Spirit of Life and Love, Be with us in this time, as people suffer, as parents grieve, as violence rages. Be with us who feel the pain of loss, who feel anger at injustice....

Did you rise this morning, broken and hung over with weariness and pain and rage tattered from waving too long in a brutal wind? Get up, child. Pull your bones upright gather your skin and muscle into a patch of sun....

This story was created collaboratively by several religious educators. As you prepare to share it, read the 1966 Ware Lecture "Don't Sleep Through the Revolution," by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly in Hollywood, Florida, May 18, 1966.

This is adapted from a litany by Gail Forsyth-Vail, who suggests the following to maximize the reading's power: Identify seventeen people who will come forward to represent the generations of African Americans in the British colonies and in the United States. As you name the first generation,...

This reading requires seventeen people who are able to come forward and represent the generations of African Americans in the British colonies and in the United States. As you name the first generation, indicate to a person that they should stand. Each time you call a new generation, you indicate...

I want to talk about choice. I want to talk about the fact that just because someone who is out to destroy you says you chose to be the way you are does not mean the path of best protection is to counter with “no I didn’t, it’s not a choice, I was born this way and I’ve always been this...

There once was a child who got lost in the woods. As night began to descend, the child became more and more frightened. I’m sure any of us would be frightened too, in that situation, but what made this child even more frightened, was that he had always been afraid of the dark. He was more afraid...

Something has changed in me this winter. In the past I’ve focused on how long winter is, How miserable I find it, and how it seems so interminable. This winter, I find myself thinking instead That every day, every hour, every minute Brings us just that much closer to spring. We all experience...

Let us join in a moment dedicated to that quiet power within us. It is within that we find the will to face the world; it is within that we find the love to embrace the world; it is within that we find our personal identity and know the world. Yet, within us is also a great void....

"We gather together": familiar words to many of us. "We"—called here not by name, not by special invitation—but we who are here, who, walking by the door, come in; who come anonymously, burdened and borne by our visions, yearnings, despairs, solitudes. "Gather"—called here not by law, not by...

We gather on this Sabbath morn to worship in spirit and truth; to raise a joyful noise to the Eternal Mystery; to reconfirm our covenant to seek wisdom in love; to strengthen our commitment to the common good. We come from many paths to explore that which is hidden; to consider the ways of our...

We gather in community to rest from our labors, to greet our neighbors, and to open our being to insight and intuition of that greater reality of which we are a part. May we find in our time together inspiration and renewal....

We gather here to worship: to seek the truth, to grow in love, to join in service; to celebrate life's beauty and find healing for its pain; to honor our kinship with each other and with the earth; to create a more compassionate world, beginning with ourselves; to wonder at the mystery that gave ...

We come to this hour knowing that it is but an hour. Yet out of all the hours in the week this is one that is set apart: an hour that is saved, an hour that is savored. It is a time for us to recognize what gives life meaning. It is a time to honor what we value. It is a time to celebrate our lives.

"Can faith equal faith? Do gods of one faith take care of the believers of other faiths? Who will protect my god when he falters and his faith fails? Do the gods of one faith take care of the gods of other faiths?" These questions all come from the poem "Faith," by Justin Chin. In the poem, the...

The world is a slippery sort of thing. It can be hard, very hard, to hold on to all the many pieces of life. In our days on this earth, we may try new ideas, new plans, new relationships, careers or places to live. No matter how many or how few sorts of things we devote our living to, we can be...

At one point in her novel Fly Away Home, American writer Marge Piercy has a mother say of her daughters: “The girls had been raised Unitarian (Universalist), which seemed a nice, sensible compromise between having no religion at all and having to lie about what we believed. Enough religion to be...