Greetings, !

June is a month of beginnings.

Graduations mark new chapters. Gardens emerge from bare soil. Families make plans for the summer months ahead. Everywhere we look, there are signs of growth, change, and possibility. What new beginnings are you looking forward to this month? 

This year, as we prepare for the NAUA Summit on Reimagining Liberal Religion, June offers a fitting opportunity to reflect on what it means to reimagine anything at all.

To reimagine is not to reject the past. It is to build upon it. It is to honor enduring values while asking how they might best serve a changing world.

Liberal religion has long offered a home for those who value freedom of conscience, open inquiry, and human dignity. Yet each generation must rediscover these ideals for itself and find new ways to put them into practice.

What does community look like in a digital age? How do we cultivate meaning in a distracted world? How do we remain united amid disagreement? How do we create spaces where theists, atheists, agnostics, and seekers can learn from one another?

These are not just questions for our Summit. They are questions for all of us. As summer begins, may we approach them with curiosity, humility, and hope.

Helen Pluckrose is our keynote speaker at Summit 2026. Helen is an independent author and journalist living in London, England, For the past decade Helen has been publishing and leading programs and initiatives that challenge authoritarianism and illiberal actions - both on the right and on the left.

To help us get to know Helen, we will be highlighting one of her blog posts from https://www.hpluckrose.com/ each month in the Compass.

This month’s Pluckrose Blog to read is about an event currently making international news: Henry Nowak's Murder and the Politics of Narrative. (What happens when facts become secondary to political narratives?)

"On Monday, 23-year-old Vikrum Digwa was given a life sentence with a minimum of 21 years for the murder of 18-year-old Henry Nowak. Since then, there have been many, many think pieces on the broader significance of this horrible crime.

It is unsurprising that the brutal and senseless murder of such a young man would arouse so much anger and disgust. It was also bound to be read through the lens of the culture wars. Henry’s killer was the son of migrants from India and a member of a minority religion. He had made false claims of racism against his victim, and the police, accepting that Henry was the aggressor and not believing he had been stabbed, pinned down and handcuffed a dying youth. This is a toxic mix of characteristics bound to incite existing anger about immigration, violent crime, “woke” concepts of racism which hold that only white people can be guilty of it and potential police bias.

Some arguments along these lines have been serious, thoughtful and reasonable and addressed issues of cultural clashes, knife crime and the hampering of the police by racially relative guidelines. Others, however, have sought to read this incident through the lens of pre-existing cultural narratives in ways that simply do not work. The serious issues surrounding this case will be better addressed if people refrain from doing this.

Three primary bad arguments stand out to me on perusing online debate…[read more]

There is an old saying that society thrives when people plant trees whose shade they know they may never sit under. Or when people plan for 7 generations ahead.

Religious communities are much the same.

The congregations, organizations, and traditions that enrich our lives today were built by people who invested their time, talents, and resources long before we arrived. They believed that future generations deserved places where questions could be asked freely, ideas could be explored openly, and people could gather in a spirit of goodwill and mutual respect.

Today, we are the beneficiaries of that generosity. Our challenge is to become good ancestors in turn.

By supporting the NAUA, we help create opportunities for future seekers, future leaders, future congregations, and future communities of liberal religion. We help preserve the values we cherish while ensuring they remain accessible to those who come after us.

The gifts we make today are not simply about covering this year's expenses. They are about planting seeds, nurturing growth, and helping something meaningful flourish for years to come.

Thank you for helping plant trees whose shade future generations may enjoy.

Photography as Spiritual Practice Circle
1st Monday, Monthly, 4:00 pm Pacific Time
~Description on our website

Discourse Circle - Respectful & Difficult Listening  
2nd Sunday, Monthly, 4:00 - 5:30 pm Pacific Time
~Description on our website

SatChat Connection Circle
Meets 2nd & 4th Saturdays, 1:00 pm Pacific Time
~Join us for connection and community

Forum Circle
Meets 1st & 3rd Sundays, 1:00 - 2:30 pm Pacific Time
~Description on our website

Thursday Connection Circle
1st & 3rd Thursdays, 9:00 - 10:30 am Pacific Time
~You are invited to join us for a four-session discussion on Religious Liberalism

• Session 1: What is Liberalism, Really? (May 21)
• Session 2: The Strengths of Liberalism (June 4)
• Session 3: The Critique - David Brooks and the “Moral Vacuum” (June 18)
• Session 4: Can Liberalism Be Renewed? (July 2)

Joys & Sorrows Circle
4th Sundays, 4:00 - 5:00 pm Pacific Time. No registration required. Description on our website 

Note: The Wednesday Drop-in Conversation Circle is taking June, July, and August off. Will return in September. 

** For more information or to register for any of these Circles, email the Circles Team at circles@naunitarians.org **

Suggestions for new NAUA programs, or changes to existing programs, are always welcome. Please email your suggestions to info@naunitarians.org or speak directly to one of NAUA's board trustees.

The monthly NAUA board meeting is open for members to attend and observe. 

If you are interested in joining or observing a board meeting, please read the board meeting participation policy on our website before emailing our board secretary for the Zoom link: 
secretary@naunitarians.org.

Join us for a celebration of this year’s summer solstice. Service begins at 10:00 AM PT (1:00 PM ET)

The Summer Solstice, arriving this year on June 20, marks the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. For thousands of years, people around the world have celebrated this turning point in the annual cycle of light and darkness. Whether through festivals, bonfires, gatherings, or quiet reflection, the solstice has long invited us to pause and appreciate the abundance of summer, the beauty of the natural world, and our place within it.

Yet the solstice also carries a gentle reminder: even as we celebrate the year’s greatest light, the days that follow will gradually grow shorter. Nature teaches us that change is constant and that every season contains the seeds of the next. The Summer Solstice invites us to hold both gratitude and awareness—to savor the warmth, joy, and possibility of the present moment while recognizing the ever-turning cycles of life. In that spirit, may we take time this season to reconnect with nature, deepen our relationships, and appreciate the light we bring to one another’s lives.

Zoom access at https://tinyurl.com/NAUAService.

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Our Minister: Ken Marino serves as a chaplain for UC Davis Home Health. He is a certified Reiki master, yoga teacher, author, and musician. His work integrates contemplative practice, interfaith engagement, and trauma-informed mindfulness. He studied philosophy at Stony Brook University, focusing on hermeneutics, Indian thought under Antonio De Nicolas, and modern continental philosophy with Jacques Derrida and Edward Casey. Ken’s spiritual journey began in the yoga and meditation communities of the Northeast including the Sri Chinmoy Center, Kripalu Ashram, Zen Mountain Monastery, and Yoga Anand Ashram. Ken volunteered at Omega Institute for Holistic Studies where he was introduced to mindfulness and yoga teachers Joan Halifax, Ram Dass, Swami Satchitananda, Stephen Levine, Joseph Goldstein, Deepak Chopra, and Jack Kornfield. He later pursued yoga therapy at the Kripalu Center, and deepened his yoga studies at the New York Jivamukti Center, and at Yoga Shanti with Rodney Yee. Deeply interested in the application of yoga and mindfulness to trauma as well as inter-religious dialogue and religion as a lived spiritual practice, Ken has taught at CSU Hayward and the City University of New York, and has led yoga programs through AARP and throughout the New York area. Ken attended seminary at Drew University and is completing the Tara Brach/Jack Kornfield mindfulness certification, integrating his academic studies with a holistic, embodied approach to mindfulness.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE • By an award-winning technology reporter for The Wall Street Journal, a behind-the-scenes look at the manipulative tactics Facebook used to grow its business, how it distorted the way we connect online, and the company insiders who found the courage to speak out,

"Broken Code fillets Facebook’s strategic failures to address its part in the spread of disinformation, political fracturing and even genocide. The book is stuffed with eye-popping, sometimes Orwellian statistics and anecdotes that could have come only from the inside." — New York Times Book Review