It is fitting that we start our monthly themes this year with “What is it to embrace your heart?," because that is how I intend to go on with our year! Being a Unitarian Universalist means being vulnerable with your heart, within our community and outside of it. This year, we’ll be deepening our conversations about what it means to be a caring, open, and anti-oppressive community.

We all know that in order to welcome people who have historically been excluded from our communities, UU and otherwise, we must find new ways of being together: embracing restorative practices rather than punitive, being vulnerable with one another rather than putting up a “brave front,” meeting conflict with curiosity rather than defensiveness or ego. And while we will definitely be using our heads to figure out how to best live out our values, first we must embrace our hearts. We must embrace our empathy, our compassion, even our pain, in order to truly hear the needs of our communities, and to embrace new, more life-giving ways of being together.

And so naturally, I decided that this month I'll share how some of our members have been embracing their hearts as well as some upcoming opportunities for you to do the same!

In July, we held an accessibility listening session for people with disabilities and neurodiverse folks to share how we might change our space to be more welcoming. The group made many suggestions, some of which are small and quickly implemented, and others that will take more time and resources. The group will be gathering again for support and discussion in mid-September. Do join us if you want to be part of it! (Watch your Weekly Connection for a date.) 

In August, the Racial Justice Team met to raise the question of how we open our hearts to a wider portion of our greater community, and how we translate the love and support we feel for people of marginalized communities into real action and practice. What do we still need to change, as a congregation, in order to draw our circle ever wider? How do we insure that we keep learning, growing, and supporting one another as we continue to, as adrienne maree brown puts it, do the next right thing?

The Caring Listeners (formerly the Spiritual Companions) met to talk about how we help people to speak more openly of their struggles and their needs, as well as their joys and successes. How can we encourage folks to lower the defenses and smokescreens we’re taught to put up, in order to get to the real spiritual and emotional work of healing and connecting to our fellow congregants? How do we have difficult conversations about conflict while affirming our love for one another? How do we hold people, as norms shift from a culture of “having the right answers” to a culture of “making sure everyone is heard”? 

And our Justice Council is in the midst of getting ready for this year's Social Justice Challenge, which will embrace most of the month of October, from the 3rd to the 24th. Please have a look at our upcoming events, bookmark, and keep checking your weekly connections! Our full schedule of Social Justice Challenge events will be released in the next couple of weeks, so get ready to mark your calendars. There will be some great opportunities to embrace your heart and to try something new.

Perhaps you’ve had this happen in your household. You’re rushing to get out the door, and you have hit some resistance from a small person or two who live with you and ask, “Why? Why do we have to go? Why do we have to go to church?” And amidst all the chaos, you are at a loss for words. What do you say? Why do you have to go to church? You, as a grown-up, have your reasons: community, spiritual growth, giving back, etc. 

Still, why should your kids go to church?

We have an answer for you: We go to church to grow our hearts.

This famous phrase is written on the wall in the Faith Exploration wing of the church. These words were uttered to Rev. Wendy after a service in Flagstaff, AZ, at the church that she and I both served a while back. This famous phrase is emblematic of what we strive for in Faith Exploration. To grow our hearts, we need to learn to live with empathy, be courageous, and speak truth to power. To grow our hearts, we grow a loving community where everyone is accepted for however they show up. To grow our hearts, we learn to be in healthy relationships with others, answer big questions, and explore religious communities beyond our church walls. 

To grow our hearts, we go to church. We learn this and live this in Faith Exploration. 

So, the way we are going to embrace our hearts in Faith Exploration is to embrace this phrase in everything we do. In honor of Wendy’s final year here at Common Flame, this is the theme for the year in Faith Exploration. 

We go to church to grow our hearts. 

May it be so.



Everyone starts somewhere, right? When we enter any building for the first time, we take that deep breath and hope that nothing blows up in our face. From new jobs to new communities, we are all looking to find a place where we belong. We can prepare our whole lives and still walk into a room feeling like we don't quite fit.

It takes bravery to make those first steps. Whether we're going to a New Here class or simply walking through the doors for the first time, we're met with all those little anxieties that come with being new. Being new is scary and hard. Yet we do the hard thing. We listen to our hearts, take that deep breath, and walk through the door anyway.

Once we've been here for a while, we get to become the people who help the next new person find a home. I love the full circle of that. Remember the first person who said hello to you when you walked through our doors? Now you get to be that person and make a difference in someone else's life. You can be the one who shows them that they didn't make a wrong turn and that they can relax. Think about the relief of realizing you might have found your place. Now we get to turn around and offer that feeling to someone else.



As we think about “embracing your heart,” it's a good time to reflect on what brought us here in the first place. What pulled on your heart enough to make you walk through the door? What were you looking for? And now that you're here, how can you help someone else take those first steps?

Every week, new faces walk through our doors looking for connection and wondering if this might be their place. So say hello. Learn a name. Make room for someone you haven't met yet. Help someone new discover what you once discovered for yourself: what it means to find belonging around one Common Flame.

What is it to embrace your heart? 

That question is not one I trust myself to answer quickly, and as you may suspect, that’s kind of the point. It’s the kind of question you carry, rather than solve. It's the kind of question our tradition has always been more interested in living inside than closing the book on. 

I’ve been sitting with it lately because it’s also, in a quieter way, the question our choir asks every time we start a new season. Rehearsals begin again in September, and every year I’m struck by the same small miracle: a room full of people who don’t yet know what the music will ask of them, showing up anyway. That’s a kind of heart-embracing too: the willingness to be a beginner again, to let a phrase of music undo something in you before you understand why. 

Music has never been especially interested in giving us answers. What it’s good at is loosening our grip on the need for one. A chord that doesn’t resolve the way you expect, a text that says something you’ve heard a hundred times but suddenly means something entirely different. These are small invitations to stay curious a little longer than might be comfortable. I think that’s close to what it means to embrace your heart: not to master it, but to stop bracing against what it might still have to teach you. 

So as the choir gathers again this month, and as we all step into a new year together, I find myself wondering alongside you: what does your heart already know, that your mind hasn’t caught up to yet? Where in your life right now are you being asked to stay open, rather than certain? And is there a piece of music (a hymn, a song from childhood, something you can’t quite explain) that has embraced your heart back? 

I don’t have tidy answers to any of that, and I’m not sure I want them. What I have is a season of singing ahead of us, and a hope that whether you’re in the choir loft or the congregation, you’ll let this month’s question sit with you a while. Not as something to figure out, but as something to feel your way into.

See you in song.

by Amy Stasch

A roommate once told me I was an “excessively practical person.” She may have stammered that in frustration, but my practicality has always been a point of pride for me. To be honest, the phrases of “following your heart” or doing something “just for the joy of it,” seemed like concepts from romcoms I’ve struggled to relate to my day-to-day.

Yet, in the last weeks of my mom’s life, we made a point of eating homemade ice cream out of dainty family heirloom teacups that were always regarded as “the good dishes” relegated to a dark cabinet. And of eating foods that had previously been only for “special” times. I realized in her waning weeks she was teaching me some final lessons about celebrating life (with the memories carried in the objects inherited from prior generations) in the small moments and not waiting for the grand joys or sorrows that proclaim themselves.

I recently took a 2.5-week solo road-trip. It’s the longest I’ve taken off work, the longest I’ve camped out of my car. I clearly remember a shorter trip, some 15 years ago, when my irritation boiled over as my sister spent ten minutes at the end of a long day of adventure debating which campsite would have a better view for our morning wake ups. My practical self just wanted her to stop debating and choose the darn campsite so we could begin cooking dinner (yes, I’m extremely food motivated)!

Part of what I love about a meandering road trip is just that: the meander. The choice to follow a mysterious road, to take the impractical route, or to go swimming just because the river is there. Yet this trip, I realized that my desire to absorb the simplest pleasures grew: the noticing of the sensations of eating ice cream on a hot day, the change of shoes immediately after a long hike, the stop by the side of the highway to dig the stove out and make an extra cup of coffee, and yes, the perfect positioning of the tent so the morning sunrise view is perfection. To me, these are all small actions of setting down practicalities and following my heart.

On a longer driving day of the trip, a podcast with host Charlie Warzel interviewing author Ian Bogost began in my feed. The topic was gratification, defined by the Bogost as “why the tiny rituals, sensory pleasures, and routine interactions we tend to overlook may be the very things that make us feel connected to one another, to the world around us, and to ourselves.” I’ve thought a lot about the varied layers that nourished my heart and soul this trip. Yes, the grand vistas and the big hikes, but also the small interactions in small town grocery stores and coffee shops, the afternoon ice creams, the steady routine of preparing my coffee with a camp stove each morning, and the satisfaction of packing the back of my car just so to avoid that stove rattling.

Indeed, embracing your heart might be grand gestures, but maybe it’s also the small daily gratifications.

by Rev. Ruth Rinehart

Dear ones, it is a great joy of mine to be an Affiliated Community minister here at Common Flame. Since 2008 (wow!), I have watched you grow and change, and you have watched me grow and change. I wanted to update you on my work here in Colorado with Unitarian Universalism.

Perhaps you have now heard of UUCAN: UU Colorado Action Network. After Rev. Lydia Ferrante-Roseberry and I returned from Minneapolis in January, we wanted to build on what we saw there: the power of Unitarian Universalists organized in their state, and their ability to move, to create possibilities, to respond quickly, to amplify our partner organizations. So many of us are already involved in the public square, and we are not looking to duplicate organizations or structures. We want to organize and amplify as we all work to build the more just and beautiful world we all know is possible.



UUCAN: Solidarity Summit on October 3

The Colorado Solidarity Summit will be the first in-person, statewide convening of UUCAN on Saturday, October 3, at All Souls UU Church in Colorado Springs. As part of "UU the Vote 2026: Ignite Solidarity, Reimagine Democracy," gatherings like this are regional interfaith justice trainings designed to strengthen relationships, capacities, and skills. The event in Colorado Springs will focus on deep canvassing skills for defeating harmful ballot measures in November, and training for being on the frontline in potentially hostile environments. Build spiritual community and ground in joyful connection while learning together! You can learn more about Solidarity Summits here, and you can directly register for our Colorado October 3rd event here.

There is a cap of 100 attending this event, and there are already 5 registered from Common Flame. Will you be part of the 10-12 person team going to Colorado Springs on Saturday, October 3? Whether or not you can make the Solidarity Summit, if you are not already registered with UUCAN, you can register your interest here, and be invited to our monthly zoom gatherings, and the Actions Hours we hope will begin after the election.

As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts, and look forward to those coffee hour moments in the Commons.