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Displaying 241 - 260 of 338

  • I was working with a group of young people at a Safe Schools conference in Boston. They were discussing how to tell their parents they were gay or lesbian. Many of them had suffered harassment, brutality, and ostracism by their peers, and they worried about how to protect their parents from the...
    Reading | By Elizabeth Tarbox | January 21, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Christianity, Family, Good Friday, Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender/Queer, Unitarian Universalism
  • A one-paragraph newspaper article describes a subway platform during the morning rush hour at Grand Central Terminal. A train pulls in; a well-dressed woman gets off. Before the doors close, the woman realizes that she is holding only one of her leather gloves. She looks back into the train and...
    Reading | By Jane Rzepka | January 21, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Balance, Letting Go, Playfulness, Work
  • Do not live too far in the past or the future. Live now. In each moment expect a miracle: ten kinds of birds at the feeder, and the tracks of a fox in the snow. Pick up a magnifying glass and scrutinize that crocus. See the pollen at the center of the daffodil, life's dust, death-defying life. Be...
    Reading | By Elizabeth Tarbox | January 21, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Awe, Direct Experience, Listening, Nature, Presence, Wonder
  • Blackmail, blacklist, black mark. Black Monday, black mood, black-hearted. Black plague, black mass, black market. Good guys wear white, bad guys wear black. We fear black cats, and the Dark Continent. But it's okay to tell a white lie, lily-white hands are coveted, it's great to be pure as the...
    Reading | By Jacqui James | January 21, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Balance, Psychology, Race/Ethnicity
  • I wasn't flattered when one of my daughters confided that she had thought of me as "The Big There-There" when she was three years old. If I remember correctly, I was in the middle of a phase where I was hoping to reassure myself that I still had a fertile mind as well as a welcoming bosom. Now,...
    Reading | By Barbara Rohde | January 21, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Caring
  • Many Unitarian Universalist churches and fellowships start their worship service on Sunday morning by lighting a flame inside a chalice. This flaming chalice is a symbol for Unitarian Universalists just as the cross and the Star of David are symbols for other religious groups....
    Reading | By Noreen Kimball | January 21, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: History, Unitarian Universalism
  • Many years ago in the land of Transylvania, in a mountain valley watered by quick rushing streams and shadowed by great forests of beech trees, there was a village of small wooden houses with dark-shingled roofs....
    Reading | By Janeen K Grohsmeyer | January 21, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Faith, Grace, Love
  • In a land far away, a wise old man who knew a great deal about people because he traveled from place to place arrived at a strange village. In this town all the people were carrying what seemed to be great bundles on their backs....
    Reading | By Barbara Marshman | January 21, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Forgiveness, Letting Go, Peace
  • Once upon a time God said, "I'm bored because I don't have anything to do. I want to play with my friends." And because God is God, as soon as the words were spoken, God's friends were there. When God saw them all gathered, God said, "I've been bored because I haven't had anything to do....
    Reading | By Mary Ann Moore | January 21, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 4th Principle (Truth & Meaning), Direct Experience, God, Mystery
  • Once upon a time, a girl named Ramona and a boy named Roberto had a wonderful dog. They named the dog Feliz because he was so happy when they came home from school each day. He bounded toward them, barking and tail wagging madly. His sandy brown coat was sort of wavy around the shoulders but...
    Reading | By Heather Lynn Hanson | January 21, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Easter, Good Friday, Grief, Love
  • It is easy to pray when the sun shines And we are grateful for another glorious day of being. It is hard to pray when wind and rain and thunder Plague our every step and spoil our every plan. It is easy to be virtuous when life goes well And our existence is a journey from bliss to beauty and back.
    Reading | By Richard S. Gilbert | January 21, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Spiritual Practice
  • The other day I was driving on an expressway. These days expressway driving seems a frantic enterprise. Near one of the exit ramps, one of the highway denizens, a behemoth "semi" had pulled over onto the berm. The driver had emerged and was gathering some wild plants along the side of the road.
    Reading | By Gordon B McKeeman | January 21, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Solidarity
  • Most of us look for love in only the most obvious places, and as a result, most of us come away disappointed. Its as if we are still grade school kids, counting valentines as a measure of what matters. The love that matters is not typically the subject of sonnets or love songs....
    Reading | By David S Blanchard | January 21, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Love
  • A well-known poem by Robert Graves speaks of butterflies—their "honest idiocy of flight," "lurching here and there by guess and God and hope and hopelessness." Any number of quotations sound this way, and so, I think do we. But privately. Publicly we speak the civilized language of human beings...
    Reading | By Jane Rzepka | January 21, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Acceptance, Connections, Suffering
  • We come into one another's presence seeking some part of ourselves, knowing that we do not live alone, knowing that we cannot live fully if we are for ourselves alone. We come as ordinary people, each with strengths and each with weaknesses, aware of our shortcomings. Our lives set before us many...
    Reading | By Calvin O Dame | January 21, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 3rd Principle (Acceptance & Spiritual Growth), Acceptance, Brokenness
  • We are here because we are people of faith. Within each of us lives the conviction of a saving faith that could restore our broken planet and illuminate the lives of our sisters and brothers. Ancient wisdom teaches that we who would save the world must first save ourselves....
    Reading | By Kendyl L. R. Gibbons | January 21, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 2nd Principle (Justice, Equity, & Compassion), 4th Principle (Truth & Meaning), 6th Principle (World Community), Brokenness, Faith, Healing, Mystery, Service, Unitarian Universalism, Wisdom
  • We are bogged down by the details of life. We are smothered by detail. Our bodies fill up with knots of anxiety. Our throats are dry. We would weep, but our eyes have no tears. We could cry out, but we have no passion. Who has done this to us? We confess the pain we cause ourselves....
    Reading | By Richard F Boeke | January 21, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Searching, Silence
  • To be human is to be aware of our separation. We want to love and to be loved by our friends, our parents, our children; but often we feel alone, not knowing the right things to do or the right words to say....
    Reading | By Thomas Fritts | January 21, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Connections, Grace
  • Thou who are the heart of being, we come together but often feel alone. We come for fellowship but we hold back. We are certain -- in our uncertainty. We are sure of ourselves -- in our utter doubt. We are full of answers, but not to our real questions....
    Reading | By John H Robinson, Jr | January 21, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Acceptance, Immanence
  • Left: Some of us are struggling with sorrow or grief, but are afraid to reach out for help. Right: Some of us are sick of ourselves and others, but don't know what to do about it. Some of us just want to be ourselves, but it seems that other people won't let us....
    Reading | By Jay Atkinson | January 21, 2015 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Brokenness