“I am tapping out of the fake fights that distract us!”

"When we hear our voices each other's words, then our heart is in a holy place." from #1008, "When Our Heart Is in a Holy Place," in Singing the Journey.

At last, a sequel to the classic ‘Rise Up Singing’ songbook.

Ysaye Barnwell and the music of community, resistance, and power.

Let us go out into the world singing. Let us go out into the world singing songs that proclaim liberty. Songs that turn ashes into garlands Songs that bind up the afflicted and those who mourn. Songs that, like oaks, have roots that go deep and stand strong. Let us go out into the world singing....

Translucent alabaster captures the spirit of fire.

Four hymns and two readings from our beloved Unitarian Universalist hymnals are featured in these images, created by Ellen Rockett for sharing on social media. I'll bring you hope when hope is hard to find (Carolyn McDade) All our lives we are in need, and others are in need of us (George Odell)...

This prayer's author suggests that for each paragraph of the prayer, an accompanist (on piano or some other instrument) softly play the hymn that's indicated at stanza's end. For clarity, these instructions are included below....

With Unitarian Universalist youth communities this past summer, I sang—to grieve and to celebrate.

December twenty-third, “O Holy Night” (1855). The first English translation of "O Holy Night" was by Unitarian minister John Sullivan Dwight, who tweaked the original French author's socialist themes and images to advance Dwight's own abolitionist cause. Not only was the French author a...

December twentieth, first of Elliot’s Ariel Poems, “The Journey of the Magi” (1927). "Magi" is Unitarian T. S. Eliot’s first of 5 Christmas poems published after his ambivalent choice to join the Anglican church. Many believe that Eliot's feelings about his new church are reflected by the...

December nineteenth, "The Many Moods of Christmas” (1963). Robert Shaw was best known as the conductor of his namesake Chorale. In its day, "Many Moods of Christmas" was the quintessential sound of the season. Even today, the album sells well around the holidays and choirs continue to perform it...

December eighteenth, "Do You Hear What I Hear?" (1962). Amid the anxiety of the Cuban missile crisis, Unitarian Noel Regney wrote the text for “Do You Hear What I Hear?” as a protest song. The music was composed by his then-wife, Gloria Shayne Baker. The song's allusions to the Bible stories of...

December Seventeenth, Rod Serling’s Christmas Specials (1963). Though Jewish, Rod Serling always loved Christmas (maybe because his birthday was December twenty-fifth). He became a Unitarian Universalist while in college and later joined the Unitarian Community Church of Santa Monica. He wrote...

December sixteenth, Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales (1835). When the man he loved married a woman, Danish Unitarian Hans Christian Andersen wrote one of his first and most beloved fairy tales of a mermaid's tragically unrequited love. His timeless tales include several Christmas classics...

December fourteenth, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” (1865). Unitarian poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote “Christmas Bells” (a poem later set to music and renamed “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”) just months before the end of the Civil War.

December thirteenth, first department store Santa (1890). Department storeowner James Edgar delighted customers’ children by walking about the store on weekends dressed in a Santa costume. Edgar aspired to broad-mindedness in his religion, and though not a member he attended the Unitarian church...