Changing a filter will refresh results (and remaining options) immediately.

Displaying 101 - 120 of 338

  • When I started attending a UU church, I was excited by the promise of worship that would draw from the arts, science, nature, literature and a multitude of voices. Indeed, some of the voices that Unitarian Universalists hear in worship each week belong to Thoreau, Emerson, Ballou, and others....
    Reading | By Connie Simon | October 15, 2017 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Community, Direct Experience, Identity, Inclusion, Listening, Multiculturalism, Pain, Personal Stories, Race/Ethnicity, Reconciliation, Unitarian Universalism
  • Religion is as much about faith in humanity as it is about faith in deity. And many of us will find that, over and over, our faith in humanity gets tested. We are immersed in a culture that's deeply corrupted by selfishness, greed, and oppression-borne privilege and fear....
    Reading | By Sarah Gibb Millspaugh | September 12, 2017 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 1st Principle (Worth & Dignity), Acceptance, Compassion, Faith, Healing, Humanism, Integrity, Living Our Faith, Unitarian Universalism, Wholeness
  • Yesterday, a new employee—a white guy—walked into the bakery where I work. “Hi,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve met you yet.” He told me his name. “I’m Jabari,” I replied. “Are you American?,” he asked. I hesitated. “Yeaaaaaaaaaah.” “Well, it’s just that your name is...
    Reading | By Jabari S. Jones | July 31, 2017 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: #BlackLivesMatter, 1st Principle (Worth & Dignity), America, Anti-Oppression, Black History / Whitney Young / James Reeb, Direct Experience, Humanism, Identity, Multiculturalism, Race/Ethnicity, Secular
  • Empathy isn’t just something that happens to us—a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain—it’s also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves. It’s made of exertion, that dowdier cousin of impulse. Sometimes we care for another because we know we should or because...
    Reading | By Leslie Jamison | July 19, 2017 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Commitment, Compassion, Connections, Direct Experience, Empathy, Humanism, Interdependence, Living Our Faith, Love, Relationships, Secular
  • The 7 Jobs Capitalism Asks of All of Us: 1. Measure Self Worth by Work: Don’t believe in the inherent goodness of people. Instead decide that everyone’s worth is only as much as they achieve. 2. Accept that Oppression is the Norm: This starts with adultism the moment we are born and conditions...
    Reading | By Talia Cooper | April 20, 2017 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Activism, Arts & Music, Character, Direct Experience, Healing, Integrity, Relationships, Secular, Self-Respect
  • For a long time now, I haven’t believed in a god with a will, intentionality, or consciousness. I don’t put all my eggs in the basket of a god who will save and transform me. Rather, I look to humans, to my relationships with people. Transcendence with life, with the holy, comes through my human...
    Reading | By Kaaren Solveig Anderson | April 20, 2017 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 3rd Principle (Acceptance & Spiritual Growth), Humanism, Relationships, Transcendence, Transformation
  • Those of us who call ourselves religious Humanists have a strong reverence for life. Many of us experience a deep sense of awe before the mystery of life and death, those powers greater than ourselves. We share a respect for science and reason, and we are willing to live with ambiguity to live...
    Reading | By Carol Hepokoski | April 20, 2017 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 7th Principle (Interconnected Web), Awe, Climate Justice, Earth, Earth-Centered, Environment, Humanism, Nature, Reverence, Wonder
  • Reason is an important tool, sure — an essential arbiter of truth claims about the world. But religion is grounded someplace deeper, where we experience the joy of living and are connected intimately with all that is....
    Reading | By Mark Ward | April 20, 2017 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 4th Principle (Truth & Meaning), Humanism, Purpose, Reason, Religion, Reverence
  • Humanism… is primarily about who we are connected to, what we think about each other, and how we work for justice in the world. No matter what else they believe, Humanists insist on the inherent worth of every person....
    Reading | By Amanda Poppei | April 20, 2017 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 1st Principle (Worth & Dignity), Acceptance, Belief, Humanism, Unitarian Universalism, Unitarianism, Unity
  • For all the talk about reason and science, Humanism is really about a passionate love affair. It is a love affair with life, not a mythical hereafter. Humanism is a love affair with a progressive vision of civilization in which each of us can add to our growing library of wisdom, our evolving...
    Reading | By Michael Werner | April 20, 2017 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 4th Principle (Truth & Meaning), Humanism, Meaning, Progress, Reason
  • Late in his life, the philosopher Richard Rorty — a well-known atheist — was asked by an interviewer if he could define holy. Perhaps the interlocutor thought the aging and dying Rorty would be stumped by the question or would fall into some traditional language of reverence. But Rorty was not...
    Reading | By David Breeden | April 20, 2017 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 1st Principle (Worth & Dignity), 6th Principle (World Community), 7th Principle (Interconnected Web), Dignity, Hope, Humanism, Sacred, Unitarian Universalism
  • Each of us has gifts and wounds from those who fathered us. This is inevitable; even the best fathers in the world disappoint their children sometimes. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to grow up. But I know that some wounds are deeper than others. Some people’s hearts have been broken by their...
    Reading | By Myke Johnson | April 13, 2017 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 1st Principle (Worth & Dignity), 4th Principle (Truth & Meaning), Acceptance, Children, Family, Father's Day, Fathers, Generations, Growth, Healing, Humanism, Pain, Parents, Secular
  • Every mother has a different story, though we tend to group them together. We like to think that partnered moms have it good and single moms have it rough, but the truth is that we're a diverse bunch....
    Reading | By Cheryl Strayed | March 15, 2017 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 1st Principle (Worth & Dignity), 4th Principle (Truth & Meaning), Children, Direct Experience, Family, Fathers, Humanism, Identity, Love, Money, Mother's Day, Mothers, Parents, Relationships, Sacrifice, Secular
  • Whiteness has been used throughout the histories of America and Europe to praise desirable groups of people and exclude undesirable groups. But “whiteness” is not a ethnic group, a cultural group, or a nationality. In the United States, the Supreme Court legally defined what it meant to be...
    Reading | By Sarah C Stewart | March 14, 2017 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: America, Anti-Oppression, History, Oppression, Race/Ethnicity, Secular
  • Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson, is a novel that takes the form of a letter or journal that a dying, elderly Congregationalist minister in Gilead, Iowa, writes to his 7-year old son in 1956 – written so that one day the boy will know something about his father’s life and character. In this passage...
    Reading | By Marilynne Robinson | March 10, 2017 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 1st Principle (Worth & Dignity), Animal Blessing, Animals, Awe, Calling, Christianity, Faith, Leadership, Ministry, Ordinations, Power, Sacred, Unitarian Universalism, Wonder
  • No matter what tactics and methods racial justice activists use, the general response of society will be a collective head-shaking and tsk-tsk-ing — because what people are actually complaining about are not the specific tactics that are being used in the struggle for racial justice, but that the...
    Reading | By Aisha Ansano | February 27, 2017 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: #BlackLivesMatter, 1st Principle (Worth & Dignity), 2nd Principle (Justice, Equity, & Compassion), 3rd Principle (Acceptance & Spiritual Growth), 6th Principle (World Community), Activism, Anger, Anti-Oppression, Direct Experience, Equity, Humanism, Justice, Multiculturalism, Oppression, Race/Ethnicity, Secular, Solidarity
  • The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a radical. He was called “the most dangerous man in America” by the FBI and had a 17,000 page FBI file at the time of his death. It wasn’t just KKK members or those in positions of power who disagreed with him or hated him. As Cornel West explains in...
    Reading | By Aisha Ansano | February 27, 2017 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: #BlackLivesMatter, 1st Principle (Worth & Dignity), 2nd Principle (Justice, Equity, & Compassion), 3rd Principle (Acceptance & Spiritual Growth), 6th Principle (World Community), Activism, America, Anti-Oppression, Black History / Whitney Young / James Reeb, Direct Experience, History, Humanism, Justice, Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday, Multiculturalism, Prophetic Words & Deeds, Race/Ethnicity
  • We gather at Thanksgiving, in some sense, to retell the creation myth of our country. In this myth is our very best and our very worst: a boldness; a care for the common good; a wish to say we before I. Yet from even before the first Thanksgiving feast, it’s a story of theft and violence, and a...
    Reading | By David Schwartz | November 15, 2016 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 1st Principle (Worth & Dignity), 2nd Principle (Justice, Equity, & Compassion), 6th Principle (World Community), America, Anti-Oppression, Freedom, Generations, History, Humanism, Indigenous American, Race/Ethnicity, Secular, Thanksgiving
  • Our first breath is followed by our first song Lusty, loud and primal A solo that announces to the world, “I have arrived!” We are the music. As toddlers hearing our first reggae beat We let our spines and hips bend and sway in response As natural as the beat of our hearts We are the music. The...
    Reading | By Renee Ruchotzke | November 12, 2016 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 3rd Principle (Acceptance & Spiritual Growth), Arts & Music, Direct Experience, Humanism, Music Sunday, Secular, Unity
  • People have always known that fire was special. Long, long ago, before people made matches or candles or even made houses, people knew that fire was special. There was the great fire in the sky, the sun, which made the earth warm and made night into day....
    Reading | By Elizabeth Harding | October 27, 2016 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Direct Experience, Fire Communion, Generations, Imagination, Nature, Secular, Spiritual Practice, Tradition, Unitarian Universalism