Join us for the Sunday Service!

In person and on Zoom ~ 11:00 am

Every Sunday morning at 11:00, we gather for beautiful music, sharing joys and sorrows, inspired preaching, and building beloved community. Following the service, there are both in-person and virtual coffee hours. All are welcome!  

In Person:The Great Doors at 20 Arlington Street open at 10:30 and music begins at 10:45. Dress as you'd like; come as you are. 

On Zoom: For those who would like to participate virtually, please meet us in the Arlington Street Zoom Room! Join with video at tinyurl.com/ASCZoom or participate by phone by dialing (929) 436-2866. For either option, the meeting ID is 895 886 6876.

You are welcome here!

Join the Arlington Street Zoom Room

Download the Order of Service

Fill the Virtual Collection Plate

Submit Candles of Joy & Sorrow

Make a Pledge for 2024-25

Watch Past Sermons and Full Services

Spring Gala in Celebration of Rev. Kim

Saturday, May 4 ~ 6:00–9:00 pm

On Saturday night, May 4th, you are invited to our big, sparkly gala — delicious food, signature cocktails and mocktails, jazz, fabulous auction items, and dancing with a live DJ! We’ll be celebrating Rev. Kim’s 35 years of ministry: It’s going to be wonderful! Get your tickets now at https://givebutter.com/c/ASCgala. Please come!

Covenant Renewal

A Personal Reflection from John O'Connor

offered on Sunday morning, February 11th, 2024

For the past 34 years, Arlington Street has been my spiritual home. In stormy times, it has been a place of shelter. I remember in 1990, standing at this very podium, offering my very first candle. I was shaking with rage. A group of us had just attended an AIDS fundraiser in the South End when were attacked by a gang, wielding broken bottles and bats, screaming anti-gay slurs. Several ended up in the hospital with serious injuries. And so I, a young lawyer, ended up as a witness in a Federal Hate Crimes trial. And Arlington Street was my support.

Arlington Street has also been a community of joy and celebration. I never expected I’d be a bride in a traditional church wedding . . . well, sort of traditional!

And Arlington Street has been a community of learning, where I have been challenged to become the best possible version of myself. Whoever would have thought that the angry young lawyer who came up to this pulpit 34 years ago would later decide to go to Divinity School to study for the ministry?

For those of you new to Arlington Street, stick around . . . There’s magic in this place.

Weekly Events

Nominating Committee Drop-In

Sunday, April 21st, immediately after virtual coffee hour ~ in person (Perkins room, downstairs) and on in a special Zoom room: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87383250763

The Nom Comm wants you to get involved at Arlington Street! This year, we’re looking for delegates to represent ASC at the virtual Unitarian Universalist General Assembly (June 20th through June 23rd) and at the UU Urban Ministry, a social action ministry in Roxbury, Massachusetts. If you’re interested in these opportunities, or in getting involved in some other way, please join our drop-in info session after the service on April 21st; email us at office@ASCBoston.org; or talk to Darrell Waters, Deb Pontes, Gaby Whitehouse, Philip Roberts, or Sarah Cooleybeck. Thank you!

Monday Mettā

Every Monday ~ 12:00 pm (Zoom)

Led by Rev. Kim

Come for a half hour of Mettā (lovingkindness meditation), sending lovingkindness to ourselves and to the world. No meditation experience necessary. Bring your open heart!

Join with video at tinyurl.com/ASCZoom or participate by phone by dialing (929) 436-2866. For either option, the meeting ID is 895 886 6876.

Poems to Go On

Every Monday ~ 4:00 pm (Zoom)

Led by Rev. Kim

"You can use a poem the next time your life threatens to become too crowded or too empty, or too anything, to give you some feeling of order or companionship. A spell against 'chaos and old night.' I hope some of these will do you some good." ~ Vermont poet James Hayford Please come whether or not you think you like poetry! Feel free just to listen or bring a favorite poem. We'll have the opportunity to read aloud and share what these poems mean to us. All are welcome! Join with video at tinyurl.com/ASCZoom or participate by phone by dialing (929) 436-2866. For either option, the meeting ID is always 895 886 6876.

Please come whether or not you think you like poetry! Feel free just to listen or bring a favorite poem. We'll have the opportunity to read aloud and share what these poems mean to us. All are welcome!

Join with video at tinyurl.com/ASCZoom or participate by phone by dialing (929) 436-2866. For either option, the meeting ID is 895 886 6876.

Buddha's Belly ~ The Buddhist Book Discussion

The 2nd and 4th Tuesday of each month ~ 6:00 pm (Zoom)

Led by Rev. Kim

Are you curious about Buddhism? Buddha's Belly gatherings are an opportunity to read books by contemporary Buddhist teachers and discuss The Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, the Four Heavenly Abodes, the Five Hindrances ... and to ask your burning questions about meditation (e.g., where do I put my legs?).

We're reading Jack Kornfield's A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life. For our gathering on April 23rd, please read through Chapter 5, through page 67 (the end of Part I).

Join with video at tinyurl.com/ASCZoom or participate by phone by dialing (929)436-2866. For either option, the meeting ID is always 895 886 6876.

Arlington Street Meditation Center

The 2nd and 4th Tuesday of each month ~ 7:00 pm (Zoom)
Led by Rev. Kim
Our gathering includes seated meditation, a brief reading from Buddhist teachings, and conversation. Beginners and experienced meditators from all traditions (or none!) are warmly welcome. If you'd like to print out the words to the Mettā (Lovingkindness) phrases, which we repeat together at the close of the Arlington Street Meditation Center gathering, you'll find them here. If you don't, no worries; even if you don't know them as we begin, you'll know them by the time we finish!

Join with video at tinyurl.com/ASCZoom or participate by phone by dialing (929)436-2866. For either option, the meeting ID is always 895 886 6876.

Tea with the Ministers

Every Wednesday ~ 4:00 pm (Zoom)
Led by Rev. Kim and Rev. Beth

Make a cuppa, find a comfortable seat, and come take a civilized late afternoon break with your ministers and one another. Our next discussion prompt is “If you could have had any other profession, what would it have been? What happened to your first choice?” All are welcome!

Join with video at tinyurl.com/ASCZoom or participate by phone by dialing (929) 436-2866. For either option, the meeting ID is always 895 886 6876.

Kundalini Yoga Class

Every Wednesday ~ 6:00 pm (Zoom)

Led by Jean Ko Stewart

Experience fun exercises and poses, breathing techniques, chanting, meditation, and deep relaxation in this unique class. Moving energy through your body brings positive change and growth. There is a $10 charge that goes to the church. All are welcome!

Note: This class is NOT in the Arlington Street Zoom room. Please email Office@ASCBoston.org for Zoom access. 

Arlington Street Writes! Hosted by Trisha Zembruski

Every Thursday ~ 5:00 pm (Zoom)

Led by Trisha Zembruski

Trisha invites you to the spiritual practice of writing inspired by Zen meditation, based on Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones. No writing experience necessary – all you need is paper, pen, and willingness! All are welcome!

Note: This meeting is NOT in the Arlington Street Zoom room. Join by video at tinyurl.com/ASCWrites.

Rock Voices Brookline Concert

Friday, April 19, 7:00 pm ~ Florida Ruffin Ridley Elementary School, Brookline

Support our own Barbara Gindhart and enjoy an evening of rock and pop songs from a 70+ voice choir backed up by professional band. The event will feature a tribute to the late Jimmy Buffet as well as the music of Robbie Robertson, Crosby Stills & Nash, Boston, Patti Griffin, Fleetwood Mac, Selena Gomez, Foo Fighters, The Monkees, Kacey Musgraves, and more. Attendees will also have the opportunity to win raffle prizes while raising funds for Doctors Without Borders. Come support this wonderful organization while enjoying an evening of fantastic choral rock music! Learn more and buy tickets here.

The Wednesdays Literary Salon: Walt Whitman

Wednesday, May 8th ~ 12:30-2:00 pm in the Arlington Street Zoom Room!

Rev. Kim invites you to this final gathering of The Wednesdays, at which Professor Alan Helms, a Whitman scholar, will guide us through Song of Myself, sections 1-14. It's in the public domain and available in many forms; one is here. Be sure to have read it ahead of time!

Discover a Secret Treasure: Come Ring the Steeple Bells!

Every Sunday morning ~ 10:30 am

Meet in the back of the sanctuary

Installed in 1860, the bells in the Arlington Street steeple were played until the United States entered WWII, after which they were neglected and nearly forgotten.

George Whitehouse didn't forget. Twenty years later, he and a friend restored the bells in secret. On Christmas Eve of 1961, people coming to services were surprised and delighted when "O Come, All Ye Faithful" rang out across the city, played on bells they didn't even know existed.

For many years now, the bells have largely been the domain of George (Master of the Bells) and Doc (Assistant to the Master of the Bells). They are pleased to announce the formation of the Arlington Street Bellringers Guild! Their aim is to foster a cadre of people they will train to become experienced bellringers and who will learn to do small repairs.

To ring the bells, you need to be able to climb three flights of steep stairs, be possessed of an elementary sense of rhythm, and be available a half hour before some Sunday services.

At 10:30 on any Sunday morning, please meet Doc at the foot of the staircase to the left as you enter the sanctuary so you can climb up into the belltower all together! Questions? Contact Doc at kinnerc@gmail.com.

Flowers on the High Pulpit

Would you like to make a gift of flowers for the entire congregation to enjoy on a Sunday morning? You can make your dedication in memory, in honor, or in celebration of someone or something you love. You can have flowers delivered orbring your own (a minimum of two dozen flowers is perfect for our huge space). Please email office@ASCBoston.org, to claim your date! Thank you!

ALL SOULS

A Campaign for the Preservation of Arlington Street Church

Letter from Kim

Rev. Dr. Dana McLean Greeley (left) and President Gerald Ford ~ April 19th, 1975

Dearly Beloved,

I grew up about four miles south of the Old North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts, where the opening battle of the American Revolution was fought — the British on one side, the Minute Men on the other, and the Concord River in between. As the highly-regimented Red Coats advanced from Boston, a scrappy group of some 400 farmers left their beds, grabbed their weapons (including shovels and hoes), trooped in from the neighboring communities, and took to the fields to protect their land — and this nascent country.

The British started the battle. In response, the Minute Men’s John Buttrick shouted into the April morning air, “Fire, fellow soldiers! For G*’d’s sake, fire!” and the air went blue with colonial musket gunsmoke — Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “the shot heard ’round the world.”

I know this not because I studied it in school. I know it because I’ve lived in Concord for two long stretches, totaling something like three decades, during which time there has never been a Patriots Day when I was not awakened by a pre-dawn volley of cannon fire, signaling that the reenactment of this national drama was underway. Kem & I live just a mile from the North Bridge now; as the cannons boom, the windows rattle, the house shakes a little, and the 30 teenagers in our house, despite having been warned, invariably start screaming.  

Some years, I have slipped out of bed to go and watch — most notably in 1975, when President Gerald Ford was on hand to mark the bicentennial and Rev. Dr. Dana McLean Greeley (my beloved mentor and Arlington Street's Senior Minister from 1935-1958) gave the opening prayer. Buttrick’s words have never failed to move me, nor have the words engraved on his gravestone:

Having laid down the sword with honor,
he resumed the plough with industry; 
by the latter to maintain what the former had won.

But this year — this past Monday — the early morning was perfectly still. The cannons were silent. Suddenly, I was wide awake. 

I reached for my phone to check the time and found an alert sent to the residents of Concord and surrounding towns who had once sent soldiers on foot from as far as 11 miles away: The fields surrounding the North Bridge are dangerously flooded. The battle road is impassible. The reenactment has been canceled.

Just after the wave of disappointment that I had missed the opening volley of my final Patriots Day in Concord — in June, we move to the Cape — came the deep knowing that global warming is by no means something we are trying to avert; the wild storm that had produced the flood at the bridge was just one more unmistakable sign that the climate crisis is fully upon us.  

My great, longtime friends Rev. Fred Small and his wife, Julie Wormser, Senior Policy Advisor for the Mystic River Watershed Association, have devoted their lives to work on behalf of saving the planet. How lucky are we that Rev. Fred will be in the pulpit this Earth Day Sunday, speaking about hope — hope when it’s hard to find; hope, in spite of everything? He really, really knows what we’re facing; when he preaches a sermon called In Defense of Hope, we can believe him.  

Mezzo soprano Bek Zehr opens the service with Hope from Sleeping at Last and, for the anthem, Hope Struggle and Change:

The change will come
But it won’t be free
Change will come
From you and me

We’ll all sing Hope was Given as a Garden, and Fred will lead us in David Roth’s Last Day on This Earth.  Our closing hymn is Jim Scott’s Bluegreen Hills of Earth:

For the earth forever turning
For the skies, for every sea
For our lives, for all we cherish
Sing we our joyful song of peace

For the mountains, hills, and pastures
In their silent majesty
For the stars, for all the heavens
Sing we our joyful song of peace

For the sun, for rain, and thunder
For the seasons' harmony
For our lives, for all creation
Sing we our joyful praise to thee

For the world we raise our voices
For the home that gives us birth
In our joy we sing returning
Home to our bluegreen hills of earth.

Happy Earth Day!

Faithfully yours, with love,
Kim

from the Nominating Committee:

Open Meeting following Sunday’s Service

The Nom Comm wants you to get involved at Arlington Street! This year, we’re looking for delegates to represent ASC at the virtual Unitarian Universalist General Assembly (June 20-23) and at the UU Urban Ministry, a social action ministry in Roxbury. If you’re interested in these opportunities, or in getting involved in some other way, please join our drop-in info session after this Sunday’s service; email us at office@ascboston.org; or talk to Darrell Waters, Deb Pontes, Gaby Whitehouse, Philip Roberts, or Sarah Cooleybeck. Thank you!

To read Rev. Kim’s pastoral letters to the congregation, please click here.

Our Shared Responsibility During the Global Pandemic

Friends, these are extraordinary times that call for extraordinary generosity. Many income-generating events and rentals have had to be cancelled or postponed, putting a huge strain on the Arlington Street budget. Our ministers and staff are continuing to work; our goal is to continue to pay them. Please help sustain the church by making a special online gift or by texting GIVE to (617) 300-0509. Also, please consider setting up automatic payments via bank transfer or credit card to pay your pledge. Our treasurer, Liz Teixeira, (treasurer@ascboston.org) would be happy and grateful to assist you with this process! Together though apart, we can thrive! Thank you for your steadfastness and support!

  Unitarian Universalism

  If you are new to Unitarian Universalism,
  “Voices of a Liberal Faith — Unitarian Universalists”
  is a great introduction. Click here to watch
  this ten minute video!