In The Left Hand of Darkness, the writer Ursula K Legion wrote, “To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.” So many religious and spiritual communities are struggling in these days, and so often their struggle is with unanswerable questions, or … Continue reading Do Not Answer Them
“Love is our doctrine,” were the first words of the covenant I grew up with as a Unitarian Universalist. Repeated week by week, I’ve probably said some version of the Griswold Williams covenant a couple of thousand times in my life. But what does it mean, to name love our doctrine? And what kind of … Continue reading Love is Our Doctrine
In the Roman pantheon, Janus was the god of both beginnings and endings, holding a key in the right hand to lock up that which is behind us, and a key in the left hand to unlock the dawning future. As the new year begins, let us do two things together, in the spirit of … Continue reading Out of the Flames
When Adrienne Maree Brown shared this question from her therapist, “Are you satisfiable?” it hit her like a ton of bricks, as she had to acknowledge, in that moment, she was living with no idea of the point at which she might be satisfied. It landed the same way for me, and in this season, … Continue reading Are You Satisfiable?
Edwin Markham, sometimes called the poet laureate of Universalism, wrote about inclusion and exclusion in his short epigrammatic poem Outwitted. “He drew a circle that shut me out – Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But Love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in.” Drawing the circle of … Continue reading A Wide, Wild Welcome
We take that old adage that beauty is in the eye of the beholder to be about the relativity of beauty, how we each name different things beautiful, which is, of course, true. But it also reminds us that if we wish to see beauty in the world, we must choose to behold it, to … Continue reading An Awesome World
In so many instances of life, our experience of a moment is conditioned by our expectations for that moment. If we had low expectations, we might be delighted when they’re exceeded, or deeply disappointed when the opposite occurs – even if what actually happened was precisely the same. Would we all be happier with lower … Continue reading Great(?) Expectations
When Unitarian Julia Ward Howe created Mothers Day (notice the lack of possessive apostrophe), she was living into that old adage of necessity and need, trying to bring more peace into the world in a time when conflict and violence raged. This Sunday, we’ll explore her story, the origins of the day, and explore what … Continue reading The Mother of Invention
