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Inspiration comes in many forms. I enjoy creating poetry, amateur film, and digital art as well as small group ministry. People receive spiritual inspiration and care in many forms, and the samples of my
work below provide something for nearly everyone.

One of Us

Adult Religious Education Series on Early Christian Art

The Superbowl “He Gets Us” ad campaign sought to reclaim the person of Jesus for a group’s own political purposes. But this attempt to define Jesus has been ongoing for two millennia. Nowhere is that more true than in the world of art. This four-part Zoom series, called One of Us, explores Christian art from the earliest pre-Roman to the modern and controversial — and seeks to reclaim Jesus as the subversive he was.

Found in Wilderness

Poetry and Film Project on the Spirituality of Aging

This special project included original poetry combined with original filmmaking. The work consists of six cantos, each inspired by real-life interviews with aging Unitarian Universalists who are coping with change, loss, and grief. The process for creating this art was one part spiritual care and one part artistic expression.

Retirement Conversations

Unitarian Universalist Church of Columbia

This session of sharing is designed to be a one-time chalice circle gathering for those who have recently entered into, or are preparing for, retirement. The ideas and feelings gathered can be used to inform a future retirement ritual. This is important because this important life change is less often ritualized or marked in any way, leaving new retirees feeling vulnerable.

© Copyright 2024 George Grimm-Howell. All rights reserved.

Formation Prayer

Original prayer composed for the 2023 Easter Service at UUCC

Spirit of the Earth, Gaia, mother, we call on you. In your womb we are formed — formed and reformed, shaped and reshaped, in the great cauldron of geological time unknown and unknowable.

May we in this tender moment whisper a word of gratitude that creation did not end on the sixth day, but joyously rolls on, age after age, across the centuries, the years, the days — continuing now, this very moment, inside our forming and transforming hearts. To live is to change. To change is to find our sacred purpose.

Father time, teach us to love our layers, the deposits of bygone seas of joy and sorrows, that have built up the foundations of who we are.

Mother of creation, teach us to be fearless as we are cast into the fires that melt and mold and harden us during times of upheaval and injustice.

Spirit of the Earth, teach us to trust the transformation, to hang on tight as we suffer the pressure and the heat, as our souls deep in darkness await the metamorphosis — that day when, finally, we emerge from the womb of life, transformed, our dusty limestone turned to lustrous marble.

May our transfigured hearts be hewn into tools that give life, or works of art that inspire. Or maybe a smooth, flat stone flung from a child’s hand, that skips on water for one sparkling moment.

And when changes come again, may we be content to let the ocean waves of time gently release us as humble grains of sand, to caress the toes of curious beachcombers.

Let our lives be formed, and reformed, and transformed again for love and justice — for we know that this is holy.

Amen and blessed be

Memorial Service

First Unitarian Church of St. Louis, December 2023

Below are highlights from the recent service, including an original eulogy based on a story-telling session with the family and closing prayer. The service was prepared for members of my home church, First Unitarian Church of St. Louis.

Queer Tenebrae Service

Ritual to bring LGBTQIA+ members into community and new life

Modeled on the Christian Tenebrae, or "shadows" service, also called Maundy Thursday, this special worship service carries queer and trans initiates through a journey of abandonment and isolation through symbolic death and then to a resurrection of the spirit centered in their new identity. During this experience, participants release their old lives and exchange them for loving acceptance in Unitarian Universalist community.

Honoring the Iowa Sisterhood

A ritual celebration of women Unitarian ministers on the 19th Century American prairie

As Midwestern Unitarian Universalists, we owe a debt of gratitude to the pioneering women ministers in the latter decades of the 19th Century. We know them today as the Iowa Sisterhood. We invoke the spirit of their life-giving ministries, their care for weary souls on the prairies of the western frontier, and their resistance to patriarchal domination.