“We are not walking this path alone, building spiritual muscles, climbing the ladder to become more perfect. Rather, we are discovering the truth of our relatedness through belonging to these bodies and emotions, to each other, and to this whole natural world. As we realize our belonging, the...

I am the field staff for the Unitarian Universalist Association covering the congregations at the West Coast epicenter of COVID-19, and this is my report. ...

I have a middle school son who is very into Dungeons and Dragons. Last Saturday he invited me into this world. We created a character. I’m a wood elf named Lulu. When he asked what I wanted my super power to be I told him that I wanted the sound of my laughter to cause the defensive mechanisms of...

The UUA Office of Church Staff Finances applauds progressive employment laws aimed at preventing workers from being exploited. At the same time, we recognize that new legislation can be challenging to interpret and places additional burdens on congregational leaders. Here we provide guidance on...

I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian church where I was taught early on that you are either ‘with us’ or ‘against us.’ A sheep or a goat, saved or damned to hell for eternity. It wasn’t a far leap from being either a conservative or a liberal, male or female, straight or gay. Each...

I grew up in a fault-finding family. It was one way my father’s upper-class WASP culture and my mother’s working-class Jewish culture came together: analyzing what was wrong. We’d go to a phenomenal movie, but spend the car ride home talking about the not-so-good acting of one character. When...

The first of the candles in the Advent Wreath is the candle of Hope. In the Lutheran tradition of my childhood, we always lit Advent candles this time of year. Winter is often a time when we look for hope. We look with hope for the return of the sun in the months to come. We hope for good things in...

What would Unitarian Universalism be like if we lived from our faith more than we lived from our fears? And when I say “we,” I mean each of us, and each of our UU institutions. What would we be like if our minds, our hearts, our spirits shifted from fear to faith? This is an open question that...

Each month a member of your regional staff team will highlight one of the “shifts” that guides our work with congregations. These seven shifts describe where we, as UUA staff in partnership with congregations in the West, are leading Unitarian Universalism. Each shift is an adaptive movement...