May the Waters gathered here remind us of what each of us brings to this community and of the waters that nourished us before we were even born, that continue to give us sustenance and energy for our life journeys. and for all creatures on this earth....

Spirit of Life, known by many names yet by no name fully known—we gather today with hopes and dreams and also with fears and wounds... [briefly name some of the things lifted up during the candles of joy and sorrow]. May we be reminded that all things come and go; that today’s joys and today’s...

Introduction One year for the November Service Auction, [a member] asked and I agreed to have a sermon topic listed among the many items available for bidding....

O God of life, help us make this church a refuge from the world, a place where the rules are different....

Giver of being and freedom, thou who touches our lives in unforeseen ways, who unsettles our ease and upsets our self-satisfactions: We wait in these moments of stillness to let the hidden processes of healing and growth do their silent work within us, and to let the quiet work of reconciliation ...

I do not know if the seasons remember their history or if the days and nights by which we count time remember their own passing. I do not know if the oak tree remembers its planting or if the pine remembers its slow climb toward sun and stars. I do not know if the squirrel remembers last fall's...

When we remember those whom we have loved and lost, help us to remember also, O God, how great a privilege is human loving, and that not to have loved at all would have been loss far greater still. Amen. “What’s a soul?” Not a question Unitarian Universalists ask very often. We are more likely...

About twenty years ago, I read a book that I've never dis­cussed with anyone, but which has stayed with me and intrigued me all this time. Titled Religions of America and edited by Leo Rosten, it is an attempt to describe as clearly and as concisely as possible the variety of religious faiths in...

There was an elderly man in England named Arthur Flowerdew. He’d lived his whole life in the seaside town of Norfolk, and had left England only once, to journey to the French coast. All his life, however, Arthur Flowerdew had been plagued by vivid mental pictures of a great city surrounded by...

Ten years ago, I was asked to present a paper to a new ministers’ study group that was forming at Cedar Hill, a small conference center near Boston. The group had chosen a perennial topic for UU clergy study groups: "Science and Religion." My job was to review one of the books we’d read in...

Why should we intentionally work for diversity? The responses to this question vary widely. Of course, hard demographic realities suggest much. But for me, beyond any demographic or sociological justification, there is a theological imperative....