Peace Like a River, Strength Like a Mountain
Nature provides ready metaphors for peace and justice. Jesus' peaceful kingdom is described as a mustard seed that grows into a large bush, providing shelter to all. the Hebrew prophet Amos cried for justice to roll down like water, and we sing, "I've got peace like a river" and "strength like a...
Green Sanctuary Kick-Off Responsive Reading
Setting ourselves to the task of Greening our Congregation, together we promise these things: Most simply, we will each do our small part to care for the earth around us. We will start with one step forward toward the thriving world that we envision....
The Miraculous Pitcher
During the hot Nebraska summers of my childhood, I spent hours, high in my treehouse, devouring the books I found in the small collection my parents had acquired from the estates of various relatives. One of my favorites was A Wonder Book, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s retelling of classical myths. My...
A Strong Reverence for Life
Those of us who call ourselves religious Humanists have a strong reverence for life. Many of us experience a deep sense of awe before the mystery of life and death, those powers greater than ourselves. We share a respect for science and reason, and we are willing to live with ambiguity to live...
Mind the Mules: Theology and Justice in the Food Chain
I grew up on my family farm in the southern part of Illinois. There was nothing about it that was a golden age. And I’m NOT nostalgic about the good old days. I don’t like carrying water from the well out back. I don’t like going to an outhouse at 4 a.m. in the snow. I don’t like the wasps...
Are You What You Eat?
On a deeper level, do we consider what we are eating and whether its origins are compatible with our personal values? Since the beginning of time, dietary practices have been incorporated into the religious practices of humanity....
Let Our Table Stand Like an Altar
I [do not] mean to present myself as some kind of bodhisattva of compassion. However, in my better moments—at least in my more conscious moments—while I’m eating, I do try to imagine the lives and even the deaths of the creatures who nourish me. I try to think of the freedom and exhilaration...
CSA as Spiritual Discipline
I understand participation in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) as a spiritual practice or discipline. While the word discipline may want to make us run and hide, a spiritual practice or discipline is meant to help us find our center. Approaching my participation in the CSA as a spiritual...
Food for Thought: UU Values and Sustainable Food
I remember back to the 50’s and 60’s when, once a week, my mother would don her shirtwaist, climb into the family car, and make her way to the A&P. How did she choose her groceries then? In our family, in New England and a long way from the fertile, productive valleys of California, proximity...
A Seed Knows How to Wait
A seed knows how to wait. Most seeds wait for several years before starting to grow; a cherry seed can wait for a hundred years with no problem. What exactly each seed is waiting for is known only to that seed. Some unique trigger-combination of temperature-moisture-light and many other things is...
The Prophecy of the Disabled Body
The following is an excerpt from the Theological Statement that opens the May 2018 Report of the UUMA Ableism Task Force. The members of that Task Force were Rev. Josh Pawelek and Rev. Barbara F. Meyers, co-chairs; Rev. Mark Belletini; Rev. Erika Hewitt; Rev. Evan Keely; and Rev. Theresa I. Soto.
The Promise, the Practice, the People
As Unitarian Universalists, we believe democracy is more than a political system; it is a shared journey, a collective responsibility, and a profound act of faith in one another.
A Faith of Holy Cartographers
I don’t want a smoothed-out, disproportionately aggrandized faith that attempts to draw all comers to its one self-righteous place at the top of the map of humanity… Instead, I want an imaginative and wandering faith of holy cartographers…
The How, Not the Why
Figuring out the why doesn’t really help me. My work is to figure out the how.
Even This
Some years are hard. Some holidays won’t feel jolly. Some days are best kept In quiet contemplation. But none of that makes this time less holy. None of that makes you less worthy…
There’s Making in a Miracle
The magic of Christmas doesn't just happen: It’s made, just like how each year a miracle is celebrated. But that very first Christmas—that miracle—didn’t just happen either…
A Recipe for Resilience
This recipe has been tweaked over time, so adjust as necessary. Sometimes it yields more servings than anticipated. Sometimes it needs a bit more of this ingredient or that. It comes from generations who have gone before me, and I've added my own flavor along the way. A Recipe for Resilience…
Reflection on Bipolar Disorder
The author, a member of a Unitarian Universalist (UU) congregation, reflects on living with bipolar disorder.
Crushing Systems
Shame seems to be a bestselling product pumped out of all these crushing systems.
Humans’ Core Function Is Love
Love leads us to observe in a much deeper way than any other emotion.
A False Story of Discovery
Every October and November in the United States, we find ourselves in a season of false and misleading stories about European settlers and Native Americans. First there’s the story that Columbus discovered America in 1492. Then there’s the story about the Pilgrims and the Indians at the first...
Thanksgiving as a Day of Mourning
In 1617, a few years before English settlers landed, an epidemic began to spread through the area that became southern New England. It likely came from British fishermen, who had been fishing off the coast for decades. By 1620, ninety to ninety-six percent of the population had died. It decimated...
It Began with a Stone
When some people think of Easter, they think of a bunny rabbit. Others would point to other fertility symbols and signs of Spring, springing forth out of the ordinary, the plain, the seemingly dead: butterflies, flowers, and the like. Christians might think of the empty cross, or of a cross with...
Spiritual Theft
Non-Indigenous people who seek to reconnect with the earth must be wary of the dangerous problem of spiritual theft. On the one hand, we have much to learn from Native peoples about this land and about what it means to honor our relationship to the land. We must take our lead from those who have...
On White Supremacy Culture and Why I Use These Words
A common "issue" in anti-racism work is the use of the term culture of white supremacy or white supremacy culture, which many people view as charged, controversial, or even deeply offensive. Sometimes there are even challenges/dismissals from people in positions of power/authority about it....
Connection as Resistance
In her 1975 theological treatise Suffering, German liberation theologian Dorothee Söelle* examines the ways that suffering can knit humans beings closer together, and can draw us more fully into the process of loving. She uses the term apatheia, “the inability to suffer,” to describe the...
In This Delicate Turning
It is time to throw out our exceptional identity and humble ourselves... We have always done good in the world—it is in our DNA. The question is, are we ready to do better for our own people? Because the world includes every person in our faith—many of whom have been micro-aggressioned right out...
There Is No Easier Way
I once saw a little sign, carved in wood, that read, “There is only the hard way.” Many of us have been harmed by theology that told us that suffering was a sacrifice that would bring us closer to God. Many of us were told that our suffering would redeem us, even when we knew that actual...
Harnessing Our Anger
Q: “I’m really struggling with my anger lately. I just feel angry all the time. What’s wrong with me?” There is nothing wrong with you because you are angry. Anger is a normal human instructional emotion, just like joy. It’s just that we as women—just like every marginalized...
Christmas Comes Whether You’re Ready or Not
I am always in a bit of a shock when December 1st arrives on the calendar. I always feel like there should be at least another week beyond Thanksgiving before I can even contemplate the next holiday....
Remembership
Today, you join in membership. This is a moment of excitement and possibility. And although I don’t wish to pull you out of this moment, I need to talk to you for a bit about a moment in your future....
A History of Church, Including Yours
One day, your church was born. Maybe it was a gathering of saints, called together for the common worship of a wrathful god, ceaselessly praying between bouts of decrying the evil of Christmas or dancing. Or maybe a few brave souls answered a notice in the newspaper, curiosity piqued by the...
The Innkeeper
The innkeeper isn’t part of most Nativity sets. No one sings carols about innkeepers. There don’t seem to be any paintings that include them. But we can imagine the scene: Bethlehem is crowded with people coming home for the census. It’s late at night when the innkeeper responds to a knock on...
Waiting For Now
Everything is about to change. And it already has. It will be. It was. It is. The dawn you eagerly await to end the long, cold darkness is already full sun far off in the east. Yet even after light’s return spring is months away. Thirty long years pass after His birth before the Messiah comes.
The Catastrophic Consequence of Likeability
We teach girls to be likeable, to be nice, to be false. And we do not teach boys the same. This is dangerous.
Every Place Is a Battleground
I was born nine years after four little girls were killed in Birmingham, Alabama, and two other boys later the same day.
Decolonizing My Desire
Since I was a kid, I have had a penchant and passion for my touch on my body. This was sometimes shameful, sometimes wonderful, and deeply private from fairly early on, as I received messages from family and neighbors that it wasn’t “right.” It has only been as an adult, as i have witnessed...
The Unseen Skeleton
We in the developed world are like homeowners who inherited a house on a piece of land that is beautiful on the outside, but whose soil is unstable loam and rock, heaving and contracting over generations, cracks patched but the deeper ruptures waved away for decades, centuries even....
How We Sell Our Soul for a Quarter
Why do we so readily hand over what's priceless for a meager sum of money—or a major sum, for that matter?
The Story of Norbert Čapek's Flower Ceremony
Čapek turned to the beauty of the countryside; to the beauty of flowers.
Bringing Conflict to the Table
Conflict resolution is in fact one of the greatest things that you can accomplish in your life and in your relationship. [W]hen I view people as not bringing conflict up, I think it’s being unfaithful to the relationship. I think it’s an abdication of your role in the relationship, and you are...
Do You Believe in Justice and Equality?
To see how we fight still after entire lifetimes of struggle—and then to tell us to be more polite is just plain cruel.
Doing the Work That Needs to Be Done
The 8th Principle is about actively dismantling racism.
Dear Divine Spirit
I believe in your grace and protection and cannot imagine them slipping through the cracks.