Speaker: Jenna Hertz  Lay Leader: Pam Miller

Musings on the effects of wild places on our understanding of the interdependent nature of the world, through the eyes of a twenty-one year old on her first trip to the Arctic Refuge. Jenna Hertz, Program and Events Assistant at Northern Alaska Environmental Center will speak.

 Speaker Hayden Nevill Lay Leader: Frida Shroyer

Michael Servetus was a proto- Unitarian who was burned at the stake as a heretic by John Calvin in 1553. His writings heavily influenced early Unitarian thought beginning in Transylvania and Poland and ultimately influencing early English and American Unitarian movements.

Speakers/Lay Leaders John and Jana Peirce

From the “Happiness Hypothesis” of positive psychology to the “World Database of Happiness” (started by a Dutch “Professor of Happiness Studies”), the causes and conditions of human happiness have lately become a subject of scientific study. Join us this Sunday as we explore some recent findings from the field of happiness research, including these and other questions: What makes us happy? Where does happiness come from? Are some countries happier than others? Should we expect happiness?

Lay Leader:  Jeanne Olson  Speaker: Phil Loring

Why do you eat local? For health reasons? Social reasons? Ethical reasons? Dr. Phil Loring, an anthropologist at UAF, will speak on the facts and fallacies that surround local food movements, especially those fallacies that have opened those movements to criticism. He will then talk about how the seven principles of Unitarian Universalism offer a template for action that can keep you, and your local food community, on track toward real social change.

Celebrant: Rev. Sarah Schurr  Lay Leader: Doug Toelle

One historic Unitarian theologian and one modern pop star; they both speak to us of the nature of the human being.

Celebrant: Rev. Sarah Schurr  Lay Leader:  Brian Rogers

Humanism is one of our six sources and was a key philosophy for our movement in the 20^th Century.  How do religious humanism and Unitarian Universalism relate historically and in our work today?

Since the 12th Century, many Christians have celebrated the blessing of the animals near the feast of St. Francis of Assi, the patron saint of animals and the environment.  For UU’s, blessings of animals allows us to contemplate our seventh principle: respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. This program will celebrate that tradition.  Please bring your animals for our UU blessing. Please bring animals that can “play well with others” or you can also bring a photograph. Lay Leader: Lisa Sporleder. Speaker: Mikayla Eager.

Lay Leader: Maia Peirce  Speakers:UUFF Young Adults

The young adults share reflections on their experiences growing up Unitarian Universalist.

Lay Leader: Phil Osborn  Special Guests: Soaring Eagle Drum Group.

UUFF will pause, along with thousands of other communities, to honor and remember the victims of September 11, 2001. We’ll host the Soaring Eagle Drum group, and our children will participate in this multigenerational service. What can we learn from such tragic events, how can we respond as a UU community to these dark parts of our world. We’ll commemorate the lives of those lost, as well as those lost at Knoxville and in the Amish community. Together, let us focus the power of healing, compassion, and love upon our world today.

Lay Leader: Laurie Walton   This is an ingathering multigenerational service. Bring waters that represent significant events that you have experienced over the summer. It is a symbolic way for us so reconnect and gather again into community as we start into the new congregational year.