Atonement
September 2012
“The beginning of atonement is the sense of its necessity. ” —Lord Byron
Articles
Turn, Turn, Turn
If we hadn’t learned it already from reading the Ecclesiastes section of the Hebrew Bible (what Christians call the Old Testament), many of us absorbed this piece of scripture through a musical rendition by Pete Seeger or The Byrds. Read more »
The Place We Require of Humans
“Who will journey to the place we require of humans?” asks the poet, Sonia Sanchez. This question from her poem “Aaaayeee Babo (Praise God)” has become scripture to me in recent months. Read more »
“Keep open the door of thy heart”
There is a profound ground of unity that is more pertinent and authentic than all the unilateral dimensions of our lives. Read more »
Jerusalem
I’m not interested in who suffered the most. I’m interested in people getting over it. Read more »
From Your Minister
What, I ask myself, does it take to live in at-one-ment? I can imagine the road I need to travel from where I am now to a place of living in at-one-ment with myself, with my friends and family, with my neighbors, with the world… Read more »
REsources for Living
Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, many be the source of one of the most…um…surprising religious traditions I know of. Surprising, as in a nice way of saying downright strange. Read more »
Pillar of Salt (Excerpt)
Speak out the paralyzing secret and begin to come back to yourself. Read more »
Happiness
Joy
July / August 2012
“From joy springs all creation,
By joy it is sustained,
Towards joy it proceeds,
And unto joy it returns. ”
—The Upanishads
Articles
Joy
I took a book to read for work and a book for pleasure. I didn’t touch either of them. I didn’t do anything. Well, I smiled a lot. Read more »
Rational Exuberance
When I started my training for spiritual direction, I figured that it would involve a lot of reading the classics of spirituality all those Desert Fathers and Mothers and Saints and a lot of sitting still, contemplating God’s emptiness or something. Read more »
Happy Bird
I saw a meadowlark today, sitting atop the razor wire on the north fence. It’s been many months since meadowlarks were here last. Many months. Read more »
Happiness
There’s just no accounting for happiness,or the way it runs up like a prodigalwho comes back to the dust at your feethaving squandered a fortune far away. Read more »
The Great Surmise
The Great Surmise says simply this: At the heart of all creation lies a good intent, a purposeful goodness, from which we come, by which we live our fullest, to which we shall at last return. And this is the supreme reality of our lives. Read more »
From Your Minister
I’m not saying that joy hasn’t been part of many other things I’ve reflected about—celebration, sexuality, justice, love, grief—it’s just that I have never taken the time to reflect specifically and explicitly on joy. Read more »
REsources for Living
I figured that in exploring the topic of joy it would be good to ask an expert for some input. So I decided to interview my dog, Piper, who is pretty much the most ridiculously joyful being I have ever encountered. Read more »
From Blossoms
From blossoms comesthis brown paper bag of peacheswe bought from the boy at the bend in the road where we turned towardsigns painted Peaches. Read more »
Joy
“From joy springs all creation, By joy it is sustained, Towards joy it proceeds, And unto joy it returns. “—The Upanishads Read more »
Notice of Annual Meeting
Notice to all members of the Church of the Larger Fellowship, Unitarian Universalist:
Per Article VII, Sections 1 and 2, of the Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF) Bylaws, the 42nd Annual Meeting will be held via conference call and screen-sharing on June 27, 2012, at 6:00PM Eastern time.
We will post all the necessary documents and contact information here by June 15, 2012. You can download the materials, print them, fill out the ballot, if it’s necessary, and send it along to the CLF office at 24 Farnsworth Street, Boston MA 02210. Or call the CLF office at 617-948-6166 and request a paper copy.
The purpose of the meeting is to elect a moderator from among members present to preside at the meeting, and to elect, if contested, from the slate of candidates presented on the ballot, three members to three-year terms and two members to one-year terms on the board of directors, and the clerk and the treasurer.
Lucia Santini Field, Clerk, May 1, 2012
Transcendence
June 2012
“All peoples are members of the same body, created from one essence. ” —Saadi
Articles
The Transcendent Within
In a very real way, these encounters helped me to learn to transcend first my self, then my family unit, and then even my country—to understand that there was a lot more of value out there beyond my own immediate world. I then internalized that broader perspective and took to heart a wider reality shown ...Read more »
The God Beyond
And so it is that Abraham’s act of practical compassion leads to an encounter with the divine. It was in Abraham’s lived experience—in the choice to transcend a focus on his own needs—that the divine was ushered in. Read more »
Transcending Boundaries
When I was a child, I would stand and gaze at the starry firmament and contemplate infinity. As I stood there, the boundary that is time dissolved; I expanded my Spirit to fill the boundary that is space. My being stilled and all fear, anxiety, and anguish disappeared. Forgotten were the chores, the homework, the ...Read more »
Oppression
Is a question of strength, of unshed tears, of being trampled under, and always, always, remembering you are human. Read more »
Notice of Annual Meeting
The purpose of the meeting is to elect a moderator from among members present to preside at the meeting, and to elect, if contested, from the slate of candidates presented on the ballot, three members to three-year terms and two members to one-year terms on the board of directors, and the clerk and the treasurer. Read more »
From Your Minister
I am talking to a man whose wife has just told him she loves someone else. I need to go to the ocean, says this Midwesterner, to see something bigger than my pain. Read more »
REsources for Living
Our Unitarian Universalist Principles and Purposes statement describes one of the sources of our living tradition as: “Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces that create and uphold life.” Read more »
Walking (Excerpt)
Tonight I walk. I am watching the sky. I think of the people who came before me and how they knew the placement of stars in the sky, watched the moving sun long and hard enough to witness how a certain angle of light touched a stone only once a year. Read more »
Transcendence
“All peoples are members of the same body, created from one essence. ” —Saadi Read more »
Justice
May 2012
“Justice is what love looks like in public.” —Cornel West
Articles
Inferno of the Living
I think we are living in an inferno. People acknowledge we are living in an economic crisis, but family, we are in a moral crisis, too. Read more »
Restoring Justice
These men are facing the shame of being labeled as outcasts and failures by their families and communities. Many of them, however, have also begun a journey on the path toward remorse. Each of them has been confronted with a moment of truth—a moment in which he has had to own up to the pain ...Read more »
Justice Should Be a Thing of the Past
Once individuals were cheated with misleading mortgages Yesterday storms randomly destroyed homes and families suffered alone Read more »
Women
Alice Walker has graciously agreed to let us publish her poem, “Women” from Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems in our printed and mailed version of Quest. Read more »
Hands
Hands are fascinating things. I like my hands. I think I have nice hands. My hands seem to have a lot of character. Read more »
From Your Minister
From my perspective these UU military chaplains are some of the most amazing advocates for justice in our movement. Every day, every hour, they are standing up for humanity instead of dehumanization, names instead of numbers, fair treatment and equality for all of those they serve. Read more »
REsources for Living
What is justice? That seems like a reasonable question for a month when justice is our theme. We know that Unitarian Universalists think that justice is important. After all, our second principle is justice, equity and compassion in human relations. Read more »
The Resting Place (Excerpt)
May all nations rise up together and with FireSpirit burn to ashes the Great Anger that separates us. Read more »
Transformation
April 2012
“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.” —James Baldwin
Articles
Tapping Transformation
Can this really come to pass? Will justice ever roll down like waters? Will we find our way to right relationship in our personal lives, in our neighborhoods, and in our world? Many days, it seems the odds are against us, stacked much higher than forty to one. Read more »
Season of Mud
A friend of mine from Maine says that down east there are five seasons: summer, fall, winter, spring, and mud. Mud is the season between winter and spring, the season of melting snow when winter’s icy grip loosens its hold…but doesn’t quite let go. Read more »
Reaching Beyond
If Unitarian Universalism stands for love, it is wed to freedom. Freedom invites vision. Vision leads to change. Change causes anxiety. Anxiety awakens resistance. Read more »
Where Do We Go From Here? (Excerpt)
Let us be dissatisfied until from every city hall, justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. Let us be dissatisfied until that day when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together, and every own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid. Read more »
Hansel and Gretel
But children rarely listen, and storybook characters, never. When they see that confectionary cottage their entrance is inevitable, like the mosquito bite you swear you will not scratch and always do, and always make it worse. Read more »
Kindness
Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. Read more »
What Are We Missing?
We need to start doing things that don’t accomplish anything in particular immediately. This is urgent. This will not wait until you are retired. (Just last week a retired volunteer said to me, “I really have to take a sabbatical. One of these days I am just going to disappear for a month.”) It takes ...Read more »
From Your Minister
I can still see her face. She looks up at me, head bent over, hair partially covering her face. I don’t know if Jesus turned water into wine, she says, tentatively, as if I might not be interested. Read more »
REsources for Living
Are you a fan of the Transformers action figures or movies? I’m not really into either action figures or action movies myself, but I have to admit there’s something kind of appealing about anything that can turn itself into a whole different thing. Read more »
Spring
How deep our sleep last night in the mountain’s heart, beneath the trees and stars, hushed by solemn-sounding waterfalls and many small soothing voices in sweet accord whispering peace! Read more »
Transformation
“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.” —James Baldwin Read more »
Brokenness
March 2012
“There are cracks, cracks, in everything — that’s how the light gets in.” —Leonard Cohen
Articles
What’s Broken is Brilliant
Rather we are called to transform the painful and harsh realities of our lives into as much beauty as we can. We are called to create mosaics known as community, as family, as congregations. And we are invited to bring our broken selves into relationship, and find ways to help each other heal. Read more »
Come, Ye Disconsolate
Maybe because I was born 1954, the same year as Brown v. Board of Education, I have always known that brokenness is not only individual, but also social and collective. I learned that religious community and theology often hold a people struggling with brokenness, suffering, and injustice. Read more »
How Does Our Faith Hold Brokenness?
The early Universalists did believe that every person is redeemable, salvageable, possessed of worth and even dignity, no matter what—but this was less a statement about human nature than about the nature of God, who was Love and nothing else for them, understanding and nothing less for them, forgiveness absolutely, if one would be forgiven. Read more »
From Your Minister
How do I stay present when things are breaking or broken? How do I allow things to break when they need to break, and still stay on the side of Life? How do I manage to not numb out or move into denial, without going mad and breaking apart myself, when systems far beyond my ...Read more »
REsources for Living
Unitarian Universalists tend to be pretty upbeat about human nature. We remind ourselves of each person’s inherent worth and dignity,and rather than baptizing babies (to cleanse them of original sin), we welcome young ones with rituals that affirm that we’re delighted to have them exactly as they are. Read more »
Brokenness
“There are cracks, cracks, in everything — that’s how the light gets in.” —Leonard Cohen Read more »
Hospitality
January 2012
“Visitor’s footfalls are like medicine; they heal the sick.” —African Proverb
Articles
To Be Seen
In the pupil of the eye, an endless heaven.The place is India. The religion is Hindu. The woman is old and determined. See her in your mind’s eye. The old woman has walked a long, long way. Her feet blistered and bled days ago, but something within still pushed her forward. Her back bends from ...Read more »
Hospitality at Our Borders
We are all migrants through history, on a journey together that will bring us either to destruction or to a whole new place of possibilities for humanity, the earth, and its inhabitants. The summoning of that longed-for land, with all its promise and the perils of the journey from here to there, is for every ...Read more »
The Fine Art of the Good Guest
We are all visitors—even when we are home. Our time in any relationship or place is ultimately limited. We are passing through; nobody stays forever. How might we act if we consider ourselves guests in the lives of friends and family? Being a good guest is rather simple in principle but occasionally challenging in practice. Read more »
From Your Minister
When Lot welcomed in wandering angels, who were sent to see if the town of Sodom was really as wicked as its reputation, the neighbors demanded that he throw them out of his house. According to many scholars, it is because of their inhospitality to the angels that the town was destroyed. Read more »
REsources for Living
How do you feel when you are about to head off to a party? Excited? Eager? Maybe a little bit anxious? For me, heading off into the midst of a group of people, some of whom I don’t know, always makes me a little jittery. Am I wearing the right thing? Am I bringing the ...Read more »
Descent into JFK
Descent into New York airspace is hard. … Languages crisscross from polyglot to melting pot. As the cabin pressure changes, the world shifts its weight to the other foot. Great care is required now in opening the compartments of the mind. Read more »
Hospitality
“Visitor’s footfalls are like medicine; they heal the sick.” —African Proverb Read more »
Living Faith
January 2012
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” —Frederick Douglass
Articles
Nothing Short of Evangelism
In 1990, a hundred and thirty American and Canadian Unitarian Universalist congregations formed one-to-one covenantal relationships with the same number of Transylvanian Unitarian churches. Later this Partner Church Program widened to involve close to four hundred churches on both sides of the Atlantic. Read more »
Feeding Faith
Some of my most intense experiences of faith have come at the small window that overlooks a field and a ridge, which I’ve dubbed Freedom Ridge. It is at this prison cell window that I have come face-to-face and, quite literally, nose-to-nose with spiritual teachers that have given me glimpses no human teacher could. Read more »
The Marker’s Meaning
Some years back I read a story in the Indianapolis Star. It was a Sunday paper kind of an article about finding happiness. “The truth is,” says the column, “the real secret to happiness isn’t a secret at all. It’s just not that pleasant a truth. Nor does it rhyme. Read more »
We Are All About Saving Souls
What are we doing here? What is our business? The answer is simple: we are in the business of saving souls. You heard me right: what we are about is saving souls. Read more »
From Your Minister
“I often think of humankind as a long procession whose beginning and end are out of sight. We, the living, are an evolutionary link between all life that has gone before and all that is yet to be…” Read more »
REsources for Living
But we know what Dr. King really cared about from his actions and his words while he was living. And so they decided to honor his words: “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?” by creating a day of service. Read more »
Birdfoot’s Grampa
The old man must have stopped our car two dozen times to climb out and gather into his hands the small toads blinded by our lights and leaping, live drops of rain. Read more »
How Do I Live a Good Life?
Perhaps the central question of religion for Unitarian Universalist is the question of how to live a life that is ethical and compassionate, and leaves the world in some measure better than how we found it. Read more »
Spiritual Reflection Posts
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