A meat eater comes up to a vegan: “Did you hear about the new study saying vegans are more likely to go blind? I guess it’s because you don’t get the proper nutrition.” The vegan replied, “Nah, it’s just from reading all of those tiny ingredient lists.” Vegans (vegetarians who don’t...

Remembering our spiritual, courageous ancestors who forsook oppression with security to gain freedom with opportunity, may we go forth to master ourselves by accepting duty with responsibility, by showing balance in our judgments and by having breadth of vision in our deliberations. May we be...

If you are proud of this church, become its advocate. If you are concerned for it future, share its message. If its values resonate deep within you, give it a measure of your devotion. This church cannot survive without your faith, your confidence, your enthusiasm. Its destiny, the larger hope,...

The first step is to notice the mountain. It is there. And it belongs to a range of mountains. There’s no going around it. The next step is to reach the kind of acceptance that has us praying in our hearts: "Lord, I don’t ask you to move the mountain, just give me the strength to climb." The...

God of all oppressed persons, remind us of your presence in voices of protest; shatter our self-complacent faith in liberty freely given; and remind us of the cost of hard-won freedom. Let the pain of strangled dreams return us to a knowledge of our own triumphs in the struggle to be free....

Let us be united in the spirit of aspiration and thanksgiving: Eternal light, toward whose quickening dawn all generations yearn, we lift our hearts in thanksgiving for all true ministry, for those of every time and place who take upon themselves all suffering along the way, who are quick to sear...

Eternal God, Source of All Creation, we would give substance to our thankfulness by resolving to make right use of the gifts we have received from thy bounty. With thy gift of the senses we would fashion and preserve a world of beauty for all....

Please join with me in the spirit of meditation and prayer.We have returned again to the time of Atonement, the time to look back over our lives this past year and face the realities of when we have fallen short of the aims set forth in "Moments of high resolve."We have the opportunity, if we cho...

We create a web of life. This is finally the time to let go of that crazy notion that we can live separate and aloof from one another We create a web of life. This is the time at last that we can come home to each other, to our mutual belonging. We create a web of life....

After the words, a quiet; after the songs, a silence; after the crowd only the memory recalls the gathering. Peace and justice have need of you after the words, the music, and the gathering. God grant you the depth for dedication to justice. God grant you the will to be an apostle of peace. Amen.

Spirit of life and love, your prophet Isaiah called us to worship you by freeing the oppressed, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and housing the homeless. Your follower St. Francis cried out, "Make me an instrument of Thy peace." Jesus instructed us to love our neighbors—and our enemies—as...

Let us be in the spirit of prayer. In this precious moment in which we set apart and ordain a woman to our ministry, we pause to give thanks for this religious community of free spirits of which we are a part....

We gather this day to seek in the midst of our fragmented selves the unity which enfolds us all; to summon in the midst of the everyday that secret taste of danger, that peace which beckons beyond the trifles and deepens the human heart; to open our self-righteous selves to that judgment which we...

(This was written for the opening worship at a district board retreat....

God, make me a channel of thy peace, that where there is hatred, I may sow love; where there is wrong, the spirit of forgiveness; where there is discord, harmony; where there is error, truth; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there are shadows, light; where there is...

Poem Try to Praise the Mutilated World , by Adam Zagajewski (translated from the Polish) Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June's long days, and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew. The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. You must praise the...