News & Events

Why in this tradition-filled meeting house, in a congregation originally gathered by Puritans (who almost certainly did not dance) are we dancing and reveling and reenacting ancient rituals originally designed to bring back the sun and ensure the rebirth of the...

In such tumultuous times as these, how do you sustain yourself? Many of you reading this might respond by saying you go to church on Sunday, or participate in some other regular or semi-regular religious or spiritual practice. For some it is working out at the gym or...

Thanksgiving as a Spiritual Practice… The Clergy of Sudbury welcomes all area churches to this Interfaith Thanksgiving Celebration. November 23, 10:00 am – Music Sunday – Hear the Poetry of Frost Set to Music this Sunday
This Sunday, join First Parish of Sudbury in experiencing typical New England landscapes and philosophical journeys through the poetry of American poet, Robert Frost, set to the music of Randall Thompson’s “Frostiana”. The choral piece will be performed by the First Parish of Sudbury choir and accompanist Noriko Yasuda under the direction of Debra Morris-Bennett, First Parish music director. The Music Sunday concert-service is free and begins at 10 a.m. in the First Parish of Sudbury sanctuary.
Thompson and Frost were acquainted through family connections, and when the composer was commissioned to write the composition for the town of Amherst’s two-hundredth anniversary,

This coming Sunday honors the bounty of the harvest and we celebrate it by engaging in a cornbread community communion. Rev. Dr. Marjorie Matty shares her thoughts about what it will take to sustain and flourish on our planet. Rev. Marjorie considers, “In the face of...

Why is it important and how can we intellectually, emotionally and spiritually sustain ourselves as individuals while maintaining the First Parish Meeting House in the face of a changing religious needs and a shifting communication paradigm. Rev. Dr. Marjorie Matty...

This is the time of the year when it is said that the “veil between worlds” is considered to be at its thinnest enabling those who have died to commune with the living. The legend of Día de Muertos in Mexico and Latin America, not to mention the many pagan communities around the world fills this time of year with festivities, skeletons and strange tales. Rev. Dr. Marjorie Matty will be offering a “Presente” a calling out to the dead and an altar will be built to honor our ancestors. She will consider the conundrum of being conscious beings who face the inevitable reality of our own mortality.

This Sunday we extend a warm welcome to Rob Kinslow a candidate for the Unitarian Universalist ministry

A bit from Rev. Kinslow: The writer Kurt Vonnegut once offered that church is a place to daydream about God. I think many of us come to church on Sunday with lots of questions fueling those daydreams-about God, about life, about the presence of good and evil in the world. Often when we ponder a supreme something, when we think about something as vast and mysterious as infinity, we think big-the expansive and expanding universe, even what some call the “multiverse.” I’d like to suggest that infinity runs both ways, and that if you think small, and smaller still, it’s possible to get just a little closer to the answers to any burning questions you might have. In this Sunday’s service I’ll offer ways to imagine infinite smallness and how such imagining-said another way, a welcoming of provocative thinking, an openness to pondering the imponderable-might help us stand on firmer ground, holier ground.

Rev. Dr. Marjorie Matty and Rev. Tom O’Brien from the Memorial Congregational Church, in honor of the 375 anniversary, will be creating worship together. Members and children from First Parish and MCC are has invited to join in the celebration. The topic of discussion will be our shared past, the historic schism, our present and the possibilities of working together to build the beloved community of the future.

Soon after the pilgrims arrived on the shore of New England the indigenous people welcomed them without full knowledge of what the implications of their actions might bring. Throughout history how people have been received and either welcomed or turned away based on difference of religion, politics, language, race or societal norms has brought grave consequences and war to the world. One might think that humankind would learn from our egregious mistakes however greed and ego continue to cause those in power to make the same mistakes today. Rev. Dr. Marjorie Matty will be wondering about the different ways that we can understand and appreciate difference without fear and she will consider some strategies of how humanity might avoid making the same mistakes as our forbears.