interview

Does living your best life mean that you've got it all figured out? Does it mean all pleasure and no pain? Does the concept of no pain even make sense in the world where joy and beauty are so often entangled with disappointment and struggle? Rev. Elaine digs into these questions and more with long-time Foothills members Lynn Young and Bob Bacon. They explore how we can hold the tension of being both awake to suffering and open to beauty and joy.

This week on the podcast we're diving into a new series called "Your Best Life," exploring how we don’t need to have it together, to do it together. What our consumer society tells us we need to live our best life is a lie... so what the heck does it mean to live your best life? Join Revs. Sean and Elaine as they explore a possible answer to this big question.  2:49 - Reading from No Cure for being Human by Kate Bowler 6:12 - Conversation with Revs. Sean and Elaine

In the final week of our series Re-Assembly Required, which is all about repairing broken relationships, we're zooming out to focus on communal relationships — specifically, the relationship between settlers and native peoples. Rev. Sean interviews indigenous activists Christinia Eala and Elissa Tivona about Hughes Land Back. Land back movements seek to restore stewardship of land to indigenous people, and Hughes Land Back specifically seeks to return the former site of Colorado State University's Hughes Stadium.

We all share the longing to be known and embraced for who we are, messy parts and all. Yet, humans are experiencing loneliness at record levels (and this was true even before the pandemic hit!). So what is it we really want in friendships and how can we find it? Rev. Gretchen draws on friendship research to help you start opening up and forming deep, authentic friendships no matter your walk of life (2:03). Then Rev. Sean converses with his close friend and fellow Unitarian Universalist minister Rev. Joe Cherry about patterns and experiences within their friendship and friendships generally (24:19).

Rev. Sean interviews couples therapist Jennifer Dunkle on how we can simplify conflicts to make them more productive. We distinguish solvable and perpetual conflicts and explore how unpacking our personal histories can help with navigating conflicting values and goals.

Rev. Sean Neil-Barron talks with Dr. Dan McKanan, Ralph Waldo Emerson Unitarian Universalist Senior Lecturer at Harvard Divinity School. They explore how the current trend of increasing economic inequality affects progressivism across religion and politics, how people rise up seeking to come to terms with America’s white supremacist and colonialist legacies, and the complex place that Unitarian Universalism occupies as a progressive religious tradition that is primarily made up of white folks. What is our role to play in movements for change? 

Rev. Gretchen draws on religious traditions, current events, and the Thanksgiving story to explore what it means to acknowledge the ghosts of our past - our past selves, our past beliefs, our past ways of being - and tend fully to the harm, while not letting go of the hope.

This week we talk about death and memory. Participants in Foothills Unitarian's Thoughtful Endings class, share their experiences with end-of-life directives and explore how life and death are interconnected and inform each other.