You Are the Light of the World
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“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. And they both knew, I think, that that was beside the point. Read more →
Hope: The Theology of Despair
Hope and Sorrow
From Your Minister
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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.”
An article in Science News Magazine says that 70% of the universe is “a mysterious entity known as dark energy that pervades all of space, pushing it apart at an ever-faster rate.” Read more →
REsources for Living
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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, which ends with the kind of happily-ever-after weddings and wealth and long-awaited babies that you expect from the end of a fairy tale.
Looking For a Sunset Bird in Winter
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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 →
Whiteness: Revelations on the Journey to Multicultural Community
“Seeing systems of oppression cracks our hearts open to the plight of others. Seeing our place in those systems breaks our hearts open to the plight within.”
While many religious traditions come together in shared theological beliefs about the divine, our tradition calls us together in shared beliefs about how it is we will be together. We hold central a theology of wholeness. That wholeness requires we move beyond acceptance of diversity to an embracing of all people because of their diversity.
To achieve this in a world in which “othering” has occurred for centuries requires us to dismantle systems of oppression which give privilege to the mainstream white/Euro culture. To transform these systems, each of us is called to recognize and understand our place in the very system we must dismantle.
The Journey to Marriage Equality
“Here is a place to bring your whole self and find sanctuary, nurturing, replenishment, love, and faith in the world we can and will build together.”
Unitarian Universalists stand as a beacon of love and hope during a national debate on LGBT rights. Our faith supports the inherent worth and dignity of every person, with no exceptions. Whether you are single or in a relationship, we believe that love is a gift from God. We also believe that loving couples of all kinds should be able to marry.
This belief is lived out within each person’s own personal call to faith, among congregants who gather for worship and service, and out in the world working for social change. The Unitarian Universalist campaign, Standing on the Side of Love, is described on their web site as, “a public advocacy campaign that seeks to harness love’s power to stop oppression.” It continues with, “No one should be dehumanized through acts of exclusion, oppression, or violence because of their identities.”
Losing a Job
We Are Not Moving On
We are not moving on
we are embracing our mourning
we are sad enough to know we must laugh again
no one deserves a tragedy
we are better than we think and not quite what we want to be
we will continue to invent the future
we will prevail—Nikki Giovanni (2007)
Unitarian Universalists affirm the inherent worth and dignity of all human beings. Inherent means that worth is not dependent on what we do or what we have. It is simply part of our being. We are part of the interdependent web and we have value.
Earth and Spirit: Belonging to the Earth
As the crickets’ soft autumn hum
is to us
so we are to the trees
as they are
to the rocks and the hills—Gary Snyder
What does it mean to belong to the Earth?
