It's time to put together all the learning we've done about ourselves and start using it to dig into tough topics. Rev. Kevin took time at a recent service to open the conversation about the conflict in Gaza and our spiritual call to find both clarity and complexity.

Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Sophia McKean, Worship Associate

Enneagram Series - Type Nine (9): Our final Enneagram type, the Nine, the Peacemaker, is the part of us that is driven to seek inner and outer peace for ourselves and others. This is also the part of us that embodies the fundamental challenge of all spiritual or inner work – being awake rather than asleep to our true nature. Whew. Sounds exhausting. At least to a Nine. Maybe I’ll sleep just a little bit longer.

Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Lindsay Dunckel, Worship Associate

Enneagram Series - Type Five (5): Our year-long look into aspects of our personalities is meant, in part, to strengthen our ability to live the pluralism our tradition claims as important. We begin this month’s pluralism theme with a dive into Fiveness. The head-centered “Investigator” is the part of us that wants to find out why things are the way they are and to understand how the world works – always searching, asking questions, and testing truth for ourselves. Sounds like many a Unitarian Universalist.

Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Randy McKean, Worship Associate

Enneagram Series - Type Seven (7): Sometimes the fun-loving, spontaneous, high-energy, upbeat, enthusiastic part of us is exactly these things. And sometimes these are ways to cope, ways to avoid feeling a deep pain beneath the surface. It is no accident that the Laugh Factory in Hollywood has a Psychologist-in-Residence for its comedians. This Sunday, we look into the Enneagram 7 – the Enthusiast - in all of us.

Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Randy McKean, Worship Associate

The Four in us (Enneagram-speak again), the Individualist, is the deeply feeling part of us that sees our self as fundamentally different from others. In our search for our own clear identity, this sense of uniqueness sometimes anchors us and sometimes leads us to feel perpetually misunderstood, or that something is missing or deficient in us. At heart, this is our search for significance, a journey we travel as individuals in community.

Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Beth Karow, Worship Associate

The Enneagram 2-ness in us (The Helper, the Altruist, The Lover) is the part of us that longs to be loved, and loved for exactly who we are. This can be the part of us that is most genuinely and generously helpful to other people or, sometimes, the part of us that is most highly invested in seeing ourselves as helpful. In our pursuit of justice and equity – and in so many other areas of our lives – we and those around us benefit when we’re able to know and notice the difference.

Rev. Kevin Tarsa with Worship Associate, Gail Johnson Vaughan

Enneagram Series: Type Three (3)

The Three-ness in each of us (in Enneagram-speak) responds to our learned tendency to base our value on what we do or achieve or how we appear. Our UU values call us to recognize and honor the inherent goodness and value of every person, including each other, and including ourselves. Sounds a lot like love. Maybe even liberating love.

Rev. Kevin with Sophia McKean, Worship Associate

Enneagram Series: We each take in the world, process what we’ve experienced, and make decisions through a combination of instinct, feeling, and thinking, though most of us over-rely on one of those three. The rub is that the one we rely on most is also where we are stuck and least free. And that means there is hope.

Worship Associate Gail Johnson Vaughan

Reading by Beth Karow

Music by Toby Thomas-Rose, Kate Canan, Randy McKean