Working to feed the hungry and obtain adequate food for poor people in our society has long been central to my own justice and service work. When I was in high school, I spent many weekends volunteering with a group called Youth Service Opportunities Project....

A while ago my friend told me that his son had come home from school with a new put-down expression. “That is sooo gay.” My friend explained to his son that perhaps he didn’t want to say that—after all, he lived in a family with two daddies—“gay” as a put-down just didn’t seem the...

My friend Sue has a son with autism who is now 19 years old. When Adam was younger (8–13) and when they would go to the grocery store, he would inevitably make a scene because he would want his parents to buy something he couldn’t have. This would be no ordinary scene of power play and wielding...

God, or however you wish to name the Divine, does not make mistakes. What does this mean? What does this mean when a mother gives birth to a child with mental retardation or cerebral palsy? What does this mean when a child is in an accident and becomes seriously physically impaired?...

I’ve always had a fantasy about going to the airport with just the clothes on my back, my ID, a credit card and my toothbrush. I go through the revolving door, walk up to the counter and look up at the day’s flight schedule as if I were looking at the menu in a coffee shop. But instead of...

SERMON DELIVERED BY REV. ROBERT WEST at the First Unitarian Church of Rochester, New York on September 8, 1963. This was Rev. Robert West's first sermon at First Unitarian in Rochester. Late on a Sunday afternoon, five weeks ago, my family and I drove into Rochester to begin our life here with...

The Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) Stewardship and Development staff is pleased to announce that The Reverend James C....

If you have been paying attention lately, you have been exposed to a mountain of information about the status of immigrants and aliens in the United States. You have heard some of the heart-wrenching stories about separated families and exploited workers, about thousands of deaths as a result of...

Step One:​ Invoke an external and internal threat. Pose it as a threat to civilization itself. Create a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solution. Insist that the leader’s superior instinct and access to privileged knowledge are more reliable than universal...

"Few of their children in the country learn English Unless the stream of their importation could be turned they will soon so outnumber us that all the advantages we have will not be able to preserve our Language, and even our Government will become precarious." Does this sound familiar? This...

How clearly I remember it. My husband, Dan, and our daughter, Sarah, had spent the night in Taos, New Mexico. The next morning we set out for the pueblo, an ancient village inhabited by indigenous people known as the Pueblo. Clearly tourists, easily identified as European Americans, we were...

As part of my seminary training I spent a summer working as a hospital chaplain, assigned to the psychiatric floor. I found it to be deeply gratifying work, and I was able to build relationships with many of the patients. Some were long-term and others had a quick turnaround. Some were what we...

Today is the second of our three-part sermon series dedicated to Rev. Forrest Church. As I noted last week, Church spent nearly 30 years as the senior minister of All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church in New York City....

Pity the poor dandelion. It is, in many ways, nature’s perfect plant. With a tap root that grows more than a foot long, it can survive in climates of scorching heat and bitter cold. Its tender, young greens make a tasty addition to any salad, or they can be boiled like fiddleheads or as a tea...

One day I was sitting in a coffee shop downtown when I noticed a couple of street corner evangelists setting up shop across the street—an older and a younger man (possibly his son?), wearing dark suits and ties and wielding King James Version bibles. They commenced taking turns preaching the...

Once in a while, I find myself stuck in traffic, only slowly inching past a construction crew or toward one of the more difficult intersections. If I am at peace with myself, which sometimes happens even in heavy traffic, instead of cursing the other drivers with whom I have helped to create this...

In his 1947 biography of Theodore Parker, the American historian Henry Steele Commager wrote about Parker's first trip to Europe: There was everything to be seen and much to be remembered, and Parker invaded Europe with the ruthless thoroughness that ever characterized him: he carried the towns b...

In his book, Facing Death, Averil Stedeford recounts the following story about a woman who was diagnosed with a terminal illness: Mrs. N. was a very particular housewife who felt she should clean her home every day. She did not entertain often, for it was such an effort; everything had to be...

There was a fascinating story on the public radio evening news on Wednesday: The town of Port Arthur, Texas, a conservative, middle American community, is building a memorial to its best-known native daughter—Janis Joplin. Janis Joplin—rock star, rebel, outrageous dresser, screamer and shouter,...

[This sermon is second in a three-part series: "The Humanist in Me," "The Theist in Me," and "The Christian in Me."] You may have noticed that I do not completely attach myself to one label....