When my wife and I adopted our daughter Mattéa as an infant, we knew that we wanted to build something into our lives together in the way of prayer or ritual. Read more »

“Help” is a prayer that is always answered. It doesn’t matter how you pray—with your head bowed in silence, or crying out in grief, or dancing. Read more »

This past summer was the first that my son Adam, who is autistic, didn’t go to camp. At 19, he let us know that he was ready to move on from this kind of experience. He had been working at the local public library a few hours a week during the school year, ...Read more »

A member of my congregation was due to become a mother for the first time, and the women gathered for a Blessing Way. This ancient tradition is used to offer love and blessings to the soon-to-be mother and prepare her for the beautiful and wonderful experiences of childbirth and mothering. Read more »

Were you ever going somewhere and impatient to arrive? Are we there yet? Have you ever been ill a long time and wondered when and if you would get well? 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 »