[Worship] Fw: From Soul Matters: Announcing Our 2025-26 Soul Matters Themes!

Tue Apr 29 22:33:07 CDT 2025

________________________________
From: Soul Matters <scott at soulmatterssharingcircle.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2025 2:54 PM
To: marthamcg5119 at gmail.com <marthamcg5119 at gmail.com>
Subject: From Soul Matters: Announcing Our 2025-26 Soul Matters Themes!

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Dear Friends,

We are thrilled to announce our 2025-26 Soul Matters themes!

Before sharing the list, we want to express our appreciation for filling out our theme survey. So many of you went the extra mile to share very detailed responses. This extra effort not only helped us select the themes but will shape our approach to them. Thanks for widening our imagination about how these themes can be explored!

With that, here are this coming year's themes. Drum roll...

September:  Building Belonging            (Belonging)

October:       Cultivating Compassion    (Compassion)

November:   Nurturing Gratitude            (Gratitude)

December:   Choosing Hope                   (Hope)

January:       Practicing Resistance        (Resistance)

February:     Embodying Resilience       (Resilience)

March:          Paying Attention                 (Attention)

April:            Embracing Possibility        (Possibility)

May:             Awakening Curiosity          (Curiosity)

June:            Flourishing Together          (Flourishing)

Some comments for context:

Active-Phrase and Single-Word themes: You will notice that in the list above we included the single-word versions of each theme next to the active-phrase versions. This is because, while most of you were excited about the energy that phrased themes provide, a significant number of you felt single-word themes leave more room for your creativity and unique angles on the theme. So while the active-phrase versions will appear on the covers of our packets, we want to encourage those of you who prefer the single-word themes to use them in your worship services, RE and newsletters/websites.

Honoring Interest in the Metaphorical Themes: We were pleased that a number of you liked the more metaphorical themes listed in the survey (Coming Home, Facing Our Fears, Turning Toward Trouble, Weathering the Storms, etc). While these didn't win out, we will do our best to honor this enthusiasm by including these more imaginative versions as sub-themes in the worship and RE packets.

Leaving the Overarching Theme to You: There was no clear direction from this year's survey about the overarching theme. Some of you even said you are fine without it. So we've decided to leave it up to you. To help, here's a list of some of the options many of you suggested in the survey: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IUrZJdXYA55icIL0Xwr57bfLloePY_t-tyLFQ19huMg/edit?usp=sharing<https://dcsw8.r.sp1-brevo.net/mk/cl/f/sh/SMK1E8tHeFuBo1P5FoPtbOmfcNzr/-wsQ7b3iMV16>

Connecting to Our UU Values: As in past years, our Soul Matters team plans to lift up connections to our UU values<https://dcsw8.r.sp1-brevo.net/mk/cl/f/sh/SMK1E8tHeG13GAE2QyZNhE5Paga7/vyFiLa9oYU2m> as we research our 2025-26 themes and create our resources, especially the worship research packets and RE packets. But we also encourage you to do your own thinking and work around this. To help, we’ve put together the following list that lifts up some possible connections between our Soul Matters themes and our UU values: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10j7Y4H23LNt471sEo8AiC3UCs_QUU_VqgufvKjhjhrs/edit?usp=sharing<https://dcsw8.r.sp1-brevo.net/mk/cl/f/sh/SMK1E8tHeG7uiJ2zc8irn3O9YzAN/n0MfdoEYNBAx>

That's all for now. Thanks for getting us excited about the road ahead. We are so looking forward to another year of journeying together!
Rev. Scott
on behalf of the entire Soul Matters Team<https://dcsw8.r.sp1-brevo.net/mk/cl/f/sh/SMK1E8tHeGEmARrwnIsLssgtXHkd/QPOwAAc_7KWm>

p.s. Our Store is Open!

No rush, but if you are ready to purchase your 2025-26 subscriptions, our Store Page<https://dcsw8.r.sp1-brevo.net/mk/cl/f/sh/SMK1E8tHeGLdcagtyT1pyhzdVaKt/XX2UoL0RrO8J> has been updated and is ready to use. As always, don't hesitate to reach out if we can help you with your discernment.

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