Prayers for the Possible

In 1854, Rev. Theodore Parker prayed: “Help us to grow stronger and nobler by this world’s varying good and ill, and while we enlarge the quantity of our being by continual life, may we improve its kind and quality not less, and become fairer, and tenderer, and heavenlier too, as we leave behind us the [...]

SHINE

love is the voice under all silences; the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness; the truth more first than sun more last than star. ~ e.e. cummings Beloveds, today the sun is shining. Yesterday the sun was shining too, even though it was pouring rain here [...]

TODAY!

Today I have to make sure that there is a port-a-potty for the tri-congregation Earth Day service in the park on Sunday. Today, I get to meet with community organizers at their monthly meeting to talk about a change to the city charter. Today I need to write an evaluation for a Monday meeting with [...]

The People’s Work

In The Prophetic Imperative: Social Gospel in Theory and Practice, Rev. Richard Gilbert lays out a Unitarian Universalist interpretation of worship. He wrote: The church is a worshipping community, a religious community that deliberately and regularly gathers together to celebrate life in all its dimensions. Worship understood as the celebration of life is the most [...]

High Resolve

“Keep fresh before me the moments of my High Resolve, that in fair weather or in foul, in good times or in tempests, in the days when the darkness and the foe are nameless or familiar, I may not forget that to which my life is committed.” ~ Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman Carnival has passed. [...]

Paying Attention Again

“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake. . . .Only that day dawns to which we are awake.” Henry David Thoreau Last June, I posted about paying attention, and I am writing about it again today. Have you heard the sayings that psychotherapists and ministers share what they need to hear and to [...]

Like-Hearted People

  “You need not think alike to love alike.” This was the wisdom of Francis David, spiritual advisor to King John Sigismund of Transylvania, the Unitarian king who pronounced the first edict of religious toleration in the year 1568. You need not think alike to love alike. At Unitarian Universalist gatherings, I sometimes hear “it is so nice to [...]

Come In and Sing!

The National Cathedral in Reykjavík is a modest edifice, as far as cathedrals go, and despite the fact that I’ve passed by it at least a hundred times on my visits to Iceland, I had never stepped inside—until last month. I’m not entirely sure why. I have ventured inside dozens of other churches in the [...]

Worship as Emotive Experience

This past Sunday, I became emotional in the pulpit… again. Ok, truth to be told, I’m always emotional in the pulpit. It’s part of why I never schedule anything for Sunday afternoon, because preaching a good UU sermon will wipe me out, physically, spiritually, and emotionally. I usually maintain enough reserves to make it through [...]

Flower Communion

This year marks the ninetieth anniversary of the founding of what is known today as the Religious Society of Czech Unitarians. Its first minister, the Rev. Dr. Norbert Fabián Čapek, created a ritual that is celebrated by Unitarians and Unitarian Universalists all over the world, Flower Communion. Čapek described the ceremony in a 1923 letter [...]