Diana Gagliardi was the winning bidder for a sermon topic – so, here’s the plan: The many incarnations of “My Little Pony” point to some of the ways we are teaching valuable and sometime unintended lessons to our children, and others, these days. Let’s take a look.

We’re frequently given an apparently exclusive choice between freedom’s chaos and the safety of strict organization. There is more of a variety before us.

Among us are many remarkable people whose efforts and accomplishments enrich humanity. And we are, all of us, agents of change. We have work to do.

Two religiously significant anniversaries, the Edict of Torda and the Protestant Reformation, can point us to lessons from our Unitarian and Universalist roots.

In our first service of the 2018 we’ll consider what we want to bring with us into this new year and what we’d rather let go of in a pyrotechnic sort of way.

With songs and stories and dance and the light of candles – that’s how we welcome a magical time. Let’s come together at the Fellowship at 7 p.m. to begin.

It would be nice not to think I don’t share traits with the perpetrator of the latest crime or atrocity or inanity, but really we all have so much in common it’s hard to feel superior or disconnected.

Nothing’s quite as sure as change. Resisted or embraced, it happens. It’s true in our lives. It’s true for the Fellowship.

What has been and what can be and how, and whether to get from one to the other – such a dilemma.

It’s a story of rich and poor. And a bit more.