Before rebirth, there has to be birth. I have never given birth, but I have been privileged to witness two human babies, six puppies, three kittens, and a few birds and turtles enter the world. And I suspect all of us have watched documentaries of the same kinds of thing. Read more »

Perhaps you have seen the bumper sticker: “Born OK the first time.” That’s where we UUs tend to come down. You don’t need to be born again. We don’t hold with the notion of original sin, that babies are born carrying the sin of Adam and Eve’s rebellion. Read more »

In my own worst seasons I’ve come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. Read more »

The main point of the sermon was that I really don’t care whether there is a shred of historical truth in the story of Jesus. What I care about is that it’s a good story, and it contains truths about life—about how to live my life. Read more »

I was nine or ten when my mother gave me permission to plant and tend my first garden. She was a gardener too. In addition to ten children, my mother raised several lavish beds of exquisite purple and gold irises. I’ve associated irises with her ever since, and so they’ve always been my favorite ...Read more »

Just don’t give up what you’re trying to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong. —Ella Fitzgerald

“Pleasure disappoints, possibility never.” —Socrates

“Nothing remains as it was. If you know this, you can begin again, with pure joy in the uprooting.” —Judith Minty

“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.” —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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 »

Well-meaning people explain that it doesn’t matter what religion I choose, but I must choose, and only one. Only then, they say, can I go truly deep into a religion. Read more »