Co-Minister's Blog

May 2010

Our Unitarian Universalist principles affirm and promote a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.

The quest for truth is on-going, and there are many paths to the truth. We affirm direct experience, words and deeds, wisdom from the world’s religions, reason and science. We know that fiction and myths are not factual and actual but do often point the way toward truth.

We test our own understandings in community, and we learn from one another. We know each person has a piece of the truth and that we need one another to know more.

Truth is our theme for the month of May.

Sometimes truth is revealed through thoughtful analysis and comes with a mental clarity and awareness. Sometimes we can think, reason, and speak to justify and nearly fool ourselves.

April 2010

What are Unitarian Universalists saying about soteriology?  Soteriology is the religious study of comparing various religions’ ideas on salvation. Maybe UUs are not talking.  Or maybe we are.

Salvation comes from the Greek salvare meaning "to save."  Salvation is our theological theme for April.  What saves you?  When you’ve hit rock bottom, what has kept you going?  When you feel low and wonder what it is all about, what gets you out of bed?  When you question your worth, what lifts your spirit?

We are grateful to hear your stories of what is saving.  People tell us that when they first came to church, they sat in the back and just cried.  The service touches such a deep place.  People say singing together warms their hearts.  Holding one another’s hands at the end of the service is one person’s life-line.   Sharing silence before the spoken meditation and prayer allows one person to get a needed breather in a stressful time and another clear on a decision.  One person says coming to church Sunday after Sunday over time, “I’ve let go of shame and I accept myself, other people and life.”  “Someone will say something so true, I feel I can be myself,” says another.  Another says coming each Sunday and attending AA meetings throughout the week are keeping them alive.  Lives are saved here.

Each of the two of us has experiences during the services of looking at your faces and feeling touched by your lives or listening to a hymn medley with tears in our eyes with love for you all.   When we’re running low, such moments fill us.

March 2010

LETTING GO is our theological theme for March.  There are times in life for holding on with all we’ve got and there are times when holding on will drag you down.  So much about life is letting go.

We have to let go of each stage of life as we move into its next chapters, from childhood to adolescence and on, throughout our lives.  We let go of other people’s expectations for us.  We let go of possibilities and alternatives as we make choices and focus.  We let go of grievances, grudges, resentments in order to be free and healthy.  As we move through life, we grieve losses of jobs, places, people.  We let go and try to end something well in order to begin something new in healthy ways.  We let go of things.  We learn we have to do what we can and then let go of results.  At night, when we want to sleep, we need to let go of nagging concerns and problems.  If we parent, we do all we can, and we have to let go of our children.  At some point, we have to let go of our parents.  As we experience life’s nuances and ambiguities, we let go of certainties.  We have responsibilities; we tend to them, and we have to let go of control.  We have to let go of our self-image, our appearance and health and eventually life itself.  At times we let go of our separate individual self and recognize our oneness with the wholeness of things.

February 2010

We heard this story about the power of prayer, “I accidentally drove by the bakery this morning and there in the window were a host of goodies. I felt this was no accident, so I prayed, ‘God, if you want me to have one of those delicious coffee cakes, let me have a parking place directly in front of the bakery.’ And sure enough, the eighth time around the block, there it was!”

Unitarian Universalists are often cautious about prayer. The Rev. Patrick O'Neill, minister of the First Unitarian Congregational Society of Brooklyn, New York, writes, “Most Unitarian Universalist ministers I know spend a lot of time composing good, inclusive-type prayers…It’s a tricky business. ‘Oh, Thou Great Essence of Life’ sounds like a perfume advertisement.. . .In truth, I like the fact that our diversity of beliefs in the Unitarian Universalist church makes us choose our words of prayer carefully.”

This month’s theme is spiritual practice and prayer. You are invited to reflect on what you consider to be your personal way of prayer and spiritual practice or what you might like for it to be. Imagine you are composing a Book of Prayer and Spiritual Practice.