Often people say that they love coming to a place with so many like-minded people. I know just what they are getting at -- and I know that they aren’t getting it quite right. I don’t want to be with a bunch of people who think just like me. I want to be in a beloved community where I don’t...
In religious community, we share our joys and our triumphs, our sorrows and our broken places. In this circle of care, we make space for the complexity of life, the myriad experiences that bless and break our hearts....
... the fullness of our shapes and sizes are countless as stars in an infinite universe.
In the beginning, the Earth spoke.… And water, ever flowing, taught that life is movement and change.
we gather now / in the wake of their efforts to erase / as a sign / that we are not so easy to erase / and knowing that we are / literally love becoming
Blessed are all who hunger and thirst for liberation, for we shall inherit the future.
Water unites us. All water is one water, shape-shifting as it goes on and on in its unending cycle. The stream we gather by unites us with all the waters of the world, for all of life depends on water. That's why this common, everyday element on which our very lives depend is sacred. In our...
As drops of rain that find each other and build to become a track, a rivulet, a stream, a river, a sea, so are we drawn together; so are we fortunate to find each other; so are we bound together, on this shared passage toward an unknown ocean and eternity.
Today in UU congregations all over the world, people will gather in an effort to live into, as best as we can, what we profess about placing love at the center of all we do.
We need one another so that when our own little spring of hope dries up, there is a community well from which we can drink.
Our true wealth is the welfare of all beings and the planet that we all call home.
We won’t know how the story ends until we get there, but we can decide what words we use to write those stories.
You are loved beyond belief. You are enough, you are precious, your work and your life matter, and you are not alone. You are part of a “we,” a great cloud of witnesses living and dead who have insisted that this beautiful, broken world of ours is a blessing…
On August 25, 1619, the ship the White Lion arrived at Point Comfort, now known as Fort Monroe National Monument in Hampton, Virginia. The ship contained enslaved Africans. This is the first recorded arrival of Africans in America....
The church is not a place; it is a people… it is a people proclaiming to the world that we are here for the work of healing and of justice.
Humans make maps of stars, choosing some stars, ignoring others, to project our imaginations onto the heavens. These maps shift over time, across cultures. Names change for the same assemblage of bright points: Drinking Gourd, Big Dipper, Plough, Lost Hunters [1], Saptarishi [2]. Humans make...
We gather because we need community to do all of this holy work.
We are one, a diverse group of proudly kindred spirits, here not by coincidence but because we choose to journey together.
We are left with a new sense of ourselves as God’s people.
We have come here today to remember what some are intent on making us forget.
My dreams matter, as they are connected to the dreams of my ancestors.
We gather in covenant to celebrate the reality that love is at the core of our beings and that love will guide us if we open ourselves to the challenges which love requires of us.
Do not be alone right now. Gather together. Gathering together grows courage: in ourselves and in others who see the numbers swelling. It is a small thing, but right now it is an important thing....
Let our rest be a resurrection. Let the veils be lifted so we can feel, see, taste, and smell the power of our rested selves.
As December opens up before us, we welcome in the gift of reflection.
When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to...
We affirm that love is our greatest purpose. Accepting one another is the truest form of faithful living. The search for truth is our constant star....
I want to talk about choice. I want to talk about the fact that just because someone who is out to destroy you says you chose to be the way you are does not mean the path of best protection is to counter with “no I didn’t, it’s not a choice, I was born this way and I’ve always been this...
In the struggles we choose for ourselves, in the ways we move forward in our lives and bring our world forward with us, It is right to remember the names of those who gave us strength in this choice of living. It is right to name the power of hard lives well-lived. We share a history with those...
We, bearers of the dream, affirm that a new vision of hope is emerging.
We are all longing to go home to some place we have never been—a place half-remembered and half-envisioned we can only catch glimpses of from time to time. Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of...
I can feel the suffering of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think it will all come right, and that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again. In the meantime, I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry...
There's my temple! Believer, unbeliever or wild one. You are welcome! We have no definition of who we are but human. We have no code but that of respect. We have no creed but that of equality. There's my temple! Identity-seeker, sinner, stateless or not. You are welcome! We have no constraints on...
The road that lies ahead of us is a long one, and the pace of progress will sometimes feel glacially slow. Never forget that glaciers over time can carve out grand canyons and great lakes. Moving tectonic plates can rise up mountains over millennia, or they can explode awe-inspiring volcanoes in...
Kristin Kany wrote this multi-voice poem in 2016 to be read by a group of "diverse moms." I am mother Mother 1: I am Mother Mother 2: I am Mother Mother(s) 3: I am Mother Mother 4: I am Mother Mother(s) 5: I am Mother Mother 6: I am Mother I am Mama, I am Mommy, I am Chinese, Jewish, African,...
On Mother’s Day, let us mark how beautiful and complex it can be to mother and be mothered: To those who have mothered, we thank you. To those who rejoice in the work, the role, the presence of mothering and mothers, we celebrate with you....
May I remember in this tender moment that Love is my guide, always, shepherding me toward ways of openness and compassion. I have what I need, really, with Love at my side, above me, below me, in front of me, behind me, inside every cell of me, Love infused everywhere! Just when the weight of the...
I do not wish to breathe another breath if it is not shared with others. The breath of life is not mine alone. I brought myself to be with you, hoping that by inhaling the compassion, the courage, the hope found here, I can exhale the fear, the selfishness, the separateness I keep so close to my...
Hold fast to summer. Enjoy with heightened appreciation these still-warm September days. Create more memories, take more pictures. Enjoy a bit of denial. Suck all the summer sweetness out of your sun-warmed garden tomatoes. Smile at someone. Squeeze a hand. Put up some jam or pickles....
I put my faith in you. I put my faith in every one of you who woke up this morning with the weight of loss—manifesting as numbness, anger, fear, or an alienating, aching pain. I put my faith in you, and I pray you will put your faith in me. We need one another now, because we will not make it...
Of all the gifts in all the world, for love we are grateful. Of all the gifts in all the world, for helping hands we are grateful. Of all the gifts in all the world, for food we are grateful. May we remember that the best gifts don't arrive wrapped in paper or bows....
By no means are we [Unitarian Universalists] perfect; we often fail as much as we succeed. Yet even when "we have broken our vows a thousand times,"* we return to this essential work of justice and liberation for all. We do the work best when we remember what church is and what it is not....
We are grateful to mark time with seasons, to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries, or to gather as family to remember our loved ones. In all these seasons, may we give thanks for the breath of life, ever mindful of the fragile nature of existence. May we live fully in each moment....
This ritual entails having an empty vase on the altar, and cut flowers. It's especially meaningful to have founders or other "pillars" of the congregation have flowers with them in the service, and to have the congregation's children bring those flowers forward and put them in the vase (perhaps...
Reader 1: In 1637, the white settlers in what was to become the town of Dedham, Massachusetts, wanted to start a church. What they longed for was sincere religious association based in love, and founded in freedom. Reader 2: The idea of a free church took shape among the people—a church whose...
