This is an edited transcript of the annual question and answer sermon. People in the congregation submitted questions about questions about morals, ethics, theology, or philosophy — or in less academic terms, questions about truth, goodness, meaning, purpose, etc. During the Moment for All Ages, Dr. Kate Sullivan, our Director of Spiritual Exploration, answered questions. During the sermon time, I answered as many questions as I had time for.
The following transcript from the service was generated from the livestream recording, checked against the audio, then edited for clarity. We did not have time to answer all the questions during the service; the full list of questions follows the transcript.
Moment for All Ages
The following questions were answered by Dr. Kate Sullivan. The transcript has been edited for clarity. All responses in this section are copyright (c) 2026 Kate Sullivan.
“How does JETPIG help kids/adults remember UU principles?”
Kate: For those of you that don’t know what Jet Pig is — Jet Pig is an actual little stuffed pig with an aviator’s cap on. Jet Pig lives in a box that looks like a plane and was created by Clayton and decorated by all the kids with cool stickers. And if you would like to go visit with JetPig, please feel free at any time.
So why do we have a thing called Jet Pig, which lives in the Atkinson room? JetPig reminds us of our values. The Unitarian Universalist Association adopted these six values last year.
Now I might need a little help. Could a couple of kids come up and help me just for a sec?
We’re talking about Jet Pig. People are like, what’s this Jet Pig thing? We pay attention to how you spell Jet Pig, right? We spell Jet Pig J-E-T-P-I-G. So you know how sometimes you come up with some little rhyme or mnemonic device that helps you remember things. We came up with “Jet Pig” as an instrument to help us remember our values. These kids all know their JetPig values by heart.
J is for Justice. What comes next? E is for Equity, which is not the same as equality. T is Transformation, right? Our commitment to change and grow.
P is for Pluralism. What does pluralism mean? Everyone’s different, and that is a good thing. Next is Interdependence, which probably you all know means: What’s happening with you is sort of happening to me. There’s no real independence. We are dependent on all things and all beings and the web of life. G for generosity, which hopefully we all practice at least a little bit every day.
“Tolerance is a virtue. How do you tolerate intolerance?”
Tolerance is a virtue. Well, what do you think a virtue is, Dan?
[Comment interjected by Dan: I don’t know, you’re the one with a PhD in developmental psychology.]
Kate: A virtue is, in simple terms, a good thing to sort of have in your back pocket that you can use when you need to. And tolerance is a really good thing, and it relates to pluralism and interdependence because it means that we need to learn to be open to other ideas, other ways of thinking and doing in order to create the beautiful, compassionate society that we’re all hoping we find someday.
“When the walls of our differences are so high, where do you start conversations?”
I would say you get close. You get face to face with somebody because it’s really, really hard to hate people up close. It’s really easy to do it online. But I’d say that you sit and you take some deep breaths and you try really, really hard to be tolerant of that other person’s perspective or experience, family experience, or just ways they live that you don’t. I mean, you have to work at understanding other people’s bodies and who they are and why they are. I’d say you get up close.
“How can we remain hopeful?”
That’s the money question. I have absolutely no idea, but I think for me, anyway, little practices help. In fact, Chad and I were just talking this morning about doomscrolling and how easy it is to be swept away by negativity when you’re looking at your phone and something pops up. So restricting the stuff that really negatively impacts you I think is one way to stay hopeful.
Then I think you just have to put yourself in the way of beauty, and of joyful people and real things. I mean, that’s what works.
And a dog, okay? If you have a pet — a pet is like the super highway to joy. It releases oxytocin, which is our love-and-feel-good hormone. So I would say pets first, and then maybe people second. [Laughter]
[Question asked by Dan: I’m asking this because you’re a developmental psychologist. There’s been a lot of talk recently about legal restrictions on social media use for people under the age of 16. In addition, there’s been talk about restrictions on social media in general for all ages. Could you talk about those from your perspective as a developmental psychologist?]
I think there’s tons of evidence that to expose kids to social media of any kind too soon — and by too soon, I mean when they’re developmentally young, before seven, eight, nine years old. You’ve got to really be on it, which is very, very hard. It’s not great, right?
If children are scrolling, they’re not doing. And what kids need to do is learn, and kids learn by doing. You know, they’re not little empty faces that we fill with our stuff. They have to co-create their understanding of the world.
So any limit to social media is good. And if you need it because you’re in a restaurant and kids melt down, then something like Sesame Street or Bluey — anything that helps them understand social relationships, or how to match colors, or those kinds of things.
But I think it’s really good to restrict social media. Social media is a gift and a burden for all of us adults. It’s awesome and awful all at the same time. Everybody complains about AI, for example, but I think the onus is always on us to figure out what’s helpful and what’s hurtful and to eliminate the things that are not healthy for you, that do not make you feel good. Right? If they don’t make your soul sing, just forget about it.
Sermon
The following questions were answered by Rev. Dan Harper. The transcript has been edited for clarity. All responses in this section are copyright (c) 2026 Dan Harper.
“‘Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition.’ — Alan Turing. Reflect on the meaning of this quote.”
I’ve heard this quote many times, and I have to say I just don’t agree with it. For all of you who are not geeks, this is actually a well-known quote. I started out my college career as a physics major, but I’m essentially a lazy person. I dropped physics because when we got to electromagnetism optics and waves, I had to do math that took more time than I was willing to do. I mean, it was really that simple. I was lazy. So I switched to philosophy because I felt that philosophy and theoretical physics were asking exactly the same questions.
Then, partway into my philosophy career, I had to take a course in logic, so I took an introduction to mathematical logic — And this answer is going to be for geeks; if you’re not a geek, this is going to be boring, I’m sorry; but I know a geek asked this question.
I took a class in introduction to mathematical logic, and the whole purpose of the class was to run through Kurt Gödel’s proof of the unprovability theorem. And it was just like my mind exploded. To my mind, Kurt Gödel was doing religion. In fact, recently I did a deep dive into Gödel’s life, and he really was doing religion. He was doing religion and philosophy and mathematics, and it’s all kind of mushed together in his work. So I don’t see a strict division.
Thus, I think Alan Turing’s wrong. I think he was also wrong with the Turing test, but we’ll leave it at that. And if none of that makes sense, who are the geeks in here? [Some people raise their hands.] Just ask one of the geeks, and they’ll explain it all to you.
“Since we’re so small compared to the whole of the universe, and we will all be dead and forgotten before lunch, why can’t we sit on the couch and watch TV all day?”
And the answer is, of course you can. It is your life and it is your choice to do with what you will. However, when you look at the scale of things, compared to the universe, we are tiny. But compared to a virus, we are quite large. And compared to an electron or a quark, we’re actually quite, quite large. So I’m not sure that talking about the scale of things gives us license to sit on the couch and watch TV all day. Of course, it depends on the TV program.
I want to think about this more. I think this is going to turn into a sermon.
“When we are supposed to love our neighbors, how can we apply that rule to the corrupt, mean-spirited, totally unlovable people who are in charge of our nation’s government?”
Okay, so we’re all laughing, but if you think about who was in charge of the government in the time of Jesus, who quoted “love your neighbors” out of the Hebrew Scriptures, they were less lovable than our government. The Roman Empire was pretty horrible and extremely violent. We think: “Oh, it’s bad, we’re bombing Iran.” The Roman emperors would have been like: “Yes, that is what you’re supposed to do — and more.” They were worse. So if Jesus could say “love your neighbors” —
Then think back to the time of the ancient Israelites, which is where that “love your neighbor” really comes from. That was also a violent time with lots of corruption. And really, outside of the ancient Israelites, almost no one had a sense of morals and morality that would apply to everybody; this was a huge innovation the ancient Israelites made.
If the ancient Israelites could say, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” then that gives us something to think about when our time is so much better. Again, this is going to become another sermon topic. I’ll leave it at that for now.
“How do you address current events while being sensitive to people’s differing opinions?”
So much of what’s going on in the world is in direct opposition to our beliefs as Unitarian Universalists. This question actually came up at the potluck last night. We were talking about this and somebody made a similar point. And in fact, they said to me, why don’t I talk more about current events? And I said, well, first of all, the Johnson Amendment says that we ministers and clergy shall not take partisan positions from the pulpit. If I do, then this organization could lose its tax exempt 501(c)3 status. We all know about the Johnson Amendment.
Yet almost anything that you talk about in terms of ethics and morality these days — well, Republicans will interpret it as being partisan, and people who are diehard Democrats will interpret it as being partisan. It is extremely challenging to talk about anything without people assuming that you’re taking a partisan position, even when you’re not.
To get back to the question, which I’ll rephrase as — How do you, Dan, address current events while being sensitive to people’s different opinions?
The first thing I do is say is that I am a proudly registered independent. I am not a Democrat. I am not a Republican. That should say to everybody: If you’re going to interpret this in partisan terms, you’re wrong. That’s the first thing I do.
I think that is actually good for all of us to do. Even if you’re registered as a Democrat or a Republican, when you’re expressing an opinion, I think it is very wise to say, “I am not taking the Democratic Party line. I am not taking the Republican Party line. I am expressing my own opinion.” Then you can go further and say, “And I want to hear your opinion.”
I think that’s the way that we all have to address current events in the current climate. Here again, this could be another long sermon. This is like maybe five sermons. And I have to say this is great — because right now I’m planning out sermons for next year, and I realized I had no idea what I wanted to talk about. Your questions are giving me sermon topics for the coming year.
“How do you remain hopeful?”
Well, with all these great questions, I’m really hopeful about next year’s sermons. [Laughter]
But seriously, how do you remain hopeful? You remain hopeful by remaining in community with other human beings. We are tribal animals. I think one of the psychological reasons — and I want to ask Dr. Kate about this because she has clinical experience and is a developmental psychologist — I think one of the reasons that we’re feeling hopeless is because we are so locked into social media.
Social media, in spite of its name, is not social. You are interacting with a device. It may feel like you’re interacting with people, but you’re not. Because while real humans enter content into social media (although increasingly, it’s AI content is taking over social media), then that content is filtered through an algorithm that is designed to reinforce your attention-seeking on that social media platform. We all know this, right?
This means that social media is not social. It’s psychologically designed to keep you anxious. Because if you’re anxious, you will remain engaged with the social media platform. We all know that, right?
So how do you remain hopeful? Well, social media makes me feel hopeless. I can feel my heart rate go up. Social media is not working to make me feel hopeful.
Direct face-to-face interaction is what we need. Ben was absolutely right. [Ben had spoken earlier in the service about how much he had enjoyed the church potluck the night before.] You should all come to the church potlucks. I had more good conversations last night than I had all week, because it’s hard to find face-to-face interaction these days. For example, if you’re parents with kids, you’re taking kids to sports games, you don’t get to talk. You’re talking about the game. You’re not actually engaging.
Last night, one of the people running for select board came just because she’s interested in First Parish. And we all had a great conversation. We could actually — instead of going to the Cohasset 143 Facebook group, that Facebook site, which is so horrible — we could actually have an open conversation.
I think more face-to-face interaction is key. That’s how you would be hopeful. Again, another sermon series could come from this one question.
“Why is there pain and sadness in the world? Do we need it for some reason?”
I don’t have an answer to this question. I mean, there it is.
I suppose we could go back to evolution. Pain evolved for a very specific reason. Pain, if something hurts you, you go away from it and it helps you survive, right? But sadness? Where does that lie in evolutionary biology? I don’t know. Still, you could say it’s just evolutionary biology.
Nietzsche said — and as soon as I said “Nietzsche said,” well, don’t trust anything Friedrich Nietzsche says. For a whole bunch of reasons, but partly because he was writing polemics and not reasoned philosophy, which means he’s trying to annoy you. In any case, it was Nietzsche who said, “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
That’s wrong.
I can tell you, as a minister for mumbly-mumble years, if it doesn’t kill you — it can weaken you, or it can strengthen you, one or the other. And what Nietzsche said, he was saying that to deliberately provoke you to say: “That doesn’t feel right.”
Now people repeat that: “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” I’ve heard people say that when I’m talking to families planning a memorial service. “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” And if they want to believe that in the moment, if that’s what gives them strength, then go right ahead and believe it. But inside I’m thinking, “Nope, nope.” I’ve seen people whose spouse dies, two years later that person dies. Their sadness did not strengthen them, it did them damage. And I’ve seen other people whose spouses died who were able to not give in to the pain, to acknowledge the pain, to move beyond it and survive.
In short, pain and sadness are complicated, super complicated.
I think about my father. We learned late in his life that he had had a heart attack in his mid-seventies, and he didn’t even know it because he was a full-time caregiver to my mother; she was in pretty bad shape at that point. After she died, he had a rough couple of years. And then he came out of it, started dating again. That’s an example showing that sometimes you can work through the pain and sadness. But it is complicated.
“What topic did the kids or elders seem to respond to most in this year’s cycle of classes and sermons? Why do you think it did?”
I wish Kate were still here because I’m not as aware of what the kids were responding to this year. I know a little bit about what the kids are thinking because I help out with our Ecojustice Camp, and with our OWL program. I know we’re all worried about the environment, and what’s going on in the world. I know the kids respond to honest conversation about what’s going on, and what we can do.
This year, what really stood out for me in the sermons was something that didn’t come up in last year’s question-and-answer service. I decided to give a sermon about the ethics of AI in education. And I think I got more response from that sermon than from any other sermon I’ve preached in my whole life. So I think we’ll be talking more about AI next year, because it’s a huge topic for all of us. And it’s not simple. It’s not straightforward at all.
“How do I get coffee and smile with delight — while bombs fly, human suffering, injustice rears its head?”
My eyes are bad. I’m not sure I read this right. Coffee?
[Comment from the congregation: “I think it might be, ‘How do I get comfy.’”]
Well, I think we should have coffee. Because that’s how I get through a lot of stuff — I get some caffeine in me. [Laughter.]
This goes back to the social media thing, right? How do you do this? How do you smile with delight? Not with social media. You’ve got to talk with other people. You’ve got to have that face-to-face interaction. Because if you sit at home and stew about these things, it’s not good for you.
I’ll give you an example. People say, “Oh my goodness, it’s so much worse now than it was X number of years ago.” Well, I’m an old guy now; I’m on Medicare, so I’m officially old. But I remember back in 1979, I was sitting in a philosophy seminar, and somebody was saying, “Blah blah blah, hopeful hopeful hopeful, rainbows and unicorns.”
I said: “There are nuclear weapons enough in the world to kill us all, and they probably will.” Because that’s what we were worried about then.
That was the end of that conversation. The professor immediately moved on to another topic.
And I realized that actually, you have to go the hopeful place sometimes. People don’t want to talk about the nihilism, the hopelessness. Because if you do, you shut everything down.
So that’s what I learned as a philosophy major. Yes, if you want to just shut everything down and stop all conversation, just go straight to that nihilism place.
But you’re probably better off saying — as the great philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer said — {There’s about this much hope” [holding up thumb and forefinger about an inch apart]. It’s not much. But at least there’s some hope.
Again, this is enough for another sermon.
“If we (that is, we Unitarian Universalists) are interested in skepticism, questioning, and challenging norms (which we are), what do we do about extreme skepticism and questioning of science, health, medical norms, including climate change, and vaccines?”
I have a young cousin who’s currently pursuing her master’s degree in gender studies at San Francisco State University. (Saba’s an amazing young woman, I like bragging about her.) What Saba is currently doing — and this is going to get into academic geekiness — she is very opposed to the postmodernism that currently permeates academia.
Postmodernism says there is no grand narrative, there is no absolute truth, everything is relative. Everything is kind of what you make up. And right now, people on both the political right and the political left are fully engaged in postmodernism. They’re both saying there is no absolute truth. Whatever we say is true, is true. This is why you can have fake news, because under postmodernism, I get to decide.
So here’s Saba studying gender studies, and she’s saying, ”No, no, post-modernism has got to go away.”
And this relates to us because Unitarian Universalism is based on Enlightenment values. If you’re a philosophy geek, like I am, there’s currently a re-evaluation of Immanuel Kant. Kant and the other Enlightenment thinkers were saying: Individual humans have a real value. People have a value. This is the big change that happens in the Enlightenment.
This means that A—— [pointing to someone in the congregation], you have value for who you are. Donald Trump, you have value for who you are as a human being. I may not like everything that everybody does, but there is value even in those human beings who do things I don’t like.
Postmodernism comes along and says, We’re going to do away with Enlightenment thinking. And all of a sudden, the basis of human rights disappears. The basis of human rights is this Enlightenment thinking, that every human being is valued.
By doing away with Enlightenment thinking, postmodernism is doing away with the grounding for human rights. It’s doing away with the grounding for our concept of justice. I think we have to go back to some form of Enlightenment thinking. And okay, yes, that’s another sermon series — but I do think we have to find some way to go back to those Enlightenment values.
And we Unitarian Universalists have gone a little too far in the direction of postmodernism, too. We’re like: “Well, what we say is right.” As if that’s all that counts. We shouldn’t do that.
All this also means, once again, we need face-to-face interaction. Because the only way you find out truth is through a group effort. That’s what science does. (It’s what science is supposed to do; maybe it’s not always doing it right now.) Science is supposed to say we find truth as a group effort. When it comes to truth, you don’t get to just make it up all by yourself.
It’s getting to be time to end this service. This next question is a good one to end on.
“How can I love ticks and mosquitoes and other unlovable living things?”
I have to tell you, I hate ticks so much. I cannot tell you how much. You folks know what permethrin is, right? It’s that stuff you spray on your clothes and when ticks land on the permethrin, they die. And I want them to die. [Laughter]
At the same time, my favorite mammals are opossums. They’re so cool. They’re marsupials. They’re our only North American marsupial. How can you not love opossums?
Opossums love to eat ticks. If it’s my favorite animal’s favorite food, I guess there must be something good about ticks. But…yeah, I guess that’s going to be yet another sermon.
I didn’t even get to half of your questions. Thank you all for these great questions. I now have a year’s worth of sermons, thanks to your great questions.
The full list of questions:
We are so much healthier and wealthier than 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 500 years ago. Human rights have progressed in so many ways, Why is it so hard for us to be positive about the future — do we have a moral obligation to focus more on hope?
How can we remain hopeful?
If history repeats itself, then how do we learn and grow and be hopeful that things change for the better?
How do you teach children AI? (asked by 2 people)
What topic did the kids/adults seem to respond to most in the past year’s cycle of classes/sermons? Why do you think it did?
How do you address current events while being sensitive to people’s differing opinions? So much of what’s going on in the world is in direct opposition to our beliefs as UUs.
When the walls of our differences are so high, where do we start conversing?
These days it’s very hard to respect the worth and dignity of some people (i.e., politicians).
When we are supposed to “love our neighbors,” how can we apply that rule to the corrupt, mean spirited, totally unlovable people who are in charge of our nation’s government?
Which of these virtues is most lacking now in our world, and in our congregation? — humility, compassion, generosity, something else?
Is it OK to be rich?
How do I love ticks and mosquitoes and other unlovable living things?
Tolerance is a virtue. How do you tolerate intolerance? Example: religions which are restrictive of rights.
Who is Michael Servetus and what did he do?
If we [Unitarian Universalists] are interested in skepticism, questioning, and challenging norms — what do we do about extreme skepticism and questioning of science, health, and medical norms (including climate change and vaccines)?
How do I get coffee and smile with delight…while bombs fly, human suffering exists, and injustice rears its head?
How does JETPIG help kids/adults remember UU principles?
Why is there pain and sadness in the world? Do we need it for some reason?
Since we are so small compared to the whole of the universe and we will all be dead and forgotten before long, why can’t we sit on the couch and watch TV all day?
“Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition.” — Alan Turing. Reflect on the meaning of this quote?