Mistakes
June 2020
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. ―Albert Einstein
Articles
When We Fail
The fundamental belief in the value of the individual has long held a central place in liberal religion, and finds a modern expression in our faith’s first principle, an affirmation of the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Read more »
Embracing Failure
I used to be someone who beat myself up for every fault, even ones that no one else knew about. Read more »
Splendid Failures
This past summer my husband and I celebrated our 30th anniversary by going hiking in the mountains. Read more »
Ministerial Search
The CLF’s beloved senior minister, Rev. Meg Riley, has announced her retirement, effective August 2020. Read more »
You Are Worthy of Love
There are plenty of places in the world where folks are more than ready to point out your mistakes, and to tell you that what you are doing is not good enough. Read more »
REsources for Living
Our theme for this month is Mistakes and Failures—which I think of as two very different things. Read more »
Audio Recordings
You can listen to audio recordings of Quest Monthly, read back issues or get electronic versions of the text to share with friends (and much more) at questformeaning.org Read more »
Managing Mistakes
What do you do when you make a mistake? You see what part of it was yours. You take responsibility and let go of the self-defense. Read more »
Mistakes
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. ―Albert Einstein Read more »
Integrity
May 2020
I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions. ―Lillian Hellman
Articles
Living with Integrity
To be nobody-but-yourself—in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight.” Read more »
Living with Integrity in a “Post-Truth” World
There’s a reason why we as a religious people covenant to affirm and promote a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Read more »
Watertight Integrity
I learned about risk-taking as a component of integrity in the Navy. Read more »
Integrity’s Blemished Virtue
Helen was revered as a good person, and I was happy to be her friend. Read more »
The Crooked Timber of Ourselves
“Finding yourself.” Nearly everyone wants to do it, and many are willing to pay for the trip. Read more »
The Integrity of Community
Integrity is one of the most important character traits we can develop. Read more »
From Your Minister
Years ago I was working with an acupuncturist. She put needles all over my body to stimulate various meridians, so that my life energy, or qi, could flow freely and without impediment. Read more »
REsources for Living
What does it look like to live a life of integrity? It seems to me that this question is at the heart of Unitarian Universalism. Read more »
Support the CLF and Quest Monthly
In a system that does everything to dehumanize them, the CLF provides a rare reminder to our incarcerated members of their integrity as worthy human beings. Read more »
Audio Resources
You can listen to audio recordings of Quest Monthly, read back issues or get electronic versions of the text to share with friends (and much more) at questformeaning.org. Read more »
Full
“She’s so full of herself!” we say, as if that were an insult. As if there were something else that one should be full of.. Read more »
Integrity
I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions. ―Lillian Hellman Read more »
Renewal
April 2020
The receding wave does not despair; it knows it will rise again. ―Marty Rubin
Articles
A Renewal of Faith
I’ve known the song Spirit of Life by heart for longer than I can remember. Read more »
Thriving in Difficult Times
Recently a fellow climate change activist exclaimed in despair, “The world has never faced a crisis like this before!” Read more »
Serving Time/Served by Time
When I arrived at North Carolina’s Central Prison I wore my fear and trepidation like an aura as I, a pallid 128-pound weakling, stepped into my worst nightmare. Read more »
Renewal
We are blessed here in Texas to have nearly hundred-year-old live oaks inside our prison. Read more »
From Your Minister
I’ve been thinking about renewable sources of energy versus sources of energy that deplete. Read more »
Notice of Annual Meeting
To all members of the Church of the Larger Fellowship, Unitarian Universalist Read more »
REsources for Living
As I see it, there are three words—related but not the same—that apply to the holidays I celebrate this season. Read more »
Politics & Religion
March 2020
Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is. ―Mahatma Gandhi
Articles
Democracy is Essential
Imagine…if you believed democracy were essential. Not just a “choice” among variations of how to govern a group of people, but an essential structure. Read more »
What Matters Most
The Unitarian Universalist minister David O. Rankin liked to relate a story from his career. Read more »
The Heart of Democracy
Do you trust democracy? In your bones, do you trust it? Do you trust yourself and your fellow citizens? Read more »
Politics and Religion
One hundred years ago the state of Maine was sharply divided between Republicans and Democrats. Read more »
From Your Minister
I grew up in a deeply political UU family. From the earliest time I can remember, we talked about politics and religion at the dinner table. Read more »
REsources for Living
I had a proud parenting moment the other day. My young adult daughter texted me “I have officially become the kind of annoying adult that won’t shut up about politics.” Read more »
Make a Difference
Politics and religion share the desire to make a difference in the world. Read more »
Audio Resources
You can listen to audio recordings of Quest Monthly, read back issues or get electronic versions of the text to share with friends (and much more) at questformeaning.org Read more »
Above All, Love
Then let us first of all have grace. Grace for those who have come before us. Read more »
Politics & Religion
Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is. ―Mahatma Gandhi Read more »
Courage
February 2020
It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends. ―J.K. Rowling
Articles
Take Heart
In her TEDTalk “What Fear Can Teach Us,” novelist Karen Thompson Walker tells us that fear can be understood as an amazing act of the imagination; as an unintentional storytelling that we are born knowing how to do. Read more »
Being Superheroes
We see them on big screens and small ones In comic books and in toy stores Wearing their fancy outfits With capes or masks or armor Read more »
A Courageous Voice
The CLF seeks to be a courageous voice for justice, for growth, for community amongst people who would probably never meet with-out our web that connects lives around the world. Read more »
The Most Courageous Act
As a first grader, Ruby Bridges was part of the first group of students to racially integrate schools in Louisiana. Read more »
Courage for the Resistance…and the Relationships
I was a fearful child. And frankly, most of those fears stayed with me into young adulthood. Read more »
From Your Minister
I have been thinking about the courage I encounter every day in our far-flung religious community. Read more »
GA Delegates Needed
Would you like to represent the Church of the Larger Fellowship at General Assembly (GA) this summer? Read more »
REsources for Living
The other day my dog started doing something odd. Just as I was about to get into bed he shoved himself into the narrow space between the two banks of drawers that hold up my captain’s bed. Read more »
Become a Penpal
The CLF is serving over 1,080 members who are currently incarcerated. Live out our Unitarian Universalist values by becoming a pen pal and sharing letters and words of encouragement with a CLF member behind bars. Read more »
Audio Recordings
You can listen to audio recordings of Quest Monthly, read back issues or get electronic versions of the text to share with friends (and much more) here. Read more »
Courage
It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends. ―J.K. Rowling Read more »
Thresholds
January 2020
The threshold is the place of expectation. ―Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Articles
Crossing The Threshold
Perhaps you are familiar with the concept of The Hero’s Journey, made famous by Joseph Campbell. Read more »
On the Threshold
Thresholds are sacred. Religions of all kinds, cultures of all times and places, have ways to mark the moments when we are on a threshold between one state of being and another. Read more »
Threshold
Threshold is an interesting word. As a maintenance clerk I immediately thought of the thing at the bottom of a doorway. Read more »
In Between
In between, liminal, that space where we wait. Between moments; events, results, action, no action. Read more »
Only in the Dual Realm
There is a passage from the Sonnets to Orpheus, by Rainer Maria Rilke, that has given me inspiration when confronted by the need to change. Read more »
From Your Minister
There are predictable thresholds in our lives, when we move from one life-stage to another—when beloved children begin school, when we downsize from a house to an apartment, when we begin a new career or class. Read more »
REsources for Living
For babies, threshold moments come thick and fast. A first smile moves us into the world of reciprocal relationship. Read more »
Threshold Moments
There are threshold moments in each of our lives. Moments when the past that lies behind us seems present and real. Read more »
Audio Resources
You can listen to audio recordings of Quest Monthly, read back issues or get electronic versions to share with friends (and much more) at questformeaning.org Read more »
The Year as a House
Think of the year as a house: door flung wide in welcome, threshold swept and waiting, a graced spaciousness opening and offering itself to you. Read more »
Unexpected
December 2019
Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. ―Samuel Johnson
Articles
Answering the Angels
I want to acknowledge right up front that the story of the Annunciation, the visitation of Mary from the angel Gabriel as described in the Gospels presents us Unitarian Universalists, with all sorts of challenges. Read more »
Expect the Unexpected
Two months ago, Sky was having one of his recurring nocturnal fights against a bad thing, a monster of some sort. Read more »
Unexpected
I have five daughters. I wasn’t always in touch with them all—and one day out of the blue my youngest wrote to me. Read more »
Expecting the Unexpected
Joy and woe are woven fine, Clothing for the soul divine: Under every grief and pine Runs a joy with silken twine. Read more »
When I Wake Up
When I wake up I find myself in an environment that’s so different from the one I once knew. Read more »
Encountering Unexpected Success…
As the CLF, like all of us, encounters unexpected successes and setbacks, it helps so much to be able to count on recurring monthly donations. Read more »
From Your Minister
A few years ago, a group from CLF decided to take a trip to the Gulf Coast to help with some reconstruction after Hurricane Katrina. Read more »
REsources for Living
During a preaching class in seminary we were each assigned to read aloud to the class a brief passage from the Christmas story in the second chapter of Luke. Read more »
Audio Resources
You can listen to audio recordings of Quest Monthly, read back issues, or get electronic versions of the text to share with friends (and much more) at questformeaning.org Read more »
The Call
The call comes on a stunningly ordinary telephone: the doctor telling you the test is positive, the agency saying that you have a child, the lover who left so long ago wanting to make amends. Read more »
Unexpected
Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. ―Samuel Johnson Read more »
Thanks and Praise
November 2019
Praise, my dear one. Let us disappear into praising. Nothing belongs to us. ―Rainer Maria Rilke
Articles
Grateful
There is a large duckling-yellow hardcover book in my mother’s house called a “baby book.” It is my baby book, in fact. Read more »
Giving Thanks
There’s an old joke—perhaps you’ve heard it. A man and his granddaughter are walking along a beach… Read more »
In Praise of Weeds
Pity the poor dandelion. It is, in many ways, nature’s perfect plant. Read more »
Thanks and Praise
Thanks and Praise is is exactly what we have for all of our wonderful CLF members and supporters who contribute so that CLF can be there for religious liberals around the world. Read more »
From Your Minister
Alice Walker has been in the media in some pretty awful ways, but I still think her book, The Color Purple, is one of the most extraordinary theological texts I’ve ever read. Read more »
REsources for Living
Alice Walker has been in the media in some pretty awful ways, but I still think her book, The Color Purple, is one of the most extraordinary theological texts I’ve ever read. Read more »
Nominating Committee Seeks Leaders
The CLF’s Nominating Committee seeks members to run for positions beginning June 2020. Read more »
Audio Resources
You can listen to audio recordings of Quest Monthly, read back issues or get electronic versions of the text to share with friends (and much more) at questformeaning.org Read more »
Praise the Sun, the Moon, the Stars
You can listen to audio recordings of Quest Monthly, read back issues or get electronic versions of the text to share with friends (and much more) at questformeaning.org Read more »
Thanks and Praise
Praise, my dear one. Let us disappear into praising. Nothing belongs to us. ―Rainer Maria Rilke Read more »
Sacrifice
October 2019
You can sacrifice and not love but you cannot love and not sacrifice. ―Kris Vallotton
Articles
The Wisdom Of Trees
This month we are taking on the gnarly topic of sacrifice. It is a concept that makes many of us uncomfortable, distrustful and a little bit surly, and rightly so. Read more »
American Sacrifice
Sacrifice is a powerful, ancient, evocative word that conjures images of animals slaughtered in rituals to bind a community together in a celebratory feast for a long-awaited harvest after a drought. Read more »
Always Faithful
I have learned about faithfulness and sacrifice as a result of a very strange journey I have been on since I inadvertently found some of the men who were in Vietnam with my older brother, 2nd Lt. Robert M. Christian Jr., “Bobby” to me, who was killed on April 11, 1969. Read more »
From Your Minister
The roots of violence: Wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics without principles. Read more »
REsources for Living
I confess I’ve never been a big fan of the concept of sacrifice. It’s always struck me as kind of punitive, like it’s morally superior to suffer than to enjoy life’s abundance. Read more »
The Sacrifices You Make
For many of our CLF members, their support is truly a sacrifice—not only members on fixed incomes who give what they can, but also our incarcerated members, for whom even the price of a stamp to write to a pen pal is a significant sacrifice. Read more »
Audio Recordings
You can listen to audio recordings of Quest Monthly, read back issues or get electronic versions of the text to share with friends (and much more) at questformeaning.org Read more »
Food Chain
Give up pretending. Everything, you know, everything, sooner or later gets eaten… Read more »
Sacrifice
You can sacrifice and not love but you cannot love and not sacrifice. ―Kris Vallotton Read more »
Work & Play
September 2019
I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. ―Jerome K. Jerome
Articles
Working, Not Working, and Not Working Any More
One fine day in San Francisco, nearly 35 years ago now, I found myself down on Mission Street, standing in line at the unemployment office. Read more »
Tending the Spirit
Deep play is a form of tending to the spirit. We hope that through Quest, along with online worship, Facebook groups, questformeaning.org and our various other offerings, that the CLF provides a field where we can come together, play and explore. Read more »
Deep Play
Brian La Doone is a musher—a sled dog racer—in far northern Canada, which is polar bear country. Read more »
The Path of Play
Psychologist David Elkind, in his book The Power of Play, identifies several characteristics of play, including… Read more »
Full-Hearted Parenting
Last year my therapist started asking me at every visit, “You having any fun?” Read more »
Play, People. Just Play
The innocent mistake that keeps us caught in our own particular style of ignorance, unkindness, and shut-downness is that we are never encouraged to see clearly what is, with gentleness. Read more »
REsources for Living
“Do what you love,” the saying goes, “and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Read more »
Quest Audio Resources
You can listen to audio recordings of Quest Monthly, read back issues or get electronic versions of the text to share with friends (and much more) at questformeaning.org Read more »
Work & Play
I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. ―Jerome K. Jerome Read more »
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