Carol our Christmas, an upside down Christmas:snow is not falling and trees are not bare.Carol the summer and welcome the Christ Child,warm in our sunshine and sweetness of air. Read more »

I’ve spent a lot of time in waiting rooms in my life. Waiting for doctors, waiting for dentists, waiting for my tires to be rotated. Waiting for my airplane to board, waiting for my table at the restaurant… Read more »

You’re standing there in the cold, waiting for the bus to come, and every minute feels like an hour. You’re waiting for the phone call that will give you the results of a medical test… Read more »

The wet air curls against me as I sit in the boat without seeing through the fog. I’m without my bearings, lost between the elements of air and water. Read more »

The very first prayer I ever learned as a child was a bedtime prayer, taught to me by my grandmother. It went like this: “God bless me and keep me a good boy, and spare me for a good end. Amen.” Read more »

Prayer is not  asking. It is a longing of the soul. —Mahatma Gandhi

In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart. —Mahatma Gandhi

“Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul.” —Mahatma Gandhi

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” —Frederick Douglass

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”—Marcel Proust

For you who are stretched too thin / Flat out / Buried up to your eyeballs / Pulled in too many directions… Read more »

It always surprises me when people tell me how brave I am for being openly transgender. It doesn’t seem like bravery to me because I know how painful it was to live in the “before”… Read more »

Our UU theology calls to build the beloved community through our relationships with others. Sometimes we are faced with a different calling—to receive the help and support of others. 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 »

Some of us have been able to escape the bonds of belief systems that condemn us through religious hate-speak. As an “escapee,” I offer you words of comfort: You are not an abomination. You are not flawed. You are good and worthy, and you deserve to live life in an unfragmented fashion…as well as confident that you deserve to ...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 »

What does it mean to belong to the Earth? At present, it seems that our western culture has slowly devolved into a culture of dissociation … Read more »

“Do you know who I am?” I asked my soul mate of almost 23 years. She looked at me attentively, which was something, but said no words. “I’m Patti,” I said, “your wife. We’ve been together for 23 years.” 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 »

Over the years, we learned that gender too was one of the seeds that would only emerge in time. How beautiful it has been to watch as our beloved child has bloomed, in gender and identity and expression. Read more »

Have you ever felt frozen after hearing the news of a traumatic event or catastrophe? After the sadness and reality of a traumatic event or catastrophe situation have settled in, you’ve probably also experienced the sinking feeling that there isn’t anything you can do to “fix” the problem. We hate acknowledging that difficult ...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 »