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Soul Matters Themes 2025-26
Month Theme
September Building Belonging
October Cultivating Compassion
November Nurturing Gratitude
December Choosing Hope
January Practicing Resistance
February Embodying Resilience
March Paying Attention
April Embracing Possibility
May Awakening Curiosity
June Flourishing Together
May 2026:
Awakening Curiosity
In May, Soul Matters invites us to "Awakening Curiosity." This month's image shows a UUSF member and child sharing a moment of wonder, which is similar to Annie Lighthart's poem "The Verge." Lighthart reminds us that we should live by both reason and instinct, and be open to the "ungainly and miraculous" in our daily lives.
As the month goes on, we ask: What in your life or the world that you are currently fighting against could you meet with interest instead? You may feel "curious and ready to be true," just like the man in the poem who saw his own beauty in a window.
April 2026:
Embracing Possibility
Embracing Possibility As A Challenge
“Contemplation is not about thinking about things as they are. It is about abandoning what we know about the way things are and moving into a place where we don’t know anything. “—Trinity Primrose United Church Blog
This month, we are contemplating the theme, Embracing Possibility. I love the quote above because there have been so many times in my life when I felt stuck because I was just focusing on how to maintain what I already knew. I couldn’t understand how I could go to seminary with three young children because I was focused on the understanding I needed to move to attend. I couldn’t understand how I could move back to the San Francisco Bay Area, because I was focused on making sure my family was not disrupted. Both of these examples were made possible when I changed my perspective on how to look at them. I could attend seminary and not move. I could move to the Bay Area because my family wanted to move as well.
How often do we get in our own way of embracing possibility? And how often do we let others control our perspective of what is possible? During these times of chaos and uncertainty, my hope is we can step back and find what is possible to heal our world. Let us go into this month with the goal of embracing more possibilities and with those possibilities creating more hope.
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March 2026:
The Practice of Attention
Awareness Matters:
Engaging with Life More Deeply
It’s not enough to be in your life, in nature, or in relationships if you sleepwalk through them. The name “Buddha” means “The Awakened One," but awakeness meant a kind of focused awareness and attention. It is the kind that brings you more deeply into relationship with your own life and the depth dimension of life. As writer Mark Nepo writes, “Still yourself and listen, and soon, in time, the Mystery will begin to speak to you, through its thousand disguises as life on Earth.” This month we see what happens when you pay attention… to the practice of paying attention.
February 2026:
Embodying Resilience
Re-Grounding Sustainable Ways of Being
As we enter this month with our theme of Embodying Resilience, I wonder how many of us feel disconnected or numb or overwhelmed. This month, our practice allows us to re-ground ourselves in our values, in our bodies, and in our community. When we embody something, we are finding ways to reconnect and settle ourselves into intentional ways of being. When we pair that with resilience, then we are building systems or connections for sustainability. We practice embodying resilience through body movement, through worship, through our relationships with one another, and through spiritual practices. What are the ways you will embody resilience this month?
January 2026:
Practicing Resistance
“It’s ok to take a little step, so long as…
It's something you know something about.
do with other people,
do regularly, [and]
It makes you a little bit uncomfortable.
If it meets those criteria, then you're helping democracy.”
Quote from Timothy Snyder, American historian and author of “On Tyranny”
As we start a new year and a new month, we are asked to consider the Soul Matters theme: Practicing Resistance. What does it mean to practice resistance when you are exhausted from all that is going on in our country, let alone the world? I like Timothy Snyder’s advice above that we work on something we know; we do it with others; we do it regularly; and it makes us a little bit uncomfortable. Resistance can come in many different forms. It could be writing letters to encourage people to vote. It could be marching for the rights of immigrants or trans youth health care. It could be deciding to not shop at certain stores. It could be organizing a joyful gathering to energize people. It could be honoring when you need to rest.
Resistance allows us to push back against systemic oppression in creative and abundant ways. We encourage you this month to find the ways that resonate with you to practice resistance. Remember, we do this work together and never alone.
December 2025:
Choosing Hope
Our poem for December is Hope by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer:
Hope has holes
in its pockets.
It leaves little
crumb trails
so that we,
when anxious,
can follow it.
Hope’s secret:
it doesn’t know
the destination—
it knows only
that all roads
begin with one
foot in front
of the other.
For December our question of the month is "What is a hope you’re taking into the new year?"
Image of the Month
This photo is of the June 2025 No Kings protest in Dolores Park.
Visio Divina: To engage in ancient practice of meditating on an image as a spiritual practice click here.
November 2025:
Nurturing Gratitude
Actively Nurturing Gratitude
“This is what grateful living is. Returning to the noticing of all that is sufficient, of all that is extraordinary, all that already is in our lives, enough to take our breaths away, and using that to help us get through life in a way, through difficulty, through challenge, uplifted, enamored.” - Kristi Nelson, Author of Wake Up Grateful: The Transformative Power of Taking Nothing For Granted
As we enter into Autumn and the month of November, we begin our Soul Matters Theme of Nurturing Gratitude. When we get caught up in the state of the world or a particular personal concern, gratitude can be a practice that allows us to change our perspective or helps ground us in what we do know. By looking at our lives and our world through the lens of gratitude, we are able to notice where beauty lives, where resistance won, where abundance still resides, and where blessings abound. It does not solve the world's issues or our own concerns, however, it gives us a grounding to know what we are striving to keep as precious and that we are not alone in that effort. Make it a point this month to notice something new in the world around you; to thank those who have supported your life; to reflect on where you have been and where you are now. German Theologian Meister Eckhart said, “If the only prayer you say your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” Let gratitude be your prayer and guide this month.
October 2025:
Cultivating Compassion
The Practice of Cultivating Compassion
Over the course of a life, a lot can be taken from us. We can lose all our earthly belongings in a fire. We can and will lose loved ones, though our love and memories of them will be ours to keep. What cannot be taken with us—what, in fact, often grows stronger and richer if we are doing the work of reflective living—are two things. One is the wisdom we amass and refine over a lifetime of searching, questioning, and living our truths in the great laboratory of the world; the other is the compassion we find and nurture in ourselves, forging it into a way of being that animates how we move through the world in powerful, formative ways. This month we are looking at the second piece of what endures: compassion. We are asking you to reflect: what is this compassion we are supposed to nurture? What does it take to orient our spirit toward real compassion? How do we practice it? In worship, in the Soul Matters resources, and in our own independent reflection and study, we are invited to look at and unpack this central piece of a life well lived and how to embed compassion more deeply in our own lives.
September 2025:
Building Belonging
"A Start of a New Project: Building Belonging"
As we come back into the community from our summer adventures, we are encouraged to engage the theme of Building Belonging. As Rev. Dr. David Breeden suggests, “Belonging is not something given—it is something we build, with open hands and open hearts.” How will we build belonging this year? What do you need to feel you belong in this congregation? What will you do to open your hands and hearts to others to help them feel they belong? We will explore this theme through worship, our question of the month, visio divina, classes, and our poem of the month. We look forward to starting this effort together and hope you do as well.
