Sunday Service

April 3, 2025

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.” 

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?

• How might my inner voice be trying to speak to me through it?

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

1. What were you first taught about “deserving joy”?

2. Did you grow up in a “happy family”?

3. What simple joy rescues you over and over again? (What might you do to make a little bit more room for it in your life?)

4. Are you mostly a creator of joy, receiver of joy, notice-er of joy or spreader of joy?

5. If you could magically give a joy-filled and sorrowless week to one of your friends, family members or co-workers in the coming year, who would you choose and why?

6. Have you been hesitant or scared to ask for the thing you know will bring you joy?

7. When was the last time you sought out joy for your body?

8. Has choosing joy ever been an act of survival for you? Or an act of defiance?

9. Are you too responsible to let joy in?

10. What is one of your favorite/best moments of bringing joy to someone else?

11. Has joy ever asked something big of you? Might it be asking that now?

12. When was the last time you told your partner that they delight you?

13. 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 2025 Soul Matters materials on the theme ‘Trust’)

It’s easy to get tricked,

taken for a ride,

convinced that joy

is a possession.

Something to be caught, contained and controlled

just by us.

As if it’s a birthday present,

waiting for us to unwrap it 

and keep forever and ever.

And who can blame us,

with pain seeming so powerfully prevalent, and permanent. 

If sadness can stay for so long,

why can’t joy?

But maybe it’s elusive

for a reason.

Maybe it’s slippery

in order to help us understand

that it was put here to fly.

Or better yet:

To be flung!

To be passed, not possessed.

To be spread

between you and me,

between the ones who receive its gift

and the ones that have been looking for its treasure

for a very long time.

Maybe it’s a beautiful and elegant contagion,

over which we just might have more control than we think.

If only we share it.

If only we notice that joy is not ours to keep,

but ours to give.

Maybe joy is a gift that opens us

as much as we open to it.

Maybe that’s the way light leaks into our weary world.

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

Schedule Your Joy

Our daily calendars are full of work tasks and personal errands. They are dedicated to the things we have to do, not want to do. So why not throw a wrinkle into that and schedule in a daily dose of joy? We’re being literal here: actually sit down at the start of a week and write in a joyful activity on each day of your calendar for that week. Don’t pressure yourself to come up with “big” things. They can be as simple as “Call mom” on Tuesday at 7:30pm or “Walk in the sun” on Thursday at 2pm or “Eat dessert for dinner” on Sunday at 6pm. The key is to do one a day and put them in at a specific time. And to keep yourself accountable to joy, move your “joy appointment” to the next day if you don’t get to it as scheduled. Do not cross it off entirely. Maybe even schedule an entire “joy catch up day” if you need to.

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

Ask Them About Joy

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 help you on your way. Be sure to let your conversation partner know in advance that this won’t be a typical conversation. Telling them a bit about Soul Matters will help set the stage. Remember to also answer the questions yourself as they are meant to support a conversation, not just a time of quizzing them.

Joy Questions:

• What do you find joyful that few others do? 

• What is your third favorite way to welcome in joy?

• Did you grow up in a “happy family”?

• Has choosing joy ever been an act of survival for you? Or an act of defiance?

• When was the last time you sought out joy for your body? 

• What joyful memory has been with you the longest, showing up regularly like a long-time friend?

• What’s something you know now about joy that you didn’t know when you were younger?

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

I don't trust people who are alive and paying attention and don't feel pain about what's happening

~ adrienne maree brown

You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don’t trust enough.

~ Frank Crane

Trust is the easiest thing in the world to lose, and the hardest thing in the world to get back.

~ R. M. Williams

I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.

~ Author unclear

The same voices that cannot be trusted with our histories, certainly cannot be trusted with a story unfolding. When you don’t know who to trust, listen first to the one who’s still bleeding.

~ Cole Arthur Riley

If your wounds are still open, trust

they are doors to an answer and walk through.

You don’t have to be healed to be whole.

You don’t have to know where you’re going

to stop doubting what you’re made of.

~ Andrea Gibson

Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go.

~ Natalie Goldberg

I don't trust anyone who doesn't laugh.

~ Maya Angelou

Trust in trust.

Trust in the fact that

trusting won’t always take you

where you want to go.

But not trusting

never will.

~ Jeremy Lent

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

Trust is a confident engagement with the unknown.  

~ Rachel Botsman

Trust is choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person’s actions. Distrust [is when] what is important to me is not safe with a person in this situation or in any situation.

~ Charles Feltman

To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.

Alan Watts 

I’ve come to trust not that events will always unfold exactly as I want, but that I will be fine either way. 

~ Marianne Williamson

It’s a good thing to have all the props pulled out from under us occasionally. It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet, and what is sand.

~ Madeleine L’Engle

Daughter, believe me, 

when you tire on the long thrash

to your island, lie up, and survive.

As you float now, where I held you

and let go, remember when fear

cramps your heart what I told you:

lie gently and wide to the light-year

stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.

~ Philip Booth 

A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because her trust is not in the branch but in her own wings. 

~ Charlie Wardle

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

In relationships, trust isn’t a promise to never hurt each other. It’s acceptance of the risk that we will hurt each other and the confidence that, if we do, we will come together to heal.

~ Esther Perel

Our mistrust of the future makes it hard to give up the past.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

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