It takes courage to bring our trust forward and invite another person to meet us there. This sometimes sure, often shaky, surrender is an opportunity to discover something deeper than the confines of our individual experience.

The only way we survive this modern agony is together.

Can I love all of me, even the peevish parts?

I choose to believe in the God who makes me kinder.

Mental illnesses are sometimes called “no-casserole diseases.” People don’t bring casseroles to homes where someone is hospitalized for mental problems.

Grief is welcome, a sacred part of the mourning.

What images comes to mind when I say, “Labor Day”? Chances are you think of the holiday weekend and celebrations with your loved ones, the Federal Holiday, Unions and the cause of a working wage and benefits, maybe the history of the struggle of working people to have a fair share of the profits...

The innkeeper isn’t part of most Nativity sets. No one sings carols about innkeepers. There don’t seem to be any paintings that include them. But we can imagine the scene: Bethlehem is crowded with people coming home for the census. It’s late at night when the innkeeper responds to a knock on...

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....

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...

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...

I am always in a bit of a shock when December 1st arrives on the calendar. I always feel like there should be at least another week beyond Thanksgiving before I can even contemplate the next holiday....

Note: this reflection was written at the end of Rev. Janis-Dillon's week in Samos, Greece working in a Syrian refugee center. The people of Samos, Greece have done something that sounds ordinary, only it's not: they have treated the Syrian refugees like human beings. Past the terror of the rubber...

For many reasons, people depart. They leave home—or the places given to them, in place of home that might’ve been lost to war—and seek refuge from a thousand dangers and uncertainties. For many reasons—many of them inconceivable to us, who live in relative peace and prosperity—people...

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...

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.

For years now, my conservative friends have asked me, “Do you really want to live in a welfare state?” I’ve thought about it and I’ve decided: Yes, I do. I want to live in a welfare state! If we define “welfare” in the original meaning of the word, “the condition of being or getting...

When the world’s violence shatters the joy of a moment We pause and reach out for the hands that remain We open our hearts with love. When despair rises as a monster from the deep and drags down one of our own, our answer is that We open our hearts with love....

If you're new to Unitarian Universalism, one of the things you will learn is that we are extremely proud of our history. In truth, our history is full of great things but it also has its share of shameful moments and embarrassing episodes....

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...