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November 2014
“Home is where one starts from.”—T.S. Eliot
Articles
Home Is…
When I was born, our house was a two-story grey box with a big rock in front of the house the size of a Volkswagen. The builders found it while digging out the basement. Its resting place in the yard was as far as they would move it. Read more »
A Spiritual Home for Prisoners
The CLF offers our 600 prisoner members a spiritual home via UU publications, correspondence courses, and more. Please help keep our Prison Ministry strong and active by donating at clfuu.org or calling 1-800-231-3027. Read more »
Home Is Where You Park It
“Trans or Rez?” A bellhop asks this question of Barton Fink, title character in the 1991 Coen brothers film. Barton Fink is set in the 1940s, when the bellhop (played by Steve Buscemi) was likely clueless about the possible transgender or immigration implications of his question. Read more »
Finding Home
I can think of few words more powerful to me than the word home. It is the word that gives me hope, while at the same time it seems to be nothing more than a dream. It is both unattainable and so absolutely vital to me. Read more »
By the Waters of Babylon
By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down, and we wept when we remembered Zion. In the midst of it all we hung our harps upon the willows. They that carried us away captive required of us a song. Read more »
From Your Minister
A trend which began in the San Francisco Bay Area is now spreading to other cities—the trend of hipsters paying four or five bucks for a piece of toast. Toast. You know, like you make in the toaster. Read more »
REsources for Living
I’ve been enjoying looking at pictures of tiny homes lately—little bitty houses made of cargo containers, recycled materials or just a lot less traditional building materials. Read more »
Coming Home
It happens with the simplest gestures: a door swung open, a light turned on in the hall, the snap of a lock as it opens somewhere unseen inside. Read more »
Mourning
October 2014
Even hundredfold grief is divisible by love.”—Terri Guillemets
Articles
Grief
Each person on this earth has experienced loss. We may think when grief comes over us that we are alone in our mourning, that the smiling chatty folks around us don’t know…but of course they do. Being alive in this mortal world means knowing loss. Read more »
Grief—One Year Later
In writing about her mother’s death, Meghan O’Rourke suggests, “A mother is a story with no beginning.” Read more »
Working Through Environmental Despair (Excerpt)
Just as grief work is a process by which bereaved persons unblock their numbed energies by acknowledging and grieving the loss of a loved one, so do we all need to unblock our feelings about our threatened planet and the possible demise of our species. Until we do, our power of creative response will be ...Read more »
From Your Minister
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. Read more »
REsources for Living
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? Read more »
Offering for Grief
Look! I have made this bowl for you, this large dark blue one with lilies etched across the bottom, around the sides. Read more »
Theological Diversity and Common Ground
September 2014
Out beyond idea of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.” —Jalal ad-Din Rumi
Articles
The Challenge of Unitarian Universalist Theology
Some among us are asking, “Is there a center to Unitarian Universalism?” Do we have a theological center? And why are we asking about this? When did pluralism become a problem? Read more »
In Translation
Unitarian Universalists are people of words. But words mean different things to different people. Read more »
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 ...Read more »
From Your Minister – September 2014
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 ...Read more »
We Covenant
Covenants are intentional. / Covenants are audacious. / Covenants are a promise / that can change our lives / together in this faith. Read more »
REsources for Living
As someone who grew up Unitarian Universalist, I have to admit that there are some disadvantages to being a UU kid. It’s hard enough just getting people through the ten syllables of Unitarian Universalist. But if you manage that task then the inevitable follow-up question is: “What do you believe?” Read more »
Theological Diversity and Common Ground
“Out beyond idea of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.”—Jalal ad-Din Rumi Read more »
Independence and Interdependence
July-August 2014
To find yourself, think for yourself. —Socrates
Articles
Turn the Principles Upside Down
What happens when we affirm and promote: “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part” as our first principle and leave celebrating the inherent worth and dignity of every person until the end? Read more »
How It Happens
“…I don’t want to stereotype, but you’re some kind of Asian, right? So, math is, like, in your DNA?” I was rendered temporarily speechless…. Read more »
Welcome to Cell No. 9
American prisoners are an independent lot—or that’s what most of them want you to believe. But there comes a time when even the hardest among them need help. Moreover, sometimes these tough guys are the first to reach out to those in need. Read more »
One Today – Poem by Richard Blanco
“One Today: A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration, January 21, 2013,” by Richard Blanco Read more »
From Your Minister – July 2014
I love acknowledgments pages, and award acceptance speeches, and other public expressions of gratitude where people spell out how their individual success is interconnected with the gifts of other people. Read more »
REsources for Living
One of the most exciting things about growing up is that you can do more and more things by yourself. Read more »
The Sun Shines Not On Us…
The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us. Thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. Read more »
Security and Risk
June 2014
“Why not go out on a limb? That’s where the fruit is.” —Will Rogers
Articles
The Faith of a Trapeze Artist
The word “faith” doesn’t occupy the same place of prominence in Unitarian Universalism that it does in some religious traditions. For many of us, faith has become synonymous with blind acceptance of particular religious beliefs …
Embracing the Dangerous and Sacred (Excerpt)
I have a favorite tree that I like to sit in. Going there is a form of meditation for me. I like to climb up into the branches and look out over the Bay.The birds fly around me and my cares just melt away. I feel like I am in a sacred and safe world. ...
The Risks We Take
Am I going to take the most familiar, safest routes or will I open myself to new possibilities and new ways of doing things? Such untrodden paths might challenge me, reveal my inexperience, my biases, and expose the soft underbelly of my vulnerable, human self.
Finding Our Way in the Wilderness
Making room to be more inclusive means letting go of some more stubborn aspects of a given culture. It means making room to be changed. But change can also bring new promise and possibility—something better than the past.
Into the Wilderness
When Jesus was baptized the spirit descended upon him like a dove and God said, “This is my son, in whom I am well pleased.” It must have been a great feeling, but it didn’t last long.
From Your Minister – June 2014
When I was a kid, my father had a reason why just about everything my siblings and I might do was risky and might ultimately lead to death, or at least dismemberment.
REsources for Living
What’s the riskiest thing you’ve ever done? Jump out of a plane? Travel to a foreign country? Ride a bike downhill with no hands? Change jobs? Make friends with a stranger? Swing upside down on the monkey bars? Tell someone you love them?
Holding On / Letting Go
May 2014
All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.” —Havelock Ellis
Articles
The Glove in the Subway
A one-paragraph newspaper article describes a subway platform during the morning rush hour at Grand Central Terminal. A train pulls in; a well-dressed woman gets off. Before the doors close, the woman realizes that she is holding only one of her leather gloves. Read more »
Letting Go of What We Don’t Have
Oh, letting go. Every so often a minister has to preach on something that is absolutely not a personal strength. And this is one of those times. I’m not a letter-go; I’m an attacher and a holder-on. I hold onto people and relationships I love. Read more »
The Roots We Choose (Excerpt)
We don’t get a say in the roots we inherit, even as they stretch beneath the surface of our daily lives and contain within them countless stories of danger and survival and elation and heartbreak that inform our living in ways we understand and ways we do not. Read more »
From Your Minister
My uncle had lost his powers of speech by the time he died. In his hospital bed, surrounded by his loved ones, he used a bead board to spell out what he wanted to say during his final days. Read more »
REsources for Living
Have you ever had an all-out, meltdown, full-on temper tantrum? I don’t remember having major hissy fits when I was little, although if you asked my mom you would probably learn that’s more about my faulty memory than my good temper. Read more »
A Stone to Hold On To
It was the weekend before I was scheduled for a biopsy. Marta spent the morning gathering stones on the beach. Later that evening, she pressed a smooth round stone into my hand and said I know that when you’re facing a challenge it helps to have something to hold onto. Read more »
Holding On / Letting Go
“All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.” —Havelock Ellis Read more »
Letting Go of the Past
Grief in all of its forms is essential to a healthy life in this fragile world. But fiercely and stubbornly clinging to singular events and losses in the past is not so much grief as it is a kind of “stuckness” that truly limits the gift of our present life. Read more »
Possibilities
April 2014
Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. —Socrates
Articles
Pancakes and Process Theology
In a very fundamental way, we are our choices. Our choices define us, and they also define and determine what the universe becomes. We are co-creators of the universe. Read more »
Born and Reborn Again
How, in ee cummings words, could we doubt unimaginable you? Well, that’s easy. We’re UUs. We can doubt just about anything. Read more »
Night of Blood and Fire
My father was coming to visit for the first time in 14 years. He met my older son ten years ago in Philadelphia. He had never met my 11 year old. It would take a book to tell all the reasons for the distance between us. Read more »
The End Is Not Near
They watched, some of them, as he was put to death painfully, slowly, brutally; and then they received his broken body and wrapped it tenderly in linen, arranging oils and scent to prepare him for burial. And now, the women find his body… gone. In its place is a messenger, telling them that Jesus is ...Read more »
From Your Minister
When I was in my twenties, so many possibilities about what life might hold for me beckoned from so many directions that the upshot was I was fairly immobilized. Many futures were possible, but none of them called my name. Then one day, I stopped into a book-store and picked up a book. Read more »
Everything is Waiting for You
Your great mistake is to act the dramas if you were alone. As if life were a progressive and cunning crime with no witness to the tiny hidden transgressions. Read more »
Health and Illnesses
March 2014
Again, again we come and go, changed, changing. Hands join, unjoin in love and fear, grief and joy. The circles turn, each giving into each, into all. —Wendell Berry
Articles
What Now?
Fifteen years ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had what the surgeon called a ‘strenuous surgery, was off work for nearly three months and debilitated for another six. But…it was OK. The results of the surgery had been the best possible, and this kind of cancer wasn’t supposed to come back. Read more »
Health
I was listening to a tape about health during my hospital stay, and it defined health as the ability to fully participate in one’s life. That stopped me. I had to rewind the tape and listen again. Read more »
Both Whole and Healing
I was diagnosed with a chronic pain disorder when I was 35 years old. Though my symptoms can be traced back many years earlier, I had managed to, well, manage the pain for some time. Read more »
Boldly Co-Existing with Mental Illness
In my senior year of college I had a psychotic manic episode and was hospitalized for two weeks. At 21 years old I received a lifelong companion, bipolar disorder. Read more »
Another Helping of Brokenness
I am prone to sudden jerky movements that are beyond my control. The other day, I was out on an errand. As happens so often when I go out, I experienced how we judge one another. And how sometimes we are both spectacularly loud and spectacularly wrong in our judgments. Read more »
From Your Minister
Recently, at one of CLF’s online worship services, we featured a guest minister, Teresa Ines Soto, who lives with cerebral palsy. Her story prompted several of our members to say that they also live with cerebral palsy, which caused me to reflect on the fact that I had not known that about them. Read more »
REsources for Living
I don’t know about your family, but in my family healthy eating is an ongoing battle. Yes, I am the kind of parent who generally thinks that junk food is bad, and vegetables are good. Not surprisingly, my daughter is equally strong in her opinion that junk food is good, and vegetables are to be ...Read more »
Our Birthright of Healing
The tools and strategies of healing are so innate, so much a part of a common human birthright, that we believers in technology pay very little attention to them. But they have lost none of their power. Read more »
Health and Illnesses
“Again, again we come and go, changed, changing. Hands join, unjoin in love and fear, grief and joy. The circles turn, each giving into each, into all.” —Wendell Berry Read more »
Solitude
February 2014
“One can be instructed in society; one is inspired only in solitude.” —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Articles
From Loneliness to Solitude
One Sunday morning several years ago I stood on the front steps and greeted those who arrived. These front step greetings are one of my favorite rituals of Sunday morning; a chance for me to connect, if only briefly, with each and every person who walks through the doors. It allows me to take the ...
Power of One
Our culture sends very mixed messages about solitude, being single, and marriage. We believe strongly that each person must be able to stand alone.
Finding Strength in Silence
What I know now, that I did not know several years ago, is that renewal starts from a quiet space. Silence can be a hard commodity to find in our busy lives: either real silence, where you don’t hear anything but the rushing wind, or virtual silence, in which you quiet the noise within.
From Your Minister
In all honesty, I spent the vast majority of time during those ten-day retreats becoming aware of how rarely I am completely present to myself. It was not one blissful moment after another.
REsources for Living
The other day my internet went out. Eventually a guy from the cable company came out and determined that our cable had worn through from rubbing against a tree, and that really all of the cable from the main line to the modem needed to be replaced.
Loneliness and Longing
I have a friend who is a sailor. Sometimes he takes companions with him, but frequently he sails alone.
Solitude
“One can be instructed in society; one is inspired only in solitude.”
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Beginnings
January 2014
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. —Seneca
Articles
The Beginning is Now
The first time I heard those words was in seminary. I’d just agreed to sing with a newly formed a cappella group, and this song, Another Train, was on the practice CD I’d been sent home with after our first rehearsal. Read more »
In the Beginning . . .
The human mind is naturally drawn to beginnings, with an urge to trace things back, and back, and back—to try to get to the root. There’s a sense that if you know the beginning of something, then you know what it is, and where it might be headed, and how you might deal with it. ...Read more »
Unexpected New Year
I write this, and you will read it, at the start of a “new” year. I say “new” because that is how it has been parceled out in the proper number of days and weeks and months to make a year. Read more »
In the Beginning
Kate is teaching the kids about dinosaur air. That air you breathe that air You have inside you every time You take a breath that’s dinosaur air,’she says. Dinosaurs breathed it. Read more »
From Your Minister
One of my favorite tricks when I am frustrated, bored or stuck is to consider where things have begun. For instance, during the awkward social situations into which pretty much all of us are periodically thrown (like standing in clumps of strangers at receptions and coffee hours), one easy path into conversation is to ask ...Read more »
REsources for Living
Have you recently started up something new? Even if you haven’t, you probably remember a time when you did. Read more »
Where it Starts
The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, Lao Tzu said in the Tao. But a better translation of this familiar passage is to say the journey begins beneath our feet not in the first step but in the stillness that precedes it, in the place where we stand before we move, ...Read more »
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