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Welcome to the Pagosah Unitarian Universalist Fellowship!

What We Offer in Pagosa Springs: Our Fellowship holds weekly worship services on Sunday morning in Greenbriar Plaza, Suite B-15 from 10:30 am to noon. We are a lay-led fellowship and we sponsor visiting UU ministers several times a year. We offer a children’s program for children 3 years and older, led by our Religious Education coordinator De Anna Hoyle.

Founded in 1987, our Fellowship is one of more than one thousand fully autonomous
congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), headquartered in Boston,
MA. We financially support both the UUA and our regional district, called the Mountain
Desert District (MDD).

The Story of the Flaming Chalice: Each Sunday, as we start our worship service, we light a flame inside our beautiful hand-crafted chalice and recite some inspiring words. The flaming chalice is a symbol for Unitarian Universalists worldwide. The story of how the flaming chalice became our symbol is an interesting one, which began during the Second World War. During that war, lots of people living in Eastern Europe – Unitarians, Jews and others – were in danger of being put in prison or killed by Nazi soldiers. A group of Unitarians came together in Boston, MA to form the Unitarian Service Committee with a plan to help people in danger from the Nazis. The director of the Service Committee was Unitarian minister Rev. Charles Joy. He was in charge of a whole secret group of agents and messengers who worked hard finding safe routes for people to escape.

During the war, when danger was everywhere, lots of people were running away from their own countries; often people who wanted to help didn’t speak the same language. Rev. Joy asked a talented artist Hans Deutsch to create a symbol to print on Service Committee papers to make them look important, so as to impress governments and police who had the power to help move people to safety. The design of a stylized chalice, with the flame of freedom burning inside, was adopted by the Unitarian Service Committee, and was used in aiding the escape of countless refugees from Nazi oppression. Safehouses were marked by chalices scratched in the dirt; clandestine notes using the symbol were understood to be trustworthy. Countless lives were saved by the use of this distinctive code. Years later the flaming chalice became the symbol of Unitarian Universalists worldwide, a symbol giving strength to the human heart.