This is my favorite thing about seaweed: it feels so much like my neurodiverse brain.

People who aren't neurodiverse tend to frame neurodiversity as symptoms of inconvenience to people around them. For me, my ADHD means beauty.

Remind me that success is not the only measure of a life.

I believe that we are all "life drummers" just waiting to join in the rhythm.

I have struggled forgiving myself for not knowing how to create appropriate boundaries.

Self-compassion was one of the best gifts I gave myself.

I don’t know exactly when it happened, but something began to change.

You are loved beyond your wildest imaginings by the spirit of creation.

Once, during my ministerial internship, a woman I’ll call Clara came up to me during the hustle and bustle before the Sunday service. I knew that Clara struggled with anxiety; now, in great distress, she told me how anxious she was and that she didn’t know what to do. She was frantic, and I...

We have to keep finding ways to widen the circle of care and concern.

To be queer is to know the ways of holding all that shimmers to the light.

Happy kids are safer kids, because happy kids have adults they can ask for help.

To understand that my humanity and my abundant flesh both demand dignity is to embrace fat liberation.

My God lives in the margins and witnesses to the broken-hearted.

Spirit of Life, remind me to release that which no longer serves me so that I may be present to joy.

Feel that? Each breath, every inhale, exhale We are living, breathing, connected. We are the whole, complete, beautiful selves that we were born to be. Feel that? In your bones, in your muscles In your heart and your blood That is the extraordinary you. The you who was born for this time, this...

There is a Universal Love that has never broken faith with us and never will.

We all have our foibles; pieces of ourselves that we both admire and occasionally revile. These gifts and struggles exist in tandem.

We have so many opportunities to bless each other in this world, but they don’t always announce themselves as moments of profound transformation.

Surround yourself with skillful teachers. Let them teach you, but don't let them do it for you. That learning is yours to do.

In honor of the risk takers, those that hold the vision with clarity and charge forward with optimism even in the face of others doubts. You are our lamp lighters and our guides; may we never forget the courage it takes to lead the way forward. In honor of the cautious skeptics, those that gather...

Sometimes grief sends notice ahead of time; sometimes, it shows up as an unwelcome, uninvited guest.

Knit six purl six sets of two rows four rows six rows up to twelve, patterns, repeating, steady, soothingly same. This is not what life is like. Life is like picking up a tousled hunk of yarn pulled out of the basket by an impatient child looking for a string too many times. You find an end. You...

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.

It is deeply spiritual work to learn to treat ourselves with compassion; to learn to see ourselves, if only in moments, the same way we look at something or someone we find beautiful: a newborn baby, the ocean, a sunset.

We people, gathered here today on the quest for truth and meaning, bear witness. We bear witness. To the record of human lives extinguished, simply because these people dared to live authentically, we bear witness. To the lives and reported deaths of (number) transgender people, globally, so far...

Once I quit drinking, my inner voice and I began the harder work: that of creating a life from which I do not need or want to escape.

It is my only memory of a lesson from Kindergarten Sunday School class. Maybe it’s the only one that counts.

“If your love for me requires that I hide parts of who I am, then you don't love me. Love is never a request for silence.”...

I’d gotten in the habit of keeping my head down and hardly noticing where I was or who was around me. On this day, I decided to greet the world differently.

What if we encouraged and celebrated each other for who we are? What if, instead of criticizing, we challenged with love, affirming the good we see in one another?

"Where are you a pastor?" It's not an uncommon question when you've chosen to do ministry in a small, rural town, especially when you wear a clerical collar much of the time. I'm getting used to the puzzled looks on people's faces as they struggle to reconcile a genderqueer body in this...

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.

Spirit of Compassion, remind us that our task as humans is not perfection, but faithfulness.

I had dreams about anywhere-else-but-here But our faith kept me close. I believed I had done something to deserve it. Our faith shouted, “No!” I tried to imagine it never happened But our faith reminded, “Yes, grief is real.” I thought I might die But our faith nurtured my life. I wondered...

I wanted so badly to break free and let loose—but I just couldn't. I was stuck in my own false ideas of the congregation's expectations of me. Luckily, there’s still time.

Spirit of Compassion, help us draw strength from all that we are. Give us new language with which to claim our wholeness, a new litany of joy built out of words that wounded.

“It takes a village to raise a child. It takes a child with autism to raise the consciousness of the village.” —Elaine Hall, educator and parenting coach My three-year-old is almost completely nonverbal. Every day when she gets off the bus, I ask her the same question: I ask her how her day...

How many times do I need to make mistakes before I’m ready to admit that I’m not any better at this than the bigoted and willfully ignorant?

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....

"Suffering doesn't always mean something's gone wrong; it just means you're living a life." —from the Dear Sugars podcast, Sept. 2, 2017.

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...

Dear Moppies, Maddies, and Babas; men who have given birth, women whose children still call you Daddy, queer parents of all genders and none, There isn’t a holiday set apart for us. We’re reminded of that twice a year. But I see you. I see you next to your wife’s hospital bed, snuggling your...

In Unitarian Universalist worship, we march for justice and stand for causes all the time; we also see clearly, raise our voices, and hear the truth. We bless the hands that reach out, and the feet that follow the ways of righteousness. If we like something, chances are good there will be an able...

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious...

When my 85-year-old parents moved into their retirement home five years ago, my Dad found a comfortable role schlepping mats, blocks, and straps into the room where the Sunday yoga class was held. He was the only male, but it didn’t take him long to be an active member of the class instead of...

Humanism… is primarily about who we are connected to, what we think about each other, and how we work for justice in the world. No matter what else they believe, Humanists insist on the inherent worth of every person....

Each of us has gifts and wounds from those who fathered us. This is inevitable; even the best fathers in the world disappoint their children sometimes. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to grow up. But I know that some wounds are deeper than others. Some people’s hearts have been broken by their...

The blasphemy of body hatred has no place in this temple.

I am ever grateful for the friends who are my family; who have pieced me together each time I’ve fallen apart; who laugh, cry, dream, and age happily by my side.