Members of the UUA Common Read selection committee read a lot of fabulous books to prepare for our mid-summer selection meeting….

Thanksgiving can be a difficult holiday. Not all family gatherings are harmonious. There might be pressure to prepare “the perfect meal” just like a parent used to make. Then there is that business with Europeans spreading their empire and claiming new lands—even though those lands were…

Many of us like to point out our UU connections with well-loved Christmas music and rituals. Charles Follen introduced the first Christmas tree in the United States. Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women sacrifice their own Christmas presents for impoverished neighbor children. Charles Dickens’ A…

[Editor’s note: World AIDS Day is December 1.] This painting was a gift from a man I barely knew, but the beauty of the real gift he gave me cannot be captured with a photograph….

I grew up in a family which honored my father’s overseas military service. He had taken part in the occupation of Germany after World War II. Memorial Day parades and Veterans’ Day observances were a regular part of my childhood. I was proud to have memorized the lyrics to songs representing…

…

What makes a fire burn? Mark Hicks, Angus MacLean Professor of Religious Education at Meadville Lombard Theological School, reminds us that it is the spaces between the logs. If you pile the wood too densely, it will not burn. For most religious educators, autumn is a dense time….

I am not anxious to be the loudest voice or the most popular. But I would like to think that at a crucial moment, I was an effective voice of the voiceless, an effective hope of the hopeless. —Whitney Young by Kathleen Carpenter During the summer, I was one of the almost one thousand people who…

by Sally Patton See me beautiful each and every day. Could you take a chance? Could you find a way to see me shining through In every thing I do, And see me beautiful. —lyrics by Red Grammer, from the “Teaching Peace” CD When I started the Involve Project over 14 years ago, I was hoping to…

That is what my big brother said to me more than a decade ago. The occasion? I was hired as the Director of Religious Education at my local UU church. My brother knows something about ministry. He is a minister and bishop in the Missionary Baptist Church, married to a preacher’s kid, with whom he…