We are learning to regroup and remember perfection was never the point.

Conflict resolution is in fact one of the greatest things that you can accomplish in your life and in your relationship. [W]hen I view people as not bringing conflict up, I think it’s being unfaithful to the relationship. I think it’s an abdication of your role in the relationship, and you are...

It’s important to honor the footprint others leave on our heart.

A new disease, without any cure, is pushing us apart. And, yet, we cannot escape one another. We need one another. Whether I acknowledge it or not, the guarantee of safety does not exist.

So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment. We are utterly open with no one, in the end—not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend. We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart. Perhaps we...

A lot of us feel like our lives should have come with instructions. Or maybe they did, but we lost the only copy a long time ago.

It was disruptive and strange to know that someone had died to bring this hope, and to wonder how the donor’s family mourned at the same time we rejoiced.

What could you accomplish this week if you knew you had a ground team wishing you well? Who are the other explorers around you, needing a word of encouragement that would mean so much coming from you?

My soul nudged me from a hiding place to confess and to seek forgiveness, and only through the grace of the Great Mystery of Life unfolding around us did I receive the blessing of journeying with a beloved, grieving friend.

What, exactly, are we doing when we invite love into our lives? Surely we know that it's much tidier without it, when things stay at a distance.

It’s been said that it’s easier to untangle a string of lights if you plug them in; it’s no different for people. Humans, just like strings of lights, are wired for connection.

As a child, growing up Catholic, my sense was that we should give away forgiveness like candy at Halloween: freely and readily, to anyone who comes asking. As an adult Unitarian Universalist, however, I have realized that forgiveness is a lot more complicated and challenging than that image would...

God has a fondness for what is fragile. This means us. Advent tells us that God came to us—and comes to us still—with complete vulnerability. Christ is to be found among what is fragile—including us, ourselves, when pain and loss have left us feeling less than whole. In coming to us as a...

Leader: In this sacred place, we need not be alone. We seek a listening ear, a warm heart, open arms. Congregation: In this sacred place, we join together against the waves of negativity and oppression in our world. L: We are a community of individual beings, living our own lives, yet coming...

Unconditional love is not so much about how we receive and endure each other, as it is about the deep vow to never, under any condition, stop bringing the flawed truth of who we are to each other.

[In the] spirit of love, harmony, and remembrance, we stand too often divided, too often set apart from one another in heedless ways. We seek to be compassionate but our vision may be clouded or distracted. We too often go forward, day by day, and look without seeing....

This is a ritual of caring for one another, couched in terms of struggle and hope.

if we show them at all most of us who write our secrets down and call it poetry prefer to slip it under the door and run, and if we must be present at the reading, disguise ourselves in sotto voice and pale monotone but here was one who could take us into his personal life and show us around as i...

Spirit of Life, I give thanks for the opportunities to love that present themselves in the turmoil of life. Where the light catches the tears in another’s eyes, where hands are held and there are moments without words, let us be present then, and alive to the possibility of changing. Let us seek...

Our locks tell us a lot about our lives. Locks of all kinds hold my attention because of a dream I had when I was thirteen. In the dream a gray-haired woman in a white coat sat behind a desk. I knew she was me, far in the future. Behind her on the wall was a cross-stitched sampler with a motto. I...

Bring who you are as you enter our church this morning. Bring your best self and your struggling self; bring your mistakes and your triumphs; bring your shortcomings and your recommitment to good....

I got off work at 7 pm and did the thing where you chase the bus a ­little bit but then realize you won’t make it and walk sheepishly back to the bus stop. I’m already an hour late to Sunday night singing at the Lucy Stone Cooperative, a UU affordable housing co-op in Boston. I’m still...

Holy Spirit of Life and Love, You who are our source and our ultimate destiny, Lead us this day on a crooked path. So often we are in so much of a hurry Taking the direct route to our goal, Not allowing ourselves to be distracted, Sometimes being too direct with one another in all that we seek to...

We light our chalice, symbol of our faith, For truth, sought through a questioning heart and an attentive mind; And for love, pursued through obstacles inside and outside our own human heart; And for forgiveness, and all it entails— The place where truth and love meet and merge.

Invite the congregation to join hands. The hand in yours belongs to a person whose heart is sometimes tender, whose skin is sometimes thin, whose eyes sometimes fill with tears, and whose laughter is a beautiful sound....