Dragged Kicking and Screaming into Heaven
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Have you ever heard a Unitarian Universalist speak of having had a conversion experience? Have you had such an experience? A moment which divides your life into before and after; a moment in which there is a spiritual transformation; a shift in your inner reality that changes the way you view the world? Such a moment once seized me, and I was transformed from a Unitarian into a Universalist.
Salvation: Saved from What?
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Before the City Hall of New York City turned 42nd Street and Broadway into the glitzy, blinding neon showplace it is today, it used to be a totally different place. I had seen both the movie and the musical called “42nd Street,” and read books about its heyday. So, on a trip to New York, I decided to check out the venerable site myself. I wanted to see the glitter, glamour and glitz with my own eyes.
An African American Perspective on Salvation
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It is of enormous significance that for centuries, countless African American Christians have affirmed ‘Salvation’ as vitally connected with spaciousness, deliverance, rescue, liberation or freedom…. [I]n the African American experience, the nature of salvation is to provide space— psychic, physical and spiritual—in which to function as a free being… Read more →
Saved by Love (Excerpt)
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The first time I attended a Unitarian Universalist church for worship, I was greeted by an incredible sight: 75 percent of the people in the congregation were wearing pink triangles on their name tags. I didn’t know what to make of it. I thought I’d died and gone to some sort of queer heaven. Read more →
From Your Minister
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When we were kids, we were all supposed to have favorites of everything. Remember that? People would say, for instance, “What is your favorite color?” And I would always feel completely stumped. To avoid the discomfort of that bewildered feeling I always said, as if it were a no-brainer, “Blue.”
Salvation
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By what are you saved? And how?
Saved like a bit of string,
tucked away in a drawer?
Saved like a child rushed from
a burning building, already
singed and coughing smoke?
Or are you salvaged
like a car part—the one good door
when the rest is wrecked?
Do you believe me when I say
you are neither salvaged nor saved,
but salved, anointed by gentle hands
where you are most tender?
Haven’t you seen
the way snow curls down
like a fresh sheet, how it
covers everything, makes everything
beautiful, without exception?
This poem appears Lynn Ungar’s new book of poetry Bread and Other Miracles, which is available at www.lynnungar.com.
REsources for Living
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Are you saved? It’s a question most of us have heard, whether the person asking has appeared at our door carrying pamphlets or is a friend who wants to talk about religion on the playground. Read more →
Waiting as an Act of Faith
Waiting
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For most people waiting takes place in a doctor’s office, a teller’s line at the local bank, or in a drive-thru anticipating food. For others, maybe it’s waiting for your boyfriend to “pop the question” or for your child to come running out of school and greet you with a smile and a hug as the bell rings.
Whether it’s a few minutes or a few hours, waiting is normally over quickly and painlessly, and life goes on.
Expectant Fathers
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December makes me think of pregnancy.
There were Mary and Elizabeth, whom we hear about in the nativity stories this time of year, but there was also my wife Dori, who was five months along and suffering a bad case of morning sickness when our son was carried off a big Northwest Airlines jet and delivered into our arms just a few days before Christmas.
