Grief—One Year Later
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In writing about her mother’s death, Meghan O’Rourke suggests, “A mother is a story with no beginning.” This is because a mother was always there—from that very first moment of your creation in her body. She’s a given, a part of the fabric of your story from day one.
In my mom’s case, her story having no beginning seems especially true. She was adopted—and never wanted to know anything about her birth parents. So her beginnings were shrouded in mystery. No one knew the story, not even her.
Working Through Environmental Despair (Excerpt)
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In August, 1978 I chaired a week-long seminar on planetary survival issues. College professors and administrators had prepared papers to deliver on themes ranging from the water crisis to environmental effects of nuclear technology.
As we convened, I took time to acknowledge that the topic we were addressing was different from any other, that it touched each of us in a profoundly personal way. I suggested that we introduce ourselves by sharing an incident or image of how it had touched us.
From Your Minister
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It was not a surprise when my mother died. Survival rates for ovarian cancer are not high, and hers was in stage four by the time it was diagnosed. Against those odds, she lived three years with a high quality of life.
Finally, when the experimental treatments could not stave it off any longer, she refused any more chemo and radiation, quit eating, and slowly let go.
REsources for Living
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One way of defining religion might be as a place for talking about things that are hard to talk about. What does my life mean? Who or what is in charge? Where did everything come from? What do I owe to other people? What is good enough? How am I connected to the other beings of the planet as well as the other people? Why do bad things happen?
Offering for Grief
The Challenge of Unitarian Universalist Theology
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Some among us are asking, “Is there a center to Unitarian Universalism?” Or is it like the old story of blind persons describing an elephant, with a twist:
One of us touches the side and says, “It’s a wall.” Another feels the leg and says, “It’s a tree.” Another grabs the tail and proclaims, “It’s a rope.” But after all our surveying, is the one thing UUs can say for certain only that There is no elephant?
Do we have a theological center? And why are we asking about this? When did pluralism become a problem?
In Translation
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We are people of the word. Or, better said, people of words, many words. Words are one of the most important ways that we “know” things.
But words, to quote Henry Adams, are “slippery things,” and words mean different things to different people. Take the word “freedom.” To the privileged early Unitarians, freedom meant freedom of thought. To the African American community, however, it meant freedom from slavery and freedom from oppression. The two groups had a hard time talking.
Saved
I am paid to evangelize, to grow current congregations and plant new congregations. I’ve been lurking on internet sites of fundamentalist evangelists, because, quite frankly, they have systems for planting new congregations. I mean, they’ve got systems! They have trainings and boot camps and coaches and conferences just for planting. I have a hot case of holy envy.
So I thought about attending such a conference as an add-on activity in a city where I was already working on behalf of our Association. Well, attending it didn’t work out, but on the plane back home guess who my seatmates were? That’s right, two fundamentalist, evangelical men who had been to the church planting conference.
I strained my ears to hear what they were saying. The older man seemed to be in charge, and the younger one deferred to him. The elder quoted scripture and talked a lot about saving people. Their whole mission is converting people to Christianity so they may be saved and get into heaven.
I wanted to jump in, interrupt with all of the questions I had for them.
From Your Minister – September 2014
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One of the ways that we create spiritual or theological common ground is so simple it’s almost embarrassing: We agree to do so. We make a commitment to each other to create a space that is held in common. In religious language, these commitments are called covenants. In the Bible, covenants are between people and God.
Covenants, if they are to truly hold us, need to be large enough to contain the whole selves of the people who make them (including both what is holy and what is unholy). The place we are most likely to see covenants being created is at weddings. Two people commit to one another before their loved ones and what they name as holy. I have seen people make some pretty unlikely promises over the years—promises that are romantic and beautiful, but in my mind fairly unsustainable.
We Covenant
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Covenants are intentional.
Covenants are audacious.
Covenants are a promise
that can change our lives
together in this faith. Read more →
