Breathe, said the wind.   How can I breathe at a time like this, when the air is full of the smoke of burning tires, burning lives?   Just breathe, the wind insisted.   Easy for you to say, if the weight of injustice is not wrapped around your throat, cutting off all air.   I need you to breathe. I need you to breathe.   Don’t tell me to ...Read more »

In the wake of Ferguson, in the wake of Trayvon Martin and Oscar Grant and the 12-year-old boy with a pellet gun who was recently shot by a police officer in Cleveland and all the other young Black men killed because a White man found them threatening, it’s hard to know what to say. It’s ...Read more »

The first time I heard those words was in seminary. I’d just agreed to sing with a newly formed a cappella group, and this song, Another Train, was on the practice CD I’d been sent home with after our first rehearsal. Read more »

The human mind is naturally drawn to beginnings, with an urge to trace things back, and back, and back—to try to get to the root. There’s a sense that if you know the beginning of something, then you know what it is, and where it might be headed, and how you might deal with it. ...Read more »

I write this, and you will read it, at the start of a “new” year. I say “new” because that is how it has been parceled out in the proper number of days and weeks and months to make a year. Read more »

Everything’s got a story in it. Change the story, change the world. —Terry Prachett

Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are. —Bertolt Brecht

“Nourish beginnings… Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things are blest. The blessing is in the seed.” —Muriel Rukeyser

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.” —Ernest Hemingway

“You cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.” —C.S. Lewis

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” —Seneca

“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.” —James Baldwin

“There are cracks, cracks, in everything — that’s how the light gets in.” —Leonard Cohen

“Every intersection in the road of life is the opportunity to make a decision.”—Duke Ellington

When your child or infant is in the hospital, ill or injured, you may feel like all of life’s “knowns” are turned upside down. Suddenly unmoored, you may be struggling… Read more »

A disaster strikes fiercely and suddenly. It shatters our homes and property. It puts an end to many community services. It plays havoc with our interiors. A disaster leads people into and through stages of despair. Our once-so-comfortable-existence is replaced with anger, grief, frustration, and confusion. Looking back, I now see this after the disaster ...Read more »

For the first couple of months after I found AA I looked around to see if I could find a program without this kind of God language. With time I realized … Read more »

Illness, including mental illness, is nothing for which an individual should be blamed or shamed. But doesn’t our UU theology hold a fuller revelation? Read more »

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. (Rom 12:9-10) Read more »

We UUs value knowledge; we believe in facing the facts and tackling problems rationally. The human psyche does not always cooperate, however. What do we do when irrational—perhaps nonrational—fears seize us and send us running from the knowledge? Read more »

When we become ill, we discover what it means to be a human “being” as opposed to a human “doing.” Read more »

Unitarian Universalists hold justice to be a particularly important aspect of right relationships among human beings. But how can we temper justice with mercy? Read more »

Mental illness, like our faith, is a journey with no definitive answers and no correct path. Our illnesses demand a lot from us. There are no universally guaranteed medications or treatments; we must find what works for us. Read more »

If we look beneath memory loss and the inability to reason, we may be surprised to discover what persons with Alzheimer’s reveal to us … Read more »

For many of us, it proves impossible to limit religious thought to a narrow creed. The more we learn, the more difficult it becomes to restrict ourselves to the definition of ultimate reality, or God, that we grew up with, or held when we were young. Read more »

Caregivers often must put the rest of their lives on hold to attend to the sick child. But those of us in that role must also take care of ourselves so that we are strengthened to give that care. Read more »

What do we want for our children? Love and happiness, perhaps, are a good place to start. Read more »

Rather than seeing new babies as tainted by original sin, we see them as whole and beautiful, just as they are. Read more »

Whether we suspected it was coming or were taken completely by surprise, we have lost a job and we are likely stunned. In most cases it is not because we did something wrong and are being punished. Read more »

Many of us have long since mastered the art of despair. Many of us have fallen into despair’s trance, memorized by thoughts of suicide. Read more »

Optimism is often held up as a cardinal virtue. No matter the situation, we feel we should be plucky, searching for that silver lining, and courageous. Yet… Read more »