Equal Access: The Ongoing Struggle for Disability Rights

Last updated on: August 17, 2015 at 11:50 pm By Carl Gregg

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The ADA is estimated to have improved the lives of 43 million U.S. citizens at the time of its passage (Nielson 180). Today approximately 20% of the U.S. population are people living with disabilities: “Some disabilities like diabetes, muscular sclerosis, and depression, can be invisible. Others, like deafness or vision loss, are not immediately noticeable. Some chronic illnesses, like hepatitis C or HIV, aren’t apparent to other... Read more

“The Peabody Sisters”

Last updated on: August 17, 2015 at 7:21 pm By Carl Gregg

What stood out to me most from reading Megan Marshall’s The Peabody Sisters (a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography) were the sections about the oldest and longest-living of the three sisters, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804 – 1894). But it is perhaps appropriate to begin with the Peabody Sisters’s own mother, Eliza, who strongly influenced her daughters. And whereas the lives of her daughters spanned almost the whole of the 1800s, Eliza came of age in the 1780s in... Read more

Why You Should Give Yourself Permission for Self-Care: Cautionary Tales from UU History

Last updated on: August 13, 2015 at 11:46 am By Carl Gregg

There was an article in a recent issue of The New York Times Magazine titled “Mary Cain Is Growing Up Fast” about an 18-year-old young woman, who is a promising professional middle-distance runner from New York: In fifth grade, she ran a 6 [minute, 15 seconds] mile…. In ninth grade, Cain won the New York State 1,500-meter championship, breaking the freshman girls’ record. The summer after her sophomore year, she flew to the Junior World Championships in Barcelona and ran... Read more

Letting Go of Fear & Celebrating Differences: Insights from Intersectionality

Last updated on: August 11, 2015 at 10:37 am By Carl Gregg

This past Sunday was the 70th anniversary of the United States dropping an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki toward the end of World War II. The weapon, nicknamed “Fat Man,” was released at 11:01 a.m. local time, causing tens of thousands of civilian casualties. (The even more devastating bombing of Hiroshima was three days earlier.) This anniversary of the only time to date that atomic bombs have been used in warfare comes at a time when headlines are... Read more

The Spirituality of Embodiment: “The Science of Yoga” and Befriending Your Body

Last updated on: August 6, 2015 at 12:04 pm By Carl Gregg

One way of classifying the various methods of self-improvement that one can pursue is to divide the different paths into four major categories: body, mind, spirit, and shadow. As I list some examples, drawn from a book titled Integral Life Practice, I invite you to consider where your proclivities lie, and how your attraction to practices in one or more of these categories may have shifted over time. If left to my own devices, I’m most naturally drawn to practices... Read more

“Are You Living the Life You Chose?”: How To Discern Your Call

Last updated on: August 6, 2015 at 7:59 pm By Carl Gregg

The new album from the singer-songwriter Jason Isbell includes a song with the lyrics “Are you living the life you chose? Are you living the life that chose you?” I’ve been reflecting a lot recently about discerning how we are called. Last week, I spent four days in Chicago being trained as a facilitator for a new three-year conversation within the Unitarian Universalist Minister’s Association on the topic of “Where Leads Our Call?” I should note here at the beginning that some... Read more

Why a 40-Hour Work Week? (It’s Decreased Before. It Could Again.)

Last updated on: August 4, 2015 at 10:22 am By Carl Gregg

Peter Rollins in his book The Divine Magician tells the following “Parable of a Fisherman and a Rich Businessman”: [The businessman], while returning to work after lunch, saw a fisherman get up from the side of a river with a bucket of fish. “Where are you going?” asked the businessman. “To the market to sell these fish,” replied the fisherman. “And how long did it take you to catch those?” “A couple of hours.” “Well, what are you going to... Read more

Top Ten Highlights from The Cornel West Reader

Last updated on: July 25, 2015 at 10:56 pm By Carl Gregg

Dr. Cornel West (1953-), the provocative activist, public intellectual, and professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, will deliver the Ware Lecture at the 2015 Unitarian Universalist General Assembly. This occasion prompted me to finish reading The Cornel West Reader (1999), which weighs in at more than 600 pages. The following are highlights for me from this anthology of West’s prolific publications: 1. West draws from an immense variety of sources. The two epigraphs at the beginning, which set the trajectory... Read more

Practicing Forgiveness

Last updated on: June 9, 2015 at 11:22 am By Carl Gregg

When I think about forgiveness, one experience that comes to mind is from when I was in seminary. I had stopped by the office of one of my professors to make what I thought was a simple request that barely affected him. I was shocked when he responded loudly and harshly — not only refusing to accommodate me, but also using this opportunity to tell me all the inadequacies he perceived in me as a student and as a human... Read more

“Liberal Religion in the Public Square”

Last updated on: June 1, 2015 at 7:30 am By Carl Gregg

Each year the Unitarian Universalist Association chooses one book as a “Common Read,” and encourages all UUs to read, discuss, and consider action in light of the contents. Previous Common Reads have included: The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona-Mexico Borderlands Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, and Behind the Kitchen Door (about justice for restaurant... Read more