About The Author: The author is a member of a Unitarian Universalist (UU) congregation reflects on living with bipolar disorder. I have chosen to share my experience in a safe place—a place of acceptance, a place where we share joys and sorrows. Some might say, “Some things shouldn't be talked...

In our modern age of apathy and egoism, there is cause for hope whenever people care about something beyond themselves. But there is more to being human than feeling deeply, for we risk becoming impassioned fools. Our minds must conspire with our hearts. We should care enough to think—and think...

Our Subaru Forester was sliding sideways down Interstate 80 at fifty miles per hour. My wife, Nan, had gingerly switched to the left-hand lane to avoid a truck that was overturned on the right shoulder, but no amount of experience, skill, or caution could overcome our car’s mass and momentum on a...

There is no such thing as a lasting peace, a tranquility that will persist forever, a final resting place for the lion and the lamb. We yearn for the completion of our task, the fulfillment of our striving, the consummation of our journey. And this longing sows the seeds of our defeat....

Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness....

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul; he leadeth me in the path of righteousness for his name sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for...

Some beliefs are like walled gardens. They encourage exclusiveness, and the feeling of being especially privileged. Other beliefs are expansive and lead the way into wider and deeper sympathies. Some beliefs are like shadows, clouding children's days and fears of unknown calamities. Other beliefs...

To worship God is nothing other than to serve the people. It does not need rosaries, prayer carpets, or robes. All peoples are members of the same body, created from one essence. If fate brings suffering to one member The others cannot stay at rest.

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. There are some things in our social system to which all of us ought to be maladjusted....

The more we try to say precisely what is in our hearts, the more we find that we are speaking for multitudes of strangers the world over. The deeper we get down to our own fundamentals, the more deeply we represent those of other people. Like all human beings, I live on borrowed time....

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool. To weep is to risk appearing sentimental. To reach out for another is to risk exposing our true self. To place our ideals—our dreams—before the crowd is to risk loss. To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk despair. To try is to...

I grew up on my family farm in the southern part of Illinois. There was nothing about it that was a golden age. And I’m NOT nostalgic about the good old days. I don’t like carrying water from the well out back. I don’t like going to an outhouse at 4 a.m. in the snow. I don’t like the wasps...

I remember back to the 50’s and 60’s when, once a week, my mother would don her shirtwaist, climb into the family car, and make her way to the A&P. How did she choose her groceries then? In our family, in New England and a long way from the fertile, productive valleys of California, proximity...

On a deeper level, do we consider what we are eating and whether its origins are compatible with our personal values? Since the beginning of time, dietary practices have been incorporated into the religious practices of humanity....

So reads the doormat of conditional welcome: Here will pass the en-abled, blessed be their less complicated bodies. They will be able to hustle up a flight of stairs, decipher the PA, endure fluorescent lights, and follow long, thick, complicated words....