“The Miseducation of Justice-Making” excerpted from Nathan C. Walker (2014) Exorcising Preaching: Crafting Intellectually Honest Worship. St. Louis: Chalice Press. What does justice-making look like, feel like, when we receive hostile communication? Are we hostile in return? Or is something else...

“Beyond the Zero-Sum Game” excerpted from Nathan C. Walker (2014) Exorcising Preaching: Crafting Intellectually Honest Worship. St. Louis: Chalice Press. For centuries, insiders have been democratizing their religions. Incremental moments of institutional reform have led to a new era of...

“This Ain’t No Country Club” excerpted from Nathan C. Walker (2014) Exorcising Preaching: Crafting Intellectually Honest Worship. St. Louis: Chalice Press. There is no time to be spinning around ourselves saying, “We’re so small. We’re a minority religion.” As if “minority” is...

“Personal Spiritual Trainers” excerpted from Nathan C. Walker (2014) Exorcising Preaching: Crafting Intellectually Honest Worship. St. Louis: Chalice Press. When you come to me, come not with the expectation to have some passive clergyperson coddle you into complacency. No. Come to me as your...

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...

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...

Waiting to be born, again, into the morning, onto the day, from dark warm comfort, of my bed full of sleep and blankets, back into bright spring-scented air with all its life and branches....

Asked if he was lonesome in his hut on Walden Pond, our neighbor Henry Thoreau famously replied, “How could I be lonely? Don’t I live in the Milky Way?” Thoreau doubtless would have been encouraged by the recent discovery of Kepler-22, a planet just 600 light years from earth right in the...

When used as a responsive reading, "We are waiting" is the congregational response. This is the season of anticipation, Of expecting, of hoping, of wanting. This is the time of expecting the arrival of something--or someone. We are waiting. This is the time of living in darkness, in the hues of...

How to discuss the truth that some men love men, and some women, women, and some, both, with the children in the church school and church home? Nonchalantly. Without drum-rolls. Without tip-toe preparations. Without calculating and predicting to the nth degree. With candor. With open ears. With...

"When we seek wisdom," says one Native American spiritual leader, "we go up on the hill and talk to the Great Spirit, Wakan Tanka. Four days and four nights, without food and water. And we listen. And God speaks." Roy Phillips, minister of the Unitarian Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, writes about...

Regardless of our differences, there are a host of affirmations that we embrace as the basis for our faith. Whatever we think the holy may be, Creation itself is holy. We make no distinctions between the natural and the supernatural, the secular and the sacred. We simply cherish the earth and all...

How can we begin to understand what hope and healing mean in the face of a deadly illness with no known cure? We have many sources of hope and healing in our lives—singing, praying, thinking, communicating, acting, giving, and remembering. Dr. Richard Cabot tells the story of a young theological...

We pause this hour to honor the spirit and to accept ourselves as fragile humans, equally full of nobility and strength. We gather, weary of life’s trials, yet cheered by infinite possibilities for love’s grace. We meet with smiles and glad voices for old friends and new—every stranger a gift...

We believe there is a place at God’s table for each and every child of earth Hey, ain’t that good news! We believe the giver of life has been given many names and loves the givers of all of them Hey, ain’t that good news! We are more interested in getting heaven into people now than getting...

I am a man and I am a woman; I am a boy and I am a girl. And I am a Unitarian Universalist I am young and I am old and I am middle-aged. And I am a Unitarian Universalist...

Unitarian Universalists are proud of themselves for doing nothing to seek converts to their faith. A person’s religion is a private inward thing, it is said, and we should in no way seek to influence another person to choose our way in religion. The underlying principle here is respect for the...

We are all dying, our lives always moving toward completion. We need to learn to live with death, and to understand that death is not the worst of all events. We need to fear not death, but life—empty lives, loveless lives lives that do not build upon the gifts that each of us has been given,...

Living your Unitarian Universalism (UUism) means... If a grieving neighbor needs some companionship, you brew the pot of coffee and sit down to listen. Living your UUism means......

The womb of stars embraces us; remnants of their fiery furnaces pulse through our veins. We are of the stars, the dust of explosions cast across space. We are of the earth: we breathe and live in the breath of ancient plants and beasts....