Based on a 2011 interview with Reverend Howard Dana, who has been the Unitarian Church of Harrisburg's minister since August, 2000. When you were a child, did you have a favorite toy? Maybe it was a stuffed animal, doll, or toy truck. Did it go everywhere with you: to the market, in the tub, to bed?

This is the story of Azim Khamisa. His decision to forgive deeds many would consider unforgiveable has inspired and transformed people all over the world. Azim, an international investment banker, lived in San Diego, with his two children, a son, Tariq, and a daughter, Tasreen. One night in 1995,...

A century ago, when Lotta Hitschmanova was young, she lived with her sister Lilly and their mother and father in a spacious home in the ancient city of Prague....

What is the value of a gift given? Is it just the dollar amount on the price tag or are some gifts worth much more? Let me tell you about a gift that was not worth much monetarily, but which made a wealthy woman richer than she could have imagined....

From Christian scripture, Luke 15:11-32 (New Revised Standard Version). Then Jesus said, "There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.' So he divided his property between them. A few days later the...

The ban started in 2006, on Tanzania's Zanzibar archipelago. The Zanzibar islands on the Indian Ocean are famous for their pristine beaches and their history of trade in spices and slaves. Today, Zanzibar depends on tourism for most of its income. One month after this island paradise was named as...

A retelling of a Buddhist Jataka Tale. Once there was a village that was prosperous. The wealthiest of the villagers was afraid that the town’s reputation would attract thieves, so they buried a huge lump of gold in a field for safe keeping. Many years passed and the village lost much of its...

The following account is one young person's encounter with a fundamentalist extremist group. In June of 1998, I lost an uncle to an AIDS related illness. He was brilliant, he was Christian, and he was gay. I was only five years old when he died and I didn't know anything about AIDS. I just knew I...

Born in 1793, Lucretia Mott was raised a Quaker in Nantucket, Massachusetts. The faith had made inroads on that island almost a century before when Mary Starbuck, a prominent woman merchant and civic leader, discovered that Quakers espoused the equality of the sexes. Still, even the Quakers had...

How did an American religion that began with a boy praying in the woods become, in less than 200 years, a major world religion? How did a story as surprising as his—of Jesus visiting the Americas and modern-day Native Americans descending from the Hebrews—gain acceptance by 13 million people...

Remarkable women have done remarkable things in every part of the world in every time in history. Most of their accomplishments were not recorded in history books....

Arabia in the sixth century was dangerous and chaotic. [Leader: On a map or globe, indicate Arabian Peninsula, sweeping over Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Libya.] There were shortages of food and other goods, which led many to steal. A few people were rich, but most were very poor. The...

The Reverend James Jones was a charismatic young man of 24 when he founded the Peoples Temple in Indianapolis in 1955. He preached racial equality, and, amazingly, more than half the Peoples Temple members were of racial minorities—a level of diversity almost unheard of in the 1950s. The church...

From Hebrew scripture, the Book of Exodus....

Sometimes, freedom is a long time coming. It may take generations upon generations for justice to be won. Our Unitarian ancestor Reverend Theodore Parker said, "I do not pretend to understand the moral universe: the arc is a long one...

Jacob Lawrence The Migration Series, Panel No. 3: From every southern town migrants left by the hundreds to travel north.1940-1941 The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (C) 2009 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation, Seattle/ Artists Rights You have two options for using this image....

Mary McCarthy's parents died in the influenza epidemic of 1918 when she was six years old. She lived first with an aunt and uncle, who mistreated her cruelly, then was taken in by her maternal grandparents in Seattle. Her grandmother was Jewish and her grandfather Episcopalian, but to honor the...

Once upon a time, two sisters lived side by side. They both owned farms: One grew the sweetest grapes for miles around, the other raised vegetables. A small creek ran between the two farms. For decades, the sisters were as close as could be....

The Catanna website published by Catresea Ann Canivan was a source for this story and offers deep information about Paganism. Come with me on a journey—a journey that is as old as time itself. Repeated so often, the earth knows the rhythm and follows it, like a cosmic dance. First steps of the...

At the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis, Minnesota, people of all ages carry their own Passport to Justice. They are on a journey to help others....