Some of you may have heard Garrison Keillor’s Thanksgiving story in which Unitarians are featured. Somebody needs to find out what Keillor’s experience is with Unitarians. He mentions us frequently and, I might add, usually, his comments (whether complimentary or critical) are right on the...

In the summer of 1989, I attended the annual gathering of Unitarian Universalists at the General Assembly at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Yale is right downtown, and it was my custom to get out of the hotel and university setting for most of my meals. One morning, as I was in town...

I want to tell you about something that happened a few years ago on a Sunday after services. The congregation I was serving then was gathered for a congregational meeting....

In the Unitarian Universalist Church we find inspiration from many different sources. The inspiration for today’s sermon comes from a joke. You may have heard it: Q: What’s the difference between cats and dogs? A: Dogs look at people and say, “They feed us. They give us shelter. They take care...

"Whatsoever you wish that others do unto you, do so to them; for this is the Law of the Prophets."—Matthew 7:12 I should probably get one thing clear at the outset: I don’t claim to know much about stability, much less to possess it. In fact, when I think about what I’ve experienced in life,...

I have a story to tell you, about the less-than-triumphal first appearance I made in a pulpit. I was a first-year seminarian, doing my field work at the old First Parish in Lexington, Massachusetts. When they invited me to preach my first sermon on such an important day as Palm Sunday, I was...

When we remember those whom we have loved and lost, help us to remember also, O God, how great a privilege is human loving, and that not to have loved at all would have been loss far greater still. Amen. “What’s a soul?” Not a question Unitarian Universalists ask very often. We are more likely...

According to economist Juliet Schor, author of The Overworked American, having the chance to spend time not doing anything in particular is less common than it used to be. In her book, Schor documents the increase of time spent working—both paid employment and work around the house—over a...

About twenty years ago, I read a book that I've never dis­cussed with anyone, but which has stayed with me and intrigued me all this time. Titled Religions of America and edited by Leo Rosten, it is an attempt to describe as clearly and as concisely as possible the variety of religious faiths in...

I am a third generation Unitarian Universalist. This is by no means a record. Even in this congregation there are families whose Unitarian Universalist history goes much further back, and in New England, where I grew up, there were people who were fifth, sixth, even seventh generation....

"Can faith equal faith? Do gods of one faith take care of the believers of other faiths? Who will protect my god when he falters and his faith fails? Do the gods of one faith take care of the gods of other faiths?" These questions all come from the poem "Faith," by Justin Chin. In the poem, the...

The world is a slippery sort of thing. It can be hard, very hard, to hold on to all the many pieces of life. In our days on this earth, we may try new ideas, new plans, new relationships, careers or places to live. No matter how many or how few sorts of things we devote our living to, we can be...

There was an elderly man in England named Arthur Flowerdew. He’d lived his whole life in the seaside town of Norfolk, and had left England only once, to journey to the French coast. All his life, however, Arthur Flowerdew had been plagued by vivid mental pictures of a great city surrounded by...

The gospels are full of stories about Jesus healing. The healing stories represent some of the most moving images in Scripture. They are the most important miracle stories that were used to convince the world that Jesus was the Son of God during the first five centuries of the Common Era....

I feel sorry for the kids today who are taking geography in school for the first time. When I was in school, unless you got really interested in the history of Iraqi Kurdistan, there was a chance you could get all the way through geography class without ever having to know learn to spell Sulaymania.

Ten years ago, I was asked to present a paper to a new ministers’ study group that was forming at Cedar Hill, a small conference center near Boston. The group had chosen a perennial topic for UU clergy study groups: "Science and Religion." My job was to review one of the books we’d read in...

As must be obvious to every one of you, these are times of great tension and conflict in America. Much of this turmoil in our nation is focused on what many observers have called The Culture Wars...the very vocal and visible battles that are occurring on many fronts to determine whose values,...

Every once in a while in my life, I have a human conversation that so stuns or startles me that it proves impossible to ever forget. It wasn’t long ago that I had such a troubling and transforming interaction, and I want to tell you about it. But first, I have to set the stage. Twenty years ago,...

Happiness is a deep, persistent and universal obsession for humanity. As one of my correspondents asked, "Why isn’t happiness the only thing that matters?" From the very beginning Americans (in particular) have made happiness a central piece of their national quest....

At one point in her novel Fly Away Home, American writer Marge Piercy has a mother say of her daughters: “The girls had been raised Unitarian (Universalist), which seemed a nice, sensible compromise between having no religion at all and having to lie about what we believed. Enough religion to be...