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

Displaying 121 - 140 of 338

  • This reading is an excerpt of the sermon delivered by Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd on Sunday morning at General Assembly 2016. For as long as two or more have gathered in the name of the spirit, those two or more have fought some fake fights. You remember, perhaps, the classic wedding reading from...
    Reading | By Nancy McDonald Ladd | October 19, 2016 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Anger, Christianity, Community, Compromise, Conflict, Conscience, Purpose, Relationships, Secular, Self-Respect, Seven Principles, Unitarian Universalism, Unity, Wholeness
  • I have a voice. It is a small voice, perhaps, but it will not be silenced. When you call for black people to be beaten, and excluded, and even removed—I will say no. When you attempt to silence Latinx voices—I will say no. When you mock the disabled and threaten the oppressed—I will say no.
    Reading | By Amy Petrie Shaw | September 29, 2016 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Activism, Anger, Anti-Oppression, Character, Commitment, Democracy, Direct Experience, Justice, Limitations, Nonviolence, Oppression, Secular
  • In the first episode of "Call the Midwife"—a British show about post-WWII midwives—the main character Jenny Worth is just starting as a midwife in the East End of London. She experiences a moment of disgust and overwhelm at witnessing the awful experience of one of her expectant mothers. She...
    Reading | By Forrest Gilmore | July 28, 2016 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 2nd Principle (Justice, Equity, & Compassion), 6th Principle (World Community), Activism, Compassion, Humanism, Integrity, Justice, Poverty, Prophetic Words & Deeds, Purpose, Service, Spiritual Practice
  • He's not where he is supposed to be. He should be practicing sprints in the desert sun with all the other aspiring Marines, but instead he is here, retreating into the quiet shade of the chaplain's office, the one person who won’t yell at him. Since he was seven years old, he wanted to be a...
    Reading | By Susan Maginn | July 10, 2016 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 3rd Principle (Acceptance & Spiritual Growth), 4th Principle (Truth & Meaning), Calling, Choice, Direct Experience, Humility, Military, Psychology, Sacrifice, Secular, Service, Work, Young Adults, Youth/Teens
  • I understand participation in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) as a spiritual practice or discipline. While the word discipline may want to make us run and hide, a spiritual practice or discipline is meant to help us find our center. Approaching my participation in the CSA as a spiritual...
    Reading | By Nicole Janelle | July 10, 2016 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 4th Principle (Truth & Meaning), Community, Contemplation, Direct Experience, Earth, Earth Day, Earth-Centered, Family, Food, Food Justice, Gratitude, Nature, Spiritual Practice, Summer Solstice, Table Grace, Wonder
  • When I was a kid I liked to skip stones on lakes. If I threw a flat stone at the correct angle and with enough speed and energy it would kiss the surface and leap into the air again and again. If we have too much stuff in our lives, our attention skips from one object to another without really...
    Reading | By Doug Kraft | June 1, 2016 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 4th Principle (Truth & Meaning), Balance, Buddhism, Compromise, Direct Experience, Mindfulness, Patience, Playfulness, Self-Care, Simplicity
  • Don’t speak to me of “healing” racism, or “wounded souls” or the “painful hurt” until you are willing to feel the scars on my great-great-grandmother Laury’s back. Don’t speak to me of “values” or “justice” or “righting wrongs” until you are able to feel the heartache...
    Reading | By Adam Lawrence Dyer | May 17, 2016 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: #BlackLivesMatter, America, Anti-Oppression, Brokenness, Direct Experience, Healing, Identity, Justice, Personal Stories, Race/Ethnicity, Responsibility, Secular, Shame
  • You’ve seen it. Two black men pass each other on the street. They nod. Subtle, sometimes imperceptible, but there is acknowledgement. “Do you know him?” “No . . . (yes) . . . no.” I learned this from my father and my grandfather and my other grandfather and my uncles and my great uncle and...
    Reading | By Adam Lawrence Dyer | May 17, 2016 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: #BlackLivesMatter, 1st Principle (Worth & Dignity), 2nd Principle (Justice, Equity, & Compassion), America, Anti-Oppression, Connections, Direct Experience, Identity, Race/Ethnicity, Secular, Solidarity, Unity
  • To become an anti-racist faith community, the key question for a white/white majority community is not “How do we get people of color to join our faith community?” It is, instead, “How can we make a prolonged, spiritually-rooted, engaged commitment to uprooting white supremacy within our...
    Reading | By Chris Crass | May 9, 2016 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: #BlackLivesMatter, Anti-Oppression, Black History / Whitney Young / James Reeb, Direct Experience, Freedom, Justice, Living Our Faith, Purpose, Race/Ethnicity, Secular, Seven Principles, Solidarity, Unity
  • Fertility in social movements and among people is not something we control. We cannot make new life like we make plans or money. It's hard to be fertile when we are not grounded. Fertility is about making new life that becomes self-determining: that does not belong to us. If we drain ourselves as...
    Reading | By Caitlin Breedlove | May 3, 2016 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Abundance, Community, Creativity, Direct Experience, Leadership, Unitarian Universalism, Unity
  • For decades prior to my mother’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, we had suffered a strained relationship born from her alcoholism. When I learned she had Alzheimer’s, my hope for forgiveness and reconciliation drained away, along with her cognitive abilities. But the world of Alzheimer’s teems...
    Reading | By Jade C. Angelica | April 18, 2016 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 1st Principle (Worth & Dignity), 3rd Principle (Acceptance & Spiritual Growth), Aging, Caring, Children, Direct Experience, Family, Forgiveness, Mother's Day, Mothers, Transformation
  • The word desire comes from the Latin desiderare: “to long for,” but the Latin desiderare comes from de sidere: “from the stars.” From the stars. I find this extraordinary: to think that somehow our desire, our longing, is connected to the very stars in the sky. The stars, which share their...
    Reading | By Laura Horton-Ludwig | April 8, 2016 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 7th Principle (Interconnected Web), Connections, Intimacy, Love, Mystery, Prophetic Words & Deeds, Sexuality, Wonder
  • The religious mystics of every tradition tell us union is what we are here for — union is what we are: we are connected to each other, to the earth, to everything that exists, and to the force that lies beyond it all—only most of the time we don’t realize it. Union is not a myth or a pipe...
    Reading | By Laura Horton-Ludwig | April 8, 2016 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 1st Principle (Worth & Dignity), 7th Principle (Interconnected Web), Body, Connections, God, Intimacy, Love, Mystery, Prophetic Words & Deeds, Sexuality, Unity
  • One of the potential spiritual lessons of sports comes in its ability to connect people—to each other as well as to a team of strangers. Not too long ago, I was in a workshop in which we were discussing “peak experiences,” those mystical, transcendent experiences of what Abraham Maslow would...
    Reading | By Michael J. Tino | April 5, 2016 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: Awe, Connections, Direct Experience, Personal Stories, Playfulness, Secular, Teamwork, Unity, Wonder
  • Dear Liberal Allies, You and I learned very different things in very different ways. If you didn’t live an experience, then step aside. We students of color, gay students, trans* students, children of immigrants and refugees knew this stuff before our professors told us what to call it....
    Reading | By Trungles | March 30, 2016 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 1st Principle (Worth & Dignity), 2nd Principle (Justice, Equity, & Compassion), 3rd Principle (Acceptance & Spiritual Growth), 4th Principle (Truth & Meaning), Anti-Oppression, Direct Experience, Growth, Identity, Justice, Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender/Queer, Multiculturalism, Personal Stories, Prophetic Words & Deeds, Race/Ethnicity, Solidarity, Suffering
  • Desire and sexuality are not held in high regard by many of the world’s religious traditions today. And sex? Don’t even go there! As extremism rises, desires are seen as objects of suppression while bodies become things to control. The Greeks first articulated this idea of separation of the...
    Reading | By Robin Tanner | March 2, 2016 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 4th Principle (Truth & Meaning), Body, Christianity, Direct Experience, Intimacy, Islam, Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender/Queer, Sacred, Secular, Sexuality
  • One day, your church was born. Maybe it was a gathering of saints, called together for the common worship of a wrathful god, ceaselessly praying between bouts of decrying the evil of Christmas or dancing. Or maybe a few brave souls answered a notice in the newspaper, curiosity piqued by the...
    Reading | By Sean Neil-Barron | February 26, 2016 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 1st Principle (Worth & Dignity), 3rd Principle (Acceptance & Spiritual Growth), 5th Principle (Conscience & Democracy), Building/Space Dedication, Business Meetings, Change, Child Dedication, Community, Creativity, Direct Experience, Generations, Installations, Leadership, Prophetic Words & Deeds, Purpose, Religion, Sacred, Unitarian Universalism, WorshipWeb
  • Bruises are a part of roller derby — a celebrated part. It’s not uncommon for players to take pictures of their biggest, most colorful shaped bruises: bruises that go deep into your tissue, and come out in amazing blues, purples, and blacks that eventually fade to greens, browns and yellows. A...
    Reading | By Dawn Skjei Cooley | February 23, 2016 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: #BlackLivesMatter, 1st Principle (Worth & Dignity), 2nd Principle (Justice, Equity, & Compassion), 6th Principle (World Community), Anti-Oppression, Black History / Whitney Young / James Reeb, Body, Commitment, Direct Experience, Healing, Justice, Multiculturalism, Privilege, Race/Ethnicity, Secular
  • When we talk about a liberal theology and ethic of sexuality, we need to start in our vulnerable, needy bodies, in real life, in the struggle to navigate our embodied neediness with others in an embrace of the still-possible mutual wholeness and transformation. Any theology of sex that doesn’t...
    Reading | By Gretchen Haley | February 22, 2016 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 1st Principle (Worth & Dignity), 3rd Principle (Acceptance & Spiritual Growth), Body, Coming Out, Gender / Sex Change, Healing, Intimacy, Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender/Queer, Multiculturalism, Sexuality, Wholeness
  • Today, you join in membership. This is a moment of excitement and possibility. And although I don’t wish to pull you out of this moment, I need to talk to you for a bit about a moment in your future....
    Reading | By Liz James | February 11, 2016 | From WorshipWeb
    Tagged as: 1st Principle (Worth & Dignity), 3rd Principle (Acceptance & Spiritual Growth), Commitment, Community, Covenant, Inclusion, Living Our Faith, New Member Ceremony, Reconciliation, Relationships, Strength, Teamwork, Transformation, Unitarian Universalism, WorshipWeb