By Julie Yeeun KimJanuary 15, 2025“Whenever I speak, I must cry out, I must shout, ‘Violence and destruction!’The word of the Lord has brought me insult and injury all day long.”—The Prophet Jeremiah (20:8)When I was sent to the principal’s office in the second grade for pointing out my teacher’s co
By DanaLee SimonJanuary 8, 2025“Resistance is the secret of joy.”—Alice WalkerThe theme of Joy has been reverberating as a holy echo in my life over these past months. Joy feels like one of the most compassionate offerings I can hand over to the depth of my soul which, in many moments on many days,
By Geoff DukeDecember 18, 2024“...This is the solstice, the still pointof the sun, its cusp and midnight,the year’s thresholdand unlocking, where the pastlets go of and becomes the future…”—Margaret Atwood, in “Shapechangers in Winter”When my family moved into our Vermont home, I built a small cave
By Rumni SahaDecember 11, 2024“There is no path to happiness: happiness is the path.”—attributed to Gautam BuddhaIn 2018, I embarked on an 8,000-mile journey to meet the Dalai Lama. I meticulously planned the trip after learning that the man I had worshipped all my life would be in his adopted home
By Kim MasonDecember 4, 2024“I wish for you… a season in which there is room for the complexities that occur during this time. A season of complicated memories, of happiness and pain, of comfort and loss, of disappointment and fulfillment…. A season of joy which also has room for sadness, because gl
By Rayla D. MattsonNovember 27, 2024“Give a person a fish, they eat for a day. Teach a person to garden, and the whole neighborhood gets tomatoes.”—UnknownMy grandfather’s farm was in the middle of nowhere, Georgia. When my family would visit, he would often complain to my dad that my sister and I w
By Jo VonRueNovember 20, 2024“You may not always have a comfortable life and you will not always be able to solve all of the world’s problems at once but don’t ever underestimate the importance you can have, because history has shown us that courage can be contagious and hope can take on a life of i
By Takiyah Nur AminOctober 30, 2024“The chance to love and be loved exists no matter where you are.” —Oprah WinfreyI come from a multifaith family: I inherited Christianity from my grandmother and Islam from my mother. In both of those traditions, which inform my practice of Unitarian Universalism,
By JD StillwaterOctober 23, 2024“Compassionate action emerges from the sense of openness, connectedness, and discernment you have created.” —Joan HalifaxOn the fourth day of a week-long backpacking trip, I found myself ambling down a quiet dirt lane with an amiable teen from Brooklyn. After several
By Donna MoriartyOctober 16, 2024“There is pain in this world that you can't be cheered out of. You don't need solutions. You don't need to move on from your grief. You need someone to see your grief, to acknowledge it… Some things cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.”—Megan Devine, It's OK Th
