Category Archives for "Rev. Mike Morran"

  Rev. Mike’s latest vlog offers insights into fear, which can help us learn to recognize and address how it colors our perception. By doing so, we can better understand the world around us and the people in it and learn to navigate our fears with greater confidence and resilience. Check it out!

  Amid the heartbreaking events unfolding in the world today, Rev. Morran shares the five things everyone needs to hear every now and then. Listen as he shares these uplifting messages that provide a source of inspiration and reflection during challenging times.  

  Join us at First Unitarian in Denver, CO, as we come together to connect with our wonderful community. Rev. Mike Morran extends a warm welcome to everyone as we embrace the beauty of the Fall season. He’s also encouraging all of us to get involved in the exciting activities we have planned for the […]

A Reframed Piece of Mike’s Mind…Starting in October, our Racial Justice Project at First Unitarian Denver is going to be initiating a conversation among our congregation about racism and reparations.  My column this month provides a little of my own thinking about the background for this conversation.      Ta-Nehisi Coates recently wrote:      Basically, Americans […]

A Forested Piece of Mike’s Mind…By request, my column this month is portions of the TREES sermon from August 1st.Elif Shafak, the brilliant Turkish/British author, in a perspective-taking experiment wrote:  Humans do not see trees. They walk by us every day. They sit and sleep, smoke and picnic and secretly kiss in our shade. They pluck […]

A Maladjusted Piece of Mike’s Mind…My column this month is the conclusion of the sermon from June 18th.Krishnamurti famously said, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”  Which is another way of saying that being maladjusted is about the sanest, most spiritually mature thing we could do.I […]

An Annual Piece of Mike’s Mind…We’ve made history this past year.  For the first time since First Unitarian Denver has had a building, over a year has passed without a single public gathering in our space.  I suppose this is also true for many other organizations, but I’m fond of this one.            That doesn’t mean […]

A Discerning Piece of Mike’s Mind…By request, my column this month is a portion of my sermon from April 18th:…Jem Bendell advocates for what he calls Deep Adaptation, capital “A”, and he lays out four principles as a framework that everyone can begin talking about, developing, and doing right now.  The four principles are resilience, […]

A Frustrated Piece of Mike’s Mind…By request, here are the words spoken during the pastoral prayer on Sunday, March 28th, in response to the shooting in Boulder…:Very aware that I have family members and a few friends who will passionately disagree, I don’t care. I don’t care if extensive mandatory background checks, mandatory wait times, […]

A Reminiscent Piece of Mike’s Mind… Last month, February 22nd to be exact, was the 23rd anniversary of my ordination into the Unitarian Universalist ministry, a day for which I had spent the previous four years preparing.  From deciding I wanted to be a minister, to applying to seminary, to graduating, psychiatric evaluations, chaplaincy training, an […]

An Unequivocal Piece of Mike’s Mind…In 1792, writer Mary Wollstonecraft called for the full participation of women in the rights and duties of citizenship.  Her essay, A Vindication of the Rights of Women becomes a foundation for the early movement for suffrage for women.In 1851, Sojourner Truth delivers her feminist speech, Ain’t I a Woman?, […]

Witnessing a Piece of Mike’s Mind…As I write, it is the day after a large group of white people briefly took over the Capitol building in Washington DC, where a joint session of congress was taking place. The seditionists were attempting to slow or stop certification of the presidential election that all reliable authorities had […]

A Peace of Mike’s Mind…Our Whole Souul Living Theme for December is Salvation.  We don’t necessarily mean this in the heavenly sense.  I personally think of it in a wholeness sense.  I think everyone who lives in this world needs a little salvation from the forces that keep us compartmentalized, isolated, fractured.  The whole planet […]

A Historic Piece of Mike’s Mind…As I write these words, we still don’t know the outcome of the presidential election, and it’s likely that all of us are sick to death of politics.  If that’s you, I apologize.  I’m still thinking a lot about democracy right now, because I think what passes for ours is […]

A Piece of Mike’s Mind…Looking into the Mind of OthersI know, I know, there is too much information, too much coverage of the election, we are all on election overload, and there’s still another month to go! Nonetheless, sorry, I have something I want to share.Like many of you, I have wondered about those 35 to […]

Electing a Piece of Mike’s Mind…Predictably, anxiety around the coming election is high!  Stress, worry, fear, hope, anger, exhaustion, determination, and feelings I don’t even have words for are all present.  Everyone, literally everyone, I’ve spoken with recently is feeling the weight of this election, its importance, and potential consequences.            We’ve been here before.  We […]

A Cultural Activist Piece of Mike’s Mind…By request, my column this month is a portion of the sermon from July 12th on white supremacy culture.“…When we say white supremacy culture, we are referring to the common cultural assumptions, cultural expectations, cultural associations…, the hundreds of unspoken, unwritten, but intimately familiar ways that culturally exclude, punish, […]

​Seven or Eight Pieces of Mike’s Mind…Statements are in the air.  Organizations, companies, denominations, unions, and more are putting out statements about where they stand on matters of racial justice, Black Lives Matter, police brutality, and civil protest.  It’s good to see.Perhaps the core statement of our faith tradition is our covenant, known as the […]

​A Piece of Mike’s ​Mind…  This report comes in the middle of an international pandemic, and for the first time that I am aware of, no services or gatherings have been held at First Unitarian Denver for two consecutive months.  Like so many organizations and communities, we are in a time of adaptation and even […]