Ocean winds swept our skies clean, for a few days at least, this week. In the Jewish tradition, this time of the New Year, Rosh Hoshana, brings with it sacred winds, ready to sweep away all the spiritual smog we have gathered over the past year. What obstructions are getting in the way of your … Continue reading Clearing the Air ?
Underneath the city, the dirt and stone. Underneath the dirt and stone, the water. Dig deep, friends! Let’s dig deep and find the sources that renew and sustain us in the face of fear and uncertainty. This Sunday we celebrate our ingathering of water and stones in an unusual way for our unusual times. We … Continue reading Seeking Out the Source
One way to read the Bible is as a history of people interpreting their relationship with one another and the world through their understanding of God and the covenants God makes with them. Over and over the stories tell of the covenants being broken and remade. What wisdom do we hold about covenants being broken … Continue reading Renewing the Covenant ?
As we navigate this time of uncertainty, a modern journey through the wilderness, what can we learn from the wisdom of wild things? Wildness is a quality of human nature that civilization has long been deeply uneasy about. As our civilization confronts the edges of its capacity to control, wildness has a redemptive gift still … Continue reading The Peace of Wild Things ?
The UU minister and poet Lynn Ungar asks, “What will you do with the last good days?” As we continue to cope with a global pandemic on top of the already dire challenges of racial justice, economic inequality and climate crisis, it is easy to feel the world weighing heavily on our small mortal shoulders. … Continue reading Wake Up. Give Thanks. Sing ?
This Sunday we celebrate two of our youth who have graduated from high school and are Bridging to young adulthood. Bridging, like the many rites of passage we honor, is a time to step back and recognize a moment where the river of life bends. As our whole world moves through a rite of passage, … Continue reading Where the River Bends ?
Celebrating fathers, and fathering, this Sunday we explore the process of how deep and powerful love is forged. What do we learn about love in the heat of summer solstice? As we explore the theme of compassion this month, in a moment when strong feelings roil throughout our society, we turn to the feminist theologian … Continue reading The Work of Love ?
“Let the beauty you love be what you do,” wrote Sufi mystic Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi. In our digital Flower Communion this year, we glorify once again the beauty of diversity in humanity and the natural world. In the face of forces that would dehumanize and oppress, our ritual celebrates the role of beauty in our … Continue reading When the World is Ablaze ?
“The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” intoned Martin Luther King Jr, paraphrasing the 19th century Unitarian minister Theodore Parker. Forces that have long roiled in the soul of America are erupting in a moment of necessary conflict, a moment pregnant with both redemptive and oppressive potential. As we … Continue reading Where the Arc Bends ?
One of the YouTube hits of the pandemic has been Some Good News, a silly, heartwarming weekly show to highlight all the kindness happening right now that doesn’t make it into the headlines. The poet Naomi Shihab Nye writes that “before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the … Continue reading The Deepest Thing Inside ?
