get out of it? What is church for? Rev. Michelle Ma has some ideas: at church, we build a new world, one that doesn't play by old rules.
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February 23, 2020
by Reverend Anthony Makar and
Victoria Warden, Worship Associate
If a “foodie” is someone who has refined tastes in food and drink and tends to seek out new food experiences, a “soul foodie” is someone who is like that in the religious realm. Today we talk about how Unitarian Universalism invites people to be soul foodies and what we need to be aware of in order for our worship to be hospitable to that.
Music: I am Resilient by Rising Appalachia, sung by Margaret Gardner and Ally Jagoda
December 29, 2019
by Martha Blachly-Cross and Ryan Rosu, Worship Leaders
Vicki Warden, Worship Associate
For the shortest, darkest weeks of the year, human beings have, from the beginnings of time, created festivals of light to brighten their days. Christmas, Hanukkah, Epiphany—each anticipates the longed-for return to spring, each has its rites, symbols and above all stories. For the holidays, then, a reading list. Chaucer urged, “To read and drive the night away.”
May 20, 2018
West Shore Choir David Blazer, Director of Music Join us for this year’s final installment of the B. Neil Davis Artist Series, as the West Shore Choir presents Missa Gaia (A Mass in Celebration of Mother Earth) released by Paul Winter in 1982. It is an environmental liturgy of contemporary music. The Mass features the instrumentation of the Paul Winter Consort along with choir, vocal soloists, and the calls of wolves, whales and many other animals that are woven into the pieces. Joining David Blazer with the instrumental accompaniment will be Jon Eager (Soprano Sax), Marty Neubert (Oboe/English horn), Derek Snyder (Cello), Brian Kozak (Guitar), Dan Shell (Bass), Mell Csicsila and Evan Mitchell (Percussion).
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