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Affirmations Benedictions Blessings Chalice Lightings Closings Invocations Litanies Meditations Openings Poetry Prayers Readings Responsive Readings Rituals Stories
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
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
Liberation Is a Process

Liberation Is a Process

Liberation is the product of freedom.

E Emilie M. Townes
Questions for Reimagining Rest

Questions for Reimagining Rest

Because we are in a constant state of unraveling from the lies and socialization of grind culture, we must be intentional about reimagining what we believe rest is and can be for our lives.

T Tricia Hersey
A Necessity, Not a Luxury

A Necessity, Not a Luxury

Rest isn’t a luxury, but an absolute necessity if we’re going to survive and thrive. Rest isn’t an afterthought, but a basic part of being human. Rest is a divine right. Rest is a human right.

T Tricia Hersey
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.

Disturbance and Change

Disturbance and Change

Disturbance opens the terrain for transformative encounters… Humanists, not used to thinking with disturbance, connect the term with damage. But disturbance, as used by ecologists, is not always bad—and not always human.

A Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
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
Come to Church Anyway!

Come to Church Anyway!

Come no matter what the topic is, because your church needs you and you need your church.

V Victoria Weinstein
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
Wild Emancipation for All of Us

Wild Emancipation for All of Us

When I was small and just learning how to do life in my body, I didn’t hesitate, didn’t hold back, didn’t worry how it would look, didn’t look for cues or ask for a line. My imagination ruled... I was entirely free to be, driven by the innovation my body inspired.

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 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
This Is the Landscape

This Is the Landscape

So reads the doormat of conditional welcome: Here will pass the en-abled, blessed be their less complicated bodies. They will be able to hustle up a flight of stairs, decipher the PA, endure fluorescent lights, and follow long, thick, complicated words....

J Julia Watts Belser
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
Hopefulness in Bad Times

Hopefulness in Bad Times

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

H Howard Zinn
Simply Cherish The Earth

Simply Cherish The Earth

Regardless of our differences, there are a host of affirmations that we embrace as the basis for our faith. Whatever we think the holy may be, Creation itself is holy. We make no distinctions between the natural and the supernatural, the secular and the sacred. We simply cherish the earth and all...

W William F. Schulz
Song of the Universe

Song of the Universe

Listen carefully… Can you still hear the song? The one sung for you when you were born. The song sung by a cosmos in motion rejoicing at your life.

M Manish Mishra-Marzetti
Charge from the Earth

Charge from the Earth

Today, we are charged to remember. To know that as we live together in community, we are also in community with the silently singing lives in the vast congregation of the earth as well... Let us remember, and then act.

I Irene Glasse and Rebekah Savage
Multispecies World Making

Multispecies World Making

All organisms make ecological living places, altering earth, air, and water... In the process, each organism changes everyone’s world.

A Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
The Origins of the Anti-Choice Movement

The Origins of the Anti-Choice Movement

How white evangelicals became the most powerful voting bloc in the U.S. and the fuel of the American white supremacy engine.

G Glennon Doyle
The Power to Choose

The Power to Choose

The power to choose is the power of life in the midst of brokenness.

R Rebecca Ann Parker
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Recognition of Volunteers: A Litany

Recognition of Volunteers: A Litany

Leader (L): When there was a need, you came forward. Congregation (C): And so we thank you. L: In the nighttime or daytime, on weekends and even in the coldest, darkest part of the year, you helped. C: And so we thank you....

J Jay Libby
Cultivating Trust as an Organizing Strategy

Cultivating Trust as an Organizing Strategy

It takes courage to bring our trust forward and invite another person to meet us there. This sometimes sure, often shaky, surrender is an opportunity to discover something deeper than the confines of our individual experience.

A Adaku Utah
Toward Goodness

Toward Goodness

The fulcrum of the Earth tilts toward goodness and I will ride along…

J Jennifer Pratt-Walter
Company on the Path to Inner Truth

Company on the Path to Inner Truth

The journey toward inner truth is too taxing to be made solo.

P Parker J. Palmer
The Work of Repentance

The Work of Repentance

The work of repentance demands curiosity, care, and a willingness to face hard things with bravery and honesty.

D Danya Ruttenberg
The Work of Repair

The Work of Repair

A person is not entitled to forgiveness if they haven’t done the work of repair.

D Danya Ruttenberg
The Path of Repentance

The Path of Repentance

The path of repentance is one that can help us not only to repair what we have broken, but to grow in the process of doing so.

D Danya Ruttenberg
Facing the Gap

Facing the Gap

We need to summon the courage to cross the bridge...

D Danya Ruttenberg
Atonement versus Forgiveness

Atonement versus Forgiveness

Atonement is, in the framework of my tradition, something that happens in connection with the divine.

D Danya Ruttenberg
How We Belong

How We Belong

You can’t be a Unitarian Universalist and believe anything you want.

A Alex Jensen
We Are Not Guests

We Are Not Guests

Am I a guest here. Here in this House. Are you? Are we guests here. Here in this House. And, whose House do we inhabit? In the small world of our lives the borders between us: easements, fences, gates, hedges—serve to delineate, to separate us. To remind us of where my property begins and ends.

A Alicia R. Forde
Easter and Ostara

Easter and Ostara

Easter gets its name from the Teutonic goddess of spring and the dawn, whose name is spelled Oestre or Eastre. (The origin of the word east, the direction of the rising sun, comes from various Germanic, Austro-Hungarian words for dawn that share the root for the word aurora, which means “to...

A Adrianne Ross
May Means Mother's Day

May Means Mother's Day

May means Mother’s Day. I’m going to trust Hallmark and daddies and six year-olds and grown-up kids who are mommies themselves to honor the mothers among us as they deserve to be honored—with brass bands, flags flying, breakfast in bed (and kitchens cleaned up afterwards). I wish for those...

K Katie Lee Crane
Visitors in the Struggle for Racial Justice

Visitors in the Struggle for Racial Justice

No matter what tactics and methods racial justice activists use, the general response of society will be a collective head-shaking and tsk-tsk-ing — because what people are actually complaining about are not the specific tactics that are being used in the struggle for racial justice, but that the...

A Aisha Ansano
Every Mother Has a Different Story

Every Mother Has a Different Story

Every mother has a different story, though we tend to group them together. We like to think that partnered moms have it good and single moms have it rough, but the truth is that we're a diverse bunch....

C Cheryl Strayed
The Promise and the Practice: "Missing Voices" Reading

The Promise and the Practice: "Missing Voices" Reading

When I started attending a UU church, I was excited by the promise of worship that would draw from the arts, science, nature, literature and a multitude of voices. Indeed, some of the voices that Unitarian Universalists hear in worship each week belong to Thoreau, Emerson, Ballou, and others....

C Connie Simon