Sunday Service

UU minister, Victoria Safford, speaks of curiosity using the metaphor of perception and sight. She writes:

“To see, simply to look and to see, is an ethical act and intentional choice; to see, with open eyes, is a spiritual practice and thus a risk, for it can open you to ways of knowing the world and loving it that will lead to inevitable consequences. The awakened [and curious] eye is a conscious eye, a willful eye, and brave, because to see things as they are, each in its own truth, will make you very vulnerable.”

Consequences. We rarely think of curiosity in terms of consequences. But Rev. Safford seems to have it right. There is a type of curiosity that is about enjoyment and adventure. This way of understanding curiosity invites us to experience life as a playground. But when we look closely at our lives we realize there’s another type of curiosity at play. This kind leads us, not to playgrounds, but into dark alleys and pathless woods. It demands, not just our attention, but our courage. It’s not interested in entertaining us with the wonders of the world. Instead, it wants to enlist us in the work of the world.

Just think of how we UUs talk about our dances with curiosity. We don’t just tell stories about peppering our poor Sunday School teachers with “Why?!” and “Who says?!”; we tell stories about how asking why got us kicked out of Sunday School. We don’t just talk about being open-minded; we talk about how our open-mindedness led us to leave home and family and walk a lonelier path than we wanted. And recently, many of us have leaned into the hard work of being curious about our role in upholding institutional racism and structures of white supremacy, which is clearly about more than learning new and interesting things about ourselves.

And here’s the important insight revealed by these stories: As hard as these paths of curiosity are, we are grateful for them! Which in turn suggests that there is a part of us that doesn’t want curiosity to just be fun or interesting. It wants curiosity to change us, to make us anew. This part of us wants to be altered, not just enriched. 

So, maybe we need to tweak this month’s theme a bit. Maybe, what we need to hear is not simply “Awaken your curiosity!” but “Awaken the kind of curiosity that comes with consequences!”

Friends, it is, of course, fine to be inquisitive for the fun of it. At the same time, we must remember that curiosity is not a game. Well, actually, maybe it’s the greatest game. The one that drives us to constantly become more, for our sakes and for the sake of others.

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Awakening Curiosity')

Ask Them About Curiosity

One of the best ways to explore our monthly themes is to have conversations about them with people who are

close to you. It’s also a great way to deepen our relationships! Below is a list of questions to guide your conversation. Be sure to let your conversation partner know in advance that this won’t be a typical conversation.

Remember to also answer the questions yourself as they are meant to support a conversation, not just a time of

quizzing them.

Curiosity Questions:

●       Are you someone who is mainly curious about the world out there or the world inside you?

●       During your childhood, what were you not allowed to be curious about? And how did that shape who you are today?

●       During childhood, what one or two things were you most curious about? How do you see an echo of that in your life today?

●       If a crystal ball could reveal something about yourself, your future, or anything else, what would you want to know?

●       Have you ever been punished for being curious? Have you ever punished someone else for being curious?

●       When it comes to you worrying about the future or being curious about it, which one wins?

●       What aspect of your current stage of life are you most curious about? How about your upcoming stage of life?

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Awakening Curiosity’)

Your List of Curiosities 

Another great way to get curious about yourself is to look at the things that have grabbed your curiosity over your life. In short, this exercise invites you to create a list of your curiosities. (It might help to also think of this as listing your obsessions.)

We suggest you do this by dividing the list according to the stages of your life. For instance, childhood, college, early adulthood, midlife, later life.

Be as specific as possible. In other words, when thinking of your childhood curiosities, list “Luke Skywalker” rather than “Star Wars.” Or when listing your midlife curiosities, list “How wine is made” rather than “wine.” Or when you turn to your later life list, write down “The way fear works in my life,” rather than “Myself.”

When you feel that your list is complete, or complete enough, look it over to see what it says about you. Look for patterns or gaps. What surprises you about the list? What does it say about how much you’ve changed or grown? Or not changed or grown?

Extra mile options:

• Show your list to someone close to you and ask them what strikes them about the list? What do they think it says about you? What did they learn about you because of the list? What do they think is missing?

• Take 10-15 of your curiosities and turn them into a poem. Keep it simple and just list your 10-15 in some creative way. It could be as straight-forward as ordering them by age or by the letter they start with. Trust your gut; the order you need will come to you.

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Awakening Curiosity')

Spiritual and religious traditions encourage and help us love the life we have. But it is fun - and often instructive - to imagine the life we would live if anything was possible.

So, for this exercise, lean into your imagination and write a poem or journal-sized reflection on what you would be if another life was possible. Be as silly or serious, playful or profound as you like. And remember, sometimes it helps to revisit what you dreamed about becoming when you were a child.

So what will it be? A trapeze artist? An impressionist painter? A member of King Aurther’s court? A costume designer for movies set in the Victorian era? The owner of your own restaurant? The first person to walk on Mars? A death doula? A hermit? A circus clown? An urban planner of the first zero emission city? Spiderman?

Whether you take the playful or profound route, be sure to dedicate part of your writing to reflecting on the longing that lies at the center of your choice. This is where the deeper work lies. Because while you may not really be able to be a trapeze artist, it’s certainly possible to satisfy that longing to escape the “gravity” of worry that sits at the center of that high-flying choice. Or to put it another way, you do not need to become that imagined version of yourself to access what it represents.

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2026 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Embracing Possibility')

The most meaningful futures rarely arrive because we forced them into existence. They emerge because we noticed something true and stayed with it. A question that would not let us go. A grief that clarified what mattered. A longing that persisted beneath distraction. A quiet conviction that shaped our choices over time… The invitation is not to perfect your plans, but to tend your attention; not to demand transformation, but to notice what is already changing; not to rush toward the future, but to stand here long enough to hear what it is asking of you.

~ Cameron Trimble

I think it is healing behavior, to look at something so broken and see the possibility and wholeness in it.

~ adrienne maree brown

Ask what’s possible, not what’s wrong. Keep asking.

~ Margaret J. Wheatley

Don’t ask what will happen; Be what happens.

~ Rebecca Solnit

Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare.

~ Aimee Lehto, honoring Muhammad Ali

This beginning has been quietly forming

Waiting until you were ready to emerge…

It watched you play with the seduction of safety...

Wondered would you always live like this.

~ John O’Donahue

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2026 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Embracing Possibility')

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

~ Adelaide Anne Procter

I know some people crack their gifts open early. And others of us spent decades wondering around thinking we got skipped. But we didn’t. Some doors only open when we are ready to walk through them. Some magic only wakes up when we’ve lived enough to use it right. So don’t get down on yourself. We’re not forgotten. We’re just on a different clock!

~ Author Unknown

As the saying goes, it’s the silence in between the notes that makes the music. So if you’re in between projects or jobs—or even romantic relationships—resist the tendency to immediately fill the void with the next thing. Great new things are happening quietly inside of you. Give them the time they need to bloom.

~ Ozan Varol

Next comes winter, January and February. Boy! Are they ever cold! What comes next? Not spring. ‘Unlocking’ comes next. What else could cruel March and only slightly less cruel April be? March and April are not spring. They’re the season of Unlocking.

~ Kurt Vonnegut

It may be that when we no longer know what to do

we have come to our real work…

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

~ Wendell Berry

There is more to see in myself than just what I look for. There is more to see in my enemies than just what I look for. There is more to see in this country than just what I look for. I need this to be true.

~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,

don't hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty

of lives and whole towns destroyed or about

to be. We are not wise, and not very often

kind. And much can never be redeemed.

Still, life has some possibility left.

~ Mary Oliver

Hope [and possibility] locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When you recognize uncertainty, you recognize that you may be able to influence the outcome.

~ Rebecca Solnit

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2026 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Embracing Possibility’)

April 2, 2026

This list of questions is an aid for deep reflection. How you answer them is often less important than the journey they take you on.

So, read through the list of questions 2-3 times until one question sticks out for you and captures your attention, or as some faith traditions say, until one of the questions “shimmers.” Or as we like to say, “Read over them until one of the questions picks you.”

Then reflect on that question using one or all of these questions:

●       What is going on in my life right now that makes this question so pronounced for me?

●       What might my inner wisdom be trying to say to me through this question?

●       How might this question be trying to wake me up or get me to realize something through this question?

●       How might Life or my inner wisdom be trying to offer me a word of comfort or challenge through this question?

1. What book from your childhood convinced you that life was full of possibility? What would change in your life if that childhood sense of possibility returned to you today?

2. If you could go back in time and expand your family of origin’s sense of possibility in just one way, what would it be?

3. How would your life be different if you had trusted in possibility earlier in life?

4. If you believe that saving the world is no longer possible, might you still find hope in the work of creating islands of sanity - smaller circles of community dedicated to helping people stay sane and rooted in their values even as the world around them grows harsh and grim.

5. We all tell ourselves, “One day I will...” What “One day I will” sentence has been with you the longest? And what would need to change for you to start turning that dream into a reality? 

6. Who helped you find your way back to possibility when all the doors in front of you felt closed? If you were to thank them, what would you say now that you didn’t or couldn’t back then?

7. What have you learned about finding the possibilities that live on the other side of grief?

8. We’re told to live each day as if it were our last. But what if, instead, we lived each day as if it were our very first?

9. What if we’re built to have many lives in this lifetime of ours? What if we become fully human by pursuing and becoming many of our possible selves, rather than just one of them?

10. Are you sure it’s too late to do it, or become it?

11. What’s your question? Your question may not be listed above. As always, if the above questions don't include what life is asking from you, spend the month listening to your days to find it. 

(Curated and adapted for KUF from the 2026 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Embracing Possibility')