Life, you’ve noticed, is serious. In all seriousness, it kicks your butt, then, in all seriousness laughs about it. Life is serious. Life has at least two suits and a hundred pairs of shoes. Life spends its waking hours worried; vigilant; staring. Life won’t take “no” as answer. Life takes no prisoners. Except when it does. Life is a bargain. Faustian. Life is a dilemma, and you betray yourself. Life has tools–hammer, machete, ax. Life, you’ve seen, is serious. It’s... Read more
We do not have to wait until we are perfect to practice our faith. While the perfection of Jesus is lifted up in many congregations on this holy weekend, it is humanity that has always drawn Unitarian Universalists towards his prophetic message of love and justice. Our faith tells us that it is not perfection that is the goal – but transformation. Within our own religious heritage, we often find flaws in the prophetic men and women who worked to... Read more
Last September, we moved to the “Little Rome” section of Northeast Washington, D.C. I expected it to feel a little more “holy” this Holy Week (perhaps “holier-than-me”?) but it’s actually felt pretty ordinary, quiet, and not very springy yet. Here and there I see some crocuses insisting on coming up through fall’s accumulated leaves, and in well-sun-warmed yards there are daffodils. For me this is what the adult version of the Easter Egg Hunt has become—the search in my northern... Read more
Holy Week marked off from other weeks. Holy Week when William Blake returns to wail again down owned streets, owned parks, owned river banks. Holy Week when Blake sings over the rattle of chains forged in the mind; laughs at the best excuses of the “wise guardians of the poor.” On Holy Week–marked off to remember false arrest; false imprisonment; to remember courts, execution– Blake comes back wailing at crumbling concrete; at muddy pits where high-rises are seeded; moans again... Read more
As I write, the Supreme Court is just finishing up oral arguments on the Defense of Marriage Act. Something, presumably, is going to be decided about same-sex marriage, although what exactly that might be is anybody’s guess. But the thing is, everyone knows the eventual outcome. Everyone—at least everyone who is honest—regardless of how they feel about same-sex marriage, knows that whatever this court decides, same-sex marriage is going to be the law of the land. The scales have simply... Read more
Hard to believe we’re turning towards April in Minnesota, where I live. Out my window, I only see snow and dead leaves on the plants still standing from last year’s garden. I pawed through the snow this morning to see if I might find anything living at all—often the first thing I find is an aggressive weed called Creeping Charlie. In the summer, I am all about pulling up Creeping Charlie and removing it as much as I can. In... Read more
“Forgiveness can begin the moment we accept that the past cannot be changed.” These words, copied by a friend from a radio show, name one of the biggest hurdles on the path to forgiveness of self and others. Playing past events over in my mind like bad movies, some of them horror shows, I find myself wondering how different life would be if – if — if the levees around New Orleans had been built and maintained adequately, if planes... Read more
Though March is not the season of Ordinary Time according to the Roman Catholic calendar, we are embracing Ordinary Time in this one Unitarian Universalist household, right now. (One of many aspects of Unitarian Universalist “culture” that I enjoy is that it often seems as though “rules were made to…be discussed.”) It was been a long, full, amazing, intense year of celebrations and events in our lives, this past year. In this strange but it-worked-for-us order, we went on our... Read more
How to say she would run the horse beneath the low branches of the Thorny Locust until she fell off? How to explain she planned to build fires until the most concrete of bridges fell to embers? How to say she would wander across whatever border until every shape wore a foreign costume? How to explain breaking every tool she so expertly wielded, until syllables stuttered unintelligible screeds and jokes? How to say it’s about burning. About riding through low... Read more
Happy Spring Equinox! (Unless you happen to live in the Southern Hemisphere, in which case I’d like to wish you a delightful Fall Equinox.) The equinox, of course, is the moment of the year when the light and the dark are in perfect balance, with equal parts day and night. Legend has it that on the moment of the spring equinox it is possible to balance an egg on its end. Science would point out that there’s no reason to... Read more
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