This past fall, the Region offered a course, The Sacred Hour: Worship and Preaching Seminar for Lay Leaders to “deepen connection and trust among UUs who seek to share mind and heart in service to Sunday worship.” Drawing from a number of resources and the experience of its co-facilitators, a lay leader and Unitarian Universalist minister, participants were supported towards preaching with an authentic voice.

The following is an abridged version of a reflection written by one of the participants, Emily Weiland. We are grateful for her permission to share it here:

The Cougar, the Bison, and the Beaver

Every UU community is its own living experiment in trying to embody our values in a country that seems perpetually stuck on “unexpected plot twist.” Today I want to talk about three congregations I’ve spent time in. Each one lifted me up, and each broke my heart. I’m calling them the Cougar, the Bison, and the Beaver, because sometimes you need distance to see the true shape of a thing. Please don’t try to guess who is who. This isn’t that kind of story.

The Cougar

Imagine a philosophy seminar that grew whiskers and stretched out on a sun-warmed rock to contemplate a beautifully phrased question, and you’ll have a feel for the Cougar congregation. Ideas were sacred here. Theology was a puzzle to revisit again and again, because not-knowing sharpened reverence. The sermons were cathedrals of thought: layered, elegant. They fed something in me I didn’t know was starving.

There was wealth in that space, humming quietly like an electrical current. Chamber ensembles. Visiting scholars. Reflective retreats. Beautiful things, but gathered inward, like a walled garden: exquisite, private. Justice work existed on the margins: a committee, a line item. The real life of the congregation was enrichment, not transformation. Perfection of the self rather than repair of the world.

These were genuinely kind, generous people. But when your bills are on autopay and your worst-case scenario is “awkward,” justice can remain theory. You care about it the way you care about polar bears: sincerely, but without urgency. Without needing to risk discomfort.

The Cougar taught me that the life of the mind is not opposed to the life of the spirit; it is one of its most rigorous expressions. And it taught me this: thinking beautifully about justice is not the same as doing it. Cougars are solitary creatures. When you don’t need anyone, it’s easy to forget the people who do.

The Bison

The Bison congregation had an enormous, unruly heart. You felt the welcome in your bones the moment you stepped inside. Justice wasn’t a subcommittee; it was an office overflowing with sleeping bags, tents, and warm socks, ready for whoever knocked. And people knocked. Every week.

These priorities emerged from weathering storms together. Sermons here felt like testimony, about searching for hope with almost nothing to bargain with, and still finding a spark. People who stood in food pantry lines on Thursday read the chalice words on Sunday. There were no spectators. Everyone arrived with a need. Everyone arrived with an offering. The music came from kitchen radios and childhood bedrooms, sung out loud until it became ours.

But the church itself was dying. Small pledges. Every volunteer doing three jobs and apologizing for doing only three. A shared prayer hung in the air: How do we sustain radical love in a country designed to grind it down? The answers weren’t coming. The math did not work.

The Bison taught me that compassion and radical welcome should be lived, not admired. But love requires oxygen. Like actual bison, this congregation risked extinction. When you’re exhausted, survival replaces vision. And survival, however noble, cannot sustain a future.

The Beaver

The Beaver congregation built things. Their goodness wasn’t glamorous; it was infrastructure. They showed up to protests with extra signs and a thermos of tea “in case someone needs a pick-me-up on the way to liberation.” They sponsored legislation, provided clinic escorts, and worked tirelessly on fundraising. They understood that love requires money, money requires labor, and shared labor becomes community.

Their closets overflowed with casserole dishes, auction baskets, old pageant costumes: material evidence of a thousand acts of care. These are people who remember your surgery. Your sick parent. Your fear about the job interview.

But the Sunday services were fossilized. Hymns from another century. Sermons circled the same safe ground week after week. Comfort without challenge. Affirmation without interrogation. I found myself skipping worship and coming only for coffee hour. I told myself I was resting. Really, I was mourning the nourishment I wasn’t getting.

Beavers build well, and what they build endures. But repetition can harden into rigidity. The forest shifts. The river keeps carving its way forward, whether we follow it or not. Still, the Beaver taught me this: showing up consistently is love. The unglamorous work is sacred.

What They Gave Me

Each congregation gave me something essential.
The Cougar taught me the holiness of intellect.
The Bison taught me the holiness of compassion.
The Beaver taught me the holiness of steadiness.

But mind without hands is abstraction. Heart without structure is burnout. Constancy without evolution is stagnation.

What we need are congregations with the Cougar’s fierce questions, the Bison’s enormous heart, and the Beaver’s unshakeable commitment. Places that think beautifully, love radically, and show up relentlessly. Where the vulnerable aren’t served, but centered. Where the budget is a moral document. Where values live not in mission statements, but in who gets fed, who gets heard, and who gets to rest.

What will you bring from the wilderness, from the herd, from the dam? Bring it all. We need it.