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 »
Hope
December 2011
“What is to give light must endure burning.”—Viktor Frankl
Articles
You Are the Light of the World
“Make of yourself a light,” said the Buddha upon his death. Like Jesus, he knew that he was light, and people were drawn to him. Read more »
Hope: The Theology of Despair
The truth is that I am not an authority on hope. Until recently I didn’t even know what hope was: I thought it was something akin to a wish, a pipedream. Read more »
Hope and Sorrow
I had a very different sermon prepared for Christmas Eve, and I tossed it just a few hours before the service rolled around. A more sparkling, effervescent sermon, it was. Read more »
From Your Minister
According to Joshua Friedman, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago, “All the visible world that we see around us is just the tip of the iceberg.”… Read more »
REsources for Living
Have you seen the musical Into the Woods? It’s a Broadway show in which a variety of storybook characters—Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Jack (of the Beanstalk), etc.—meet up together in an adventure in the woods,.. Read more »
Looking For a Sunset Bird in Winter
The west was getting out of gold, The breath of air had died of cold,When shoeing home across the white, I thought I saw a bird alight. Read more »
Gratitude
November 2011
“Giving thanks for abundance is sweeter than the abundance itself.”—Rumi
Articles
The Deep Thanksgiving of Our Souls
I have wonderful neighbors who delight in garish inflatable yard decorations. We love these neighbors, but would question their taste if they did not question it for us. Read more »
To Be Joyfully Determined
Recall a time when things weren’t going well for you, when you didn’t feel quite right, didn’t feel quite like yourself; a time when you couldn’t hear the still, small voice, or when its song was faint… Read more »
Aspects of Gratitude
Gratitude is an attitude and there are aspects of it that I would not have realized if I had not come to prison. At least not in the same way. Read more »
CLF Nominating Committee Seeks Leaders
The Church of the Larger Fellowship Nominating Committee seeks CLF/CYF members to run for positions on the Board of Directors beginning June 2012. Read more »
From Your Minister
As a kid, I loved the idea of the Indians and the Pilgrims having a happy feast together. Read more »
REsources for Living
If you’ve been paying close attention you might remember that back in May I wrote about how it felt a bit odd to be talking about gratitude when it wasn’t November, the month in which we celebrate Thanksgiving. Read more »
Blessing
Thanksgiving is blessing. And blessing is mindfulness. And so, blest are each of you, you who are precisely who you are and no one else. Read more »
Thanks! You Did It!
Thanks to your generous donations, we met our target! The CLF was thrilled to see the enormous effort that CLF members and CLF friends all over the world made to help us achieve this goal. Read more »
Quest
October 2011
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”—Marcel Proust
Articles
On Pilgrimage
All religious traditions encourage pilgrimages. They ask the faithful to leave familiar surroundings and daily routine, to travel unencumbered on a journey that can reveal both wisdom and insight. Read more »
The Art of Walking
The art of Walking…sauntering: which word is beautifully derived “from idle people who roved about the country… Read more »
Prophesy from the Hopi Nation
You have been telling the people That this is the eleventh hour. Now, you must go and tell the people That THIS is the hour, And there are things to be considered. Read more »
Prodigal Songs
It was three and a half years ago when Unitarian Universalists changed my life. Read more »
From Your Minister
It is possible that the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a community… Read more »
REsources for Living
What comes to mind when you hear the word “quest”? Knights of the Round Table riding off in search of the Holy Grail? King Pellinore on his eternal search for the Questing Beast? Read more »
Another Kind of Knowledge (Excerpt)
To surrender oneself willingly to truth, to earn it, in every sense, to allow a voice to the great unbegotten mystery and, beyond that, to listen, is asking for trouble. Read more »
Quest
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”—Marcel Proust Read more »
Forgiveness
September 2011
“Without forgiveness there is no future.”—Desmond Tutu
Articles
A Pattern So Vast
I still use the copy of The Joy of Cooking I got for Christmas in 1969. This now-fragile cookbook has memories stained into many of its pages (especially the peanut-butter cookie page). Read more »
Finding Our Place in the World
It was the third summer of my seminary training, and I was completing the required “Clinical Pastoral Education” by serving as a student chaplain in a women’s prison near Tacoma, Washington. Read more »
The stories we tell…
The stories we tell of heaven and hell are not about how we die, but about how we live. Read more »
From Your Minister
I have mentioned my garden in past columns—how much joy and life I find there and how central to my spiritual practice it is from spring through fall. Read more »
REsources for Living
I’ve been thinking about the Days of Turning, the ten days between Rosh Hashana (September 28th this year) and Yom Kippur. Rosh Hashana is the Jewish New Year… Read more »
Indian Boy Love Song #1
Everyone I have lost… in the closing of a door… the click of the lock… Read more »
Abundance
July-August 2011
“This could be our revolution: to love what is plentiful as much as what is scarce.”—Alice Walker
Articles
Grace
June 2011
“The winds of grace are always blowing but you have to raise the sail.”—Ramakrishna
Articles
Amazing Grace
And so this man chose love and acceptance over prejudice, hate and fear. Instead of recruiting for the Aryan Nation, he now spends that time sharing what he knows with audiences around the country, so that the job of recruitment will be harder for those who continue to spread hate. Perhaps the Universalists are right, ...Read more »
Grace Happens
The idea of negotiating a period of “grace” sounds rather absurd. So does limiting the number of grace periods we’re allowed in our lifetimes. Grace is no longer something to be bartered for, nor is it something to be handed out with expectations attached to it. Grace is a gift freely given. It is never ...Read more »
The Grace of a Bungee Jump
The word “go” stuck in my mouth because we suddenly were plunging to the earth on a bungee cord. The air was whipping by our ears and all was a blur. I felt a surge of true terror, shut my eyes tightly, and screamed spontaneously at the top of my lungs, along with Lauren. We ...Read more »
REsources for Living
Have you ever been homesick? Maybe you were away at camp, or maybe your family moved to a new place that didn’t feel like home. Maybe you were at someone else’s house, where all the food tasted different, and the smells were different, and you couldn’t quite make sense of the rules for behavior. Whatever ...Read more »
From Pens and Postage to the Digital Age
In the postwar years, the CLF was an instrumental part of the emerging fellowship movement and it can be fairly said that the CLF has “spun off” more new congregations than any other—perhaps more than every other! When Unitarians and Universalists merged their two congregations in 1961 they established a single CLF. Read more »
Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC
After centuries of handling and mishandling, most religious words have become so shopworn nobody’s much interested any more. Not so with grace, for some reason. Mysteriously, even derivatives like gracious and graceful still have some of the bloom left. Read more »
Grace
“The winds of grace are always blowing but you have to raise the sail.”—Ramakrishna Read more »
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