We spent the Fourth of July like many others do. We got together with family and friends, we had a cookout with way too much food, and we set off some fireworks once it got dark. The family fireworks are always a highlight of the day, and we all anticipated a great show this year. What we didn’t bargain for was the near-disaster they turned into. As dusk fell the men (family tradition dictates that it’s always the men who... Read more
“What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: our life is the creation of the mind.” the DHAMMAPADA This summer, I decided to use contemporary movies as the “texts” for the worship services at my congregation. Partly, this was because I hadn’t been to any movies for several months and this gave me an excuse to go to the movies in these hot summer months. But more than that... Read more
I have spent the last seven years in the occasional study of a religious system that I believe has always existed, but has never been academically defined (except perhaps in secret by some graduate engineering students). My interest in this religious system is that my wife is an adherent, and in order to better understand her I needed to have a deeper understanding of her religious faith. Through that study, I have come to realize my wife is far from... Read more
Last week, the Unitarian Universalist Association became only the second national religious body to repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery, the 15th century papal doctrine that declared that when Christian Europeans landed in a place inhabited by non-Christian people, the Europeans could claim to have “discovered” the land, and had the right to possess it and the people on it. The Doctrine of Discovery became the theological justification for European colonialism, slavery, genocide and many atrocities of history. In 1823, it... Read more
Do you remember the Schoolhouse Rock cartoons and songs from the 1970s? Even my kids watch them today on DVD and reruns. There was a series about math, about politics, and about grammar. My favorites were “Conjunction junction, what’s your function,” “Interjection,” and “I’m just a bill, sitting here on Capitol Hill.” I think they remain one of the most brilliant television-learning tools ever created. But there was a serious gap in Schoolhouse Rock, for which I think America’s youth... Read more
The Supreme Court decision earlier this week regarding the Affordable Health Care Act is yet another reminder that we can anticipate an election season fraught with intense partisanship. The free exchange of ideas, even radically disparate ones, is essential to a healthy democracy. Yet we also know that discourse in this country is not infrequently more an effort to entertain and titillate than to actually examine complex social and political issues. It’s fascinating (and occasionally rather unsettling) to observe the... Read more
The poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, “Religion is something infinitely simple, ingenious. It is not knowledge, not content of feeling … it is not duty and not renunciation, it is not restriction: but in the infinite extent of the universe it is a direction of the heart.” While I cannot agree wholeheartedly with this great existentialist poet about what religion is not, I share his sense that, whatever else it may be, religion is a direction of the heart. I... Read more
Courage comes in many forms and it wears many faces. We often think of those who put themselves in harms’ way for the sake of others as being courageous. The firefighter who rushes into a burning building. The soldier who risks life and limb to save a buddy who’s been wounded. The mother who shields her baby from imminent danger. This past week, I saw another face of courage. It was worn by a young woman who lives in Arizona,... Read more
There is a protest at Tent City tonight, the place where Sherriff Joe Arpaio holds thousands of immigrants in his self described ‘concentration camp.’ Where there is never any relief from the Arizona heat, where humiliation is a daily occurrence. I’m with my people, in our bright yellow Standing on The Side of Love shirts that match the school buses that take us there, Unitarian Universalists in Phoenix for our annual convention. There are hundreds of us going,... Read more
My ministry in Philadelphia has led me to have two homes: a house in Central Pennsylvania with my husband and an apartment in Philadelphia near the church. This week, my husband came to Philadelphia to help me to move to another apartment. As with many things in my life, this moving experience has led me to reflect and to pay attention. It is a good change, but all change has consequences. Neither apartment is large, but the new one is... Read more
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