Braver/Wiser
Braver/Wiser
Braver/Wiser
Worship
Life is full of hard edges and complicated choices. Braver/Wiser gives you weekly message of courage and compassion for life as it is. Every Wednesday we deliver an original written reflection by a contemporary UU religious leader, and brief prayer, grounded in Unitarian Universalism. Join the Braver/Wiser community and sign up today!
Contributors
During the summer of 2017, our weekly Braver/Wise reflections will be written by a team that includes Unitarian Universalist clergy, religious educators, and music professionals. We're excited to announce that team of nine writers:
Aisha Ansano, UU seminarian
Becky Brooks, religious educator
DeReau Farrar, director of music
Rev. Elizabeth Harding, community minister
Chaplain Seanan Holland, U.S. Navy
Rev. Elea Kemler, parish minister
Christina Rivera, religious educator
Yuri Yamamoto, music director
...and one more religious educator, to be announced June 25th.
Braver/Wiser is edited by Erika Hewitt.
Note: your email address will be used only for Braver/Wiser emails, although on occasion you may receive invitations to related projects from the Unitarian Universalist Association. WorshipWeb will never share your email address with outside organizations.
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Green Beans
I want to tell you something about the June garden. Not about the knee-high rainbow chard or the hot pink zinnias, though both are splendid. Look closer: beneath heart-shaped leaves, hiding parallel to their own twining vines, are the humble treasures of early summer: the green...By Teresa Honey Youngblood | 6/21/2017 -
Do the Next Thing with Love
By the time Karate class rolled around Monday evening, I was still dazed. The day before — June 12, 2016 — my kids wanted to know why the parents were so sad. I told them I was crying for a really big group of people who had died in the night: fifty people. We got out their...By Becky Brooks | 6/14/2017 -
Keeping Our Connections Strong
I feel like I'm on a constant hunt for hope these days. I have to be: every time I look at my phone or open my laptop, I’m overwhelmed by stories of violence, disrespect for life, greed, and selfishness. When I listen to my friends and loved ones or to conversations in coffee...By Sean Parker Dennison | 6/7/2017 -
To Be Suspicious
As a born traveler, I love the novelty of discovering a familiar thing in a new setting. And what’s more familiar than a white clapboard church building on the town green? On my time away from the pulpit I often go for long drives in the hill country around my home in central...By Daniel Gregoire | 5/31/2017 -
The Folded Lie
One of the fads that swept my school when I was in 4th grade was a simple type of origami we called “cootie catchers,” the purpose of which was to predict your fortune – 97% guaranteed! A series of banal choices (do you like chocolate or vanilla? two or twelve?) caused the...By Maureen Killoran | 5/24/2017 -
Delicious Ambiguity
How is it that I, a minister and known skeptic, am able to a) not run around screaming that the sky is falling and, b) do my job at all? This question perplexes those belonging to religious traditions that offer comfort in the form of certainty. For some, answers to life’s...By Marisol Caballero | 5/17/2017 -
What Do We Do with Our Pain?
People are in pain all around us, all of the time. How can we be companions to those in pain, and bear witness, so that pain can be transformed into something less harmful? Last week, the crowd on a New York City subway herded me into a corner against someone’s seat: a man in...By Erika A. Hewitt | 5/10/2017 -
Confessing Communities
"Uh, where’s the booth?” Having been raised by a Christian-on-the-periphery, New Age mom and a Buddhist-leaning dad, I was a little perplexed at my first confession. I was eight years old, attending a Catholic school. That’s a whole different story, but let’s stay with the...By Robin Tanner | 5/3/2017 -
Exuberance
Once, I worked in an aluminum building, scoring the standardized tests that they make children take. That year, fourth graders across North Carolina were asked to answer, in an essay, "What is your favorite kind of weather, and why?" You might imagine there would be...By Jake Morrill | 4/26/2017 -
Home Is Where We Feel Connected
I spent four years of my life living in New York City and a little over two living in California, and I am proud to say that I have lived every other year of my life in Texas. Texans are known for their arrogance about our home state, and this reputation isn’t untrue. In fact,...By Marisol Caballero | 4/19/2017 -
Infighting Is Easier
Standing roadside, stranded, watching thousands of dollars rise in the smoke coming from under the hood, it’s easier to fight about who forgot to put oil in the car than to hold one another’s shaking hands in the shape-shifting uncertainty of whether the three white boys we’re...By Teresa Honey Youngblood | 4/12/2017 -
Crossing Thresholds
At times in my life, I’ve had to step back to fully take in the puzzling enormity of some action or decision I’ve taken. In those moments I’ve instinctively reached out for some kind of comfort in the form of a self-embrace, hugging myself with my arms crisscrossing my belly,...By Daniel Gregoire | 4/5/2017 -
Good Intentions and Incomplete Efforts
I’ve been doing a lot of guest preaching lately and it’s always a little awkward. I often don’t know how the congregation is used to doing things. Recently I’ve tripped on my robe, forgotten to extinguish the chalice, called someone by the wrong name, and gave the wrong musician...By Sean Parker Dennison | 3/29/2017 -
Hope for a Great Sea Change
With a name like mine, it’s easy to guess I’m Irish. My forebears were among the millions who struggled to escape Ireland’s disastrous Potato Famine (1845-1852). With his six siblings, my great-grandfather Patrick boarded one of the infamous “coffin ships” out of Liverpool. When...By Maureen Killoran | 3/22/2017 -
Blessed by a Stranger
I have an eye for spotting vanity license plates. My fellow Mainers are wicked clevah, and I often chuckle out loud when I see their displays of wit drive past: WHY W8 GEEZA RSOX ROX LVSMBDY One year ago, at a red light, I found myself behind a car with a Breast Cancer...By Erika A. Hewitt | 3/15/2017 -
Singing Out for Love's Return
For twelve years, Daisy has been the best dog any person could love. But last week, when she disappeared into the woods? That wasn’t what I was thinking. As I tramped along the wet trail, calling for her, other words came to mind. We’ve rambled together through these woods...By Jake Morrill | 3/8/2017 -
Expect Nothing
I had finally begun to relax—a bit. We were en route to Pennsylvania. My friend, a formal part of our “framily,” was visiting. We decided a visit to a crayon factory was the perfect winter outing for toddlers. The day was clear and crisp with typical bumper-to-bumper traffic for...By Robin Tanner | 3/1/2017 -
Go Play
Among my circle of friends, there's an ongoing inside joke: to quote song lyrics that give terrible advice. Among them are, “Don’t cry out loud. Hold it inside; learn how to hide your feelings.” Another is, “Smile, though your heart is aching. Smile, even though it’s breaking...By Marisol Caballero | 2/22/2017 -
With Whom Do You Believe Your Lot Is Cast?
Ethical question (although this really happened): You are in a local grocery store. An elderly, poorly-dressed white lady is pushing a cart, moving with obvious difficulty as she adds to her hoard first one item and then another. She finishes, then proceeds slowly – not to the...By Maureen Killoran | 2/15/2017 -
At Times, Look Up
When you grow up in New York City, as I did, you'll learn one cardinal rule: to never look up. Whatever you do, never look up to see the second story of a house, or the tops of buildings or worse still, the sky! To look up at the sky, whether to actually see the sky or to...By Daniel Gregoire | 2/8/2017
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