Last Sunday morning I picked up the phone in the office at the Unitarian Church of Baton Rouge, LA. After I said, "Good morning, Unitarian Church," a woman's voice said, "Good morning! Can you tell me what the topic is this morning?" Uh-oh. I thought real fast and said, "The topic is, "COME TO...

I grew up as the heavily-committed eldest child of an American Baptist minister in the 50's. Committed, that is, to self-preservation, staying out of trouble with our small town and my family, and having fun within safe parameters, namely, church activities. I never felt particularly committed to...

Leader: Spring, the triumph of light over darkness, Response: Victory of newness and growth, and warmth vanquishing cold, Leader: We, too, know coldness and darkness within us, as it is in our world....

We’ve begun a new ritual around our dinner table in which each member of the family takes a minute or two to name what he or she has been grateful for. No matter how yucky our day has been, we try to offer our gratitude in the spirit of kindness and real thankfulness. Often, the ritual’s nicest...

I hate goodbyes. I hate everything about them. It bothers me that “goodbye” isn’t really what I think we most often want to say. When those I love leave me, or I leave them, goodbye isn’t what I want to say. I want to tell them that their warm hand on my cheek, which caught my desperate...

Ministry is a quality of relationship between and among human beings that beckons forth hidden possibilities; inviting people into deeper, more constant, more reverent relationship with the world and with one another; carrying forward a long heritage of hope and liberation that has dignified and...

Among the most accomplished and fabled tribes of Africa, no tribe was considered to have warriors more fearsome or more intelligent than the mighty Masai....

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...

A voice screeched gate assignments through a nerve-jangling public address system. Even if the announcements had been in English, I doubt that I’d have been able to make sense of them. But whatever was being broadcast to the cavernous waiting area of the Moscow airport prompted mobs of people to...

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...

My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world. #463, Singing the Living Tradition Original source: From Dream of a Common Language (1978)...

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 ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish truth....

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....