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Affirmations Benedictions Blessings Chalice Lightings Closings Invocations Litanies Meditations Openings Poetry Prayers Readings Responsive Readings Rituals Stories
Peace Like a River, Strength Like a Mountain

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...

S Stephen M. Shick
Green Sanctuary Kick-Off Responsive Reading

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....

M Molly Housh
The Miraculous Pitcher

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...

B Barbara Rohde
A Strong Reverence for Life

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...

C Carol Hepokoski
Mind the Mules: Theology and Justice in the Food Chain

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...

D David Breeden
Are You What You Eat?

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....

G Gerri Kennedy
Let Our Table Stand Like an Altar

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...

L Lillian Nye
CSA as Spiritual Discipline

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...

N Nicole Janelle
Food for Thought: UU Values and Sustainable Food

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...

V Vicky Talbert
A Seed Knows How to Wait

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...

H Hope Jahren
The Prophecy of the Disabled Body

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

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.

E E. N. Hill
A Faith of Holy Cartographers

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…

T Teresa Honey Youngblood
The How, Not the Why

The How, Not the Why

Figuring out the why doesn’t really help me. My work is to figure out the how.

K Karen Brigid Taliesin
Liberation Is a Process

Liberation Is a Process

Liberation is the product of freedom.

E Emilie M. Townes
Even This

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…

Monica Clark-Robinson
There’s Making in a Miracle

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 Adena Dannouf
A Recipe for Resilience

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…

M Margaret Weis
Reflection on Bipolar Disorder

Reflection on Bipolar Disorder

The author, a member of a Unitarian Universalist (UU) congregation, reflects on living with bipolar disorder.

A Anonymous
Crushing Systems

Crushing Systems

Shame seems to be a bestselling product pumped out of all these crushing systems.

R Rebekah Taussig
Humans’ Core Function Is Love

Humans’ Core Function Is Love

Love leads us to observe in a much deeper way than any other emotion.

A Adrienne Maree Brown
A False Story of Discovery

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...

M Myke Johnson
Thanksgiving as a Day of Mourning

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...

M Myke Johnson
It Began with a Stone

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...

L Lisa Fischbeck
Connection as Resistance

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...

E Erika Hewitt
In This Delicate Turning

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...

M Marta I. Valentín
Spiritual Theft

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...

M Myke Johnson
On White Supremacy Culture and Why I Use These Words

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....

C Carolina Krawarik-Graham
There Is No Easier Way

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...

E Elizabeth Nguyen
Harnessing Our Anger

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...

G Glennon Doyle
Christmas Comes Whether You’re Ready or Not

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....

C Cynthia Frado
Remembership

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....

L Liz James
A History of Church, Including Yours

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...

S Sean Neil-Barron
The Innkeeper

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...

A Anne Dilenschneider
Waiting For Now

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.

M Mandie McGlynn
Goodbyes Are Hard

Goodbyes Are Hard

It’s important to honor the footprint others leave on our heart.

L Lauren Robbins
You Are Not a Problem

You Are Not a Problem

Black men are not a species. They, you, belong to humanity.

I Imani Perry
The Catastrophic Consequence of Likeability

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.

C Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Every Place Is a Battleground

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.

I Imani Perry
Decolonizing My Desire

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...

A Adrienne Maree Brown
The Unseen Skeleton

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....

I Isabel Wilkerson
Followers of Jesus Serve

Followers of Jesus Serve

Maundy Thursday means that followers of Jesus serve.

J Jill Duffield
How We Sell Our Soul for a Quarter

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?

J Jill Duffield
The Story of Norbert Čapek's Flower Ceremony

The Story of Norbert Čapek's Flower Ceremony

Čapek turned to the beauty of the countryside; to the beauty of flowers.

T Teresa Schwartz and David Schwartz
Bringing Conflict to the Table

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...

A Amanda Doyle
Do You Believe in Justice and Equality?

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.

I Ijeoma Oluo
Don't Argue with Salvation

Don't Argue with Salvation

Don’t argue with salvation when it arrives on your shores.

A Alex Jensen
Doing the Work That Needs to Be Done

Doing the Work That Needs to Be Done

The 8th Principle is about actively dismantling racism.

S Shannon Lang
Dear Divine Spirit

Dear Divine Spirit

I believe in your grace and protection and cannot imagine them slipping through the cracks.

V Vanessa Titang
The Insidiousness of White Supremacy

The Insidiousness of White Supremacy

White supremacy illuminates the exceptional instead of blaming the system.

C Clint Smith