Every relationship is an ongoing story that unfolds between people.

What’s your most memorable story about getting lost? What do you remember about finding your way home?

Of all the things "faith" can mean, to me it means believing in us.

I need to celebrate our human family, whose power and potential shimmer against the backdrop of deep time, because we aren’t at our best right now.

May I have the wisdom to be curious when I find myself grumbling about “them.”

I feel disoriented when I’m in a new place or situation and can’t figure out whether the rules are real or imaginary.

The most life-giving coping strategy—for me—is to attune to a voice calmer and wiser than mine, and allow that seeking to be its own expression of faith.

In this community, we hold hope close. We don’t always know what comes next, but that cannot dissuade us. We don’t always know just what to do, but that will not mean that we are lost in the wilderness. We rely on the certainty beneath, the foundation of our values and ethics. —Rev. Theresa I.

We can be cheerleaders for simple joys (even when we don't share them) and compassionate about the fact that we’re all just trying to survive.

Although the German word Giftschrank sounds like a quirky holiday tradition, the term is really a combination of the words poison and cabinet....

In her 1975 theological treatise Suffering, German liberation theologian Dorothee Söelle* examines the ways that suffering can knit humans beings closer together, and can draw us more fully into the process of loving. She uses the term apatheia, “the inability to suffer,” to describe the...

Reader 1: In 1637, the white settlers in what was to become the town of Dedham, Massachusetts, wanted to start a church. What they longed for was sincere religious association based in love, and founded in freedom. Reader 2: The idea of a free church took shape among the people—a church whose...

This ritual entails having an empty vase on the altar, and cut flowers. It's especially meaningful to have founders or other "pillars" of the congregation have flowers with them in the service, and to have the congregation's children bring those flowers forward and put them in the vase (perhaps...

"We are the people who return to love like a North Star and to the truth that we are greater together than we are alone." —Rev. Theresa Soto, in "We Hold Hope Close" I spend a lot of my Saturday evenings feeling awkward at wedding receptions, because most guests don’t want to talk to The...

Despite being warmly welcomed over and over by the greeters, by the family sitting behind me, and by the lead pastor, I couldn’t shake that “guest” feeling.

To offer hospitality, we first have to identify ourselves — sometimes in inconvenient or uncomfortable ways — as helpers; as willing to offer kindness or connection to someone we might disagree with.

"How complicated it is to break silence: to open all of the secrets in all of our broken hearts. But silence does break; truth seeks the light. We're unraveling silence because we have determined that our power with one another is greater than the power someone once had over us."

This Lamentation is for two voices: one white, and one person of color/indigenous (POCI). Both voices invite people to repeat a refrain several times: white voices say, “So much has been lost,” and voices of color say, “Beloved, you must not be defensive when you hear our hurt.” The latter,...

Leader: We know that hurt moves through the world, perpetrated by action, inaction, and indifference. Our values call us to live in the reality of the heartbreak of our world, remembering that: Congregation: “No one is outside the circle of love.” L: We who are Unitarian Universalist not only...

”If we don’t find a way to transform our pain, we will always transmit it to those around us or turn it against ourselves… If your religion is not teaching you how to recognize, hold, and transform suffering, it is junk religion.” —Fr. Richard Rohr People are in pain all around us, all of...