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 »
Gratitude
May 2011
“Gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”—G. K. Chesterton
Articles
That Would Suffice
In the early 1980s when I was serving the Unitarian Universalist Church in Rockland, Maine I would have occasion to go over to Augusta, the state capital, from time to time. Read more »
Gratitude
In India recently someone asked my spiritual teacher a question: “What is the worst karma a person can undergo here on earth? What is the greatest difficulty? The harshest circumstances?” Read more »
Humanizing Mom
On Mother’s Day, one expects to read about the wonder and glory of motherhood. Read more »
Rev. Meg to be Installed as CLF Senior Minister
The CLF Board of Directors invites those who attend the General Assembly (GA) in Charlotte, North Carolina in June 2011 to attend the annual CLF worship service. Read more »
From Your Minister
The more I sit with it, the more I think gratitude is the very epicenter of the life of the spirit. Pretty much every religious tradition tells us this, even if they put their own spin on it. Read more »
REsources for Living
When Rev. Meg first suggested that our theme for May be “Gratitude” I have to confess I was just a bit confused. Don’t we do gratitude in November, with Thanksgiving? Read more »
O Women of America!
Into your hands God has pressed one of the sublimest opportunities that ever came into the hands of the women of any race or people. Read more »
Healing
April 2011
“Suddenly there is a point when religion becomes laughable. Then you decide that you are nevertheless religious.”—Thomas Merton
Articles
The Impossible and the Laughable
Well, this sermon does mention Jesus and his resurrection. There also will be mention of Pharaoh, Moses, and the parting of the Red Sea. I will speak of miracles and I will also invoke the supernatural — things so mysterious so as to be inexplicable. But bear with me, because my starting point is something ...Read more »
Prayer 101
To keep ourselves halfway decently in tune, we must tinker all the time: here on our anger, there on our bitterness, lethargy, pettiness, or pride. Fully to love we must mute our fears; fully to serve, tone down our piping little egos. In order to produce anything like beautiful music, we must join in the ...Read more »
Finding Healing Through the Mail
Then two years ago I was matched with Alex, who is in prison in Texas. Alex is extremely verbal, very bright, and almost a poster child for how to raise a career criminal. It is possible to look up a prisoner’s conviction record, but I never felt it was relevant to do so. I wanted ...Read more »
From Your Minister
This was in 1993. At the time, I had a picture of Harriet Tubman on the wall behind my computer screen. Her courage and tenacity spoke to me as I was becoming visible in ways I had never dared before, inspired to free my own people. Read more »
REsources for Living
How do souls get healed? Well, there are plenty of different answers for that one. Some Christians would say that the way to heal souls is simply to accept that Jesus has saved you. But UUs tend to expect that each of us is more involved in our own healing, and in the healing of ...Read more »
Mending
How shall we mend you, sweet Soul? What shall we use, and how is it in the first place you’ve come to be torn? Come sit. Come tell me. We will find a way to mend you. Read more »
Healing
“Suddenly there is a point when religion becomes laughable. Then you decide that you are nevertheless religious.”—Thomas Merton Read more »
Courage
March 2011
“What makes the elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist, or the dusky dusk? What makes the muskrat guard his musk? Courage!”—The Cowardly Lion
Articles
Spiritual Courage
Many years ago I learned this poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay: “The courage that my mother had/ Went with her, and is with her still: Rock from New England quarried;/ Now granite in a granite hill… Read more »
Finding the Blessing
I was standing beside a small mountain waterfall at a Shinto shrine in the mountains outside Nagoya during my first visit to Japan. Read more »
Never Too Late
Bravery is a choice. It is a decision to enter into the fray no matter how illogical and crazy things are. Even as our friends, family and common sense recommend that we stay away. Read more »
From Your Minister
As I have held the idea of courage in my mind, preparing to write this column, I have seen and heard it all around me. Read more »
REsources For Living
Isabel, who is ten years old, gave us permission to share this essay that she wrote on courage, the theme of this month’s Quest. Read more »
Courage
We may never know when we will be asked to prove ourselves or if the next plane trip will test our capacity for heroism. Read more »
Courage
“What makes the elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist, or the dusky dusk? What makes the muskrat guard his musk? Courage!”—The Cowardly Lion Read more »
Issues
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