Quest Blog
“You’re Keeping That?”
2013-05-03 While nursing lately, I’ve been watching the sun move across the dusty piano. “I’ve got to dust that, the moment I get up,” I think, and then promptly forget, again. But I’ve also been wondering if that’s exactly why spring motivates us to some version of cleaning-tending-sorting-purging-reclaiming of space in our lives—is it simply…
Read MoreSerious Life
2013-04-04 Life, you’ve noticed, is serious. In all seriousness, it kicks your butt, then, in all seriousness laughs about it. Life is serious. Life has at least two suits and a hundred pairs of shoes. Life spends its waking hours worried; vigilant; staring. Life won’t take “no” as answer. Life takes no prisoners. Except when…
Read MoreYes, Sweetie, Your Mama’s An Atheist…Minister. It Happens. Now, About This Sunday…
2013-03-29 Last September, we moved to the “Little Rome” section of Northeast Washington, D.C. I expected it to feel a little more “holy” this Holy Week (perhaps “holier-than-me”?) but it’s actually felt pretty ordinary, quiet, and not very springy yet. Here and there I see some crocuses insisting on coming up through fall’s accumulated leaves,…
Read MoreGood Guys and Bad Guys
2013-03-06 Depending on who you talk to, the recent death of Hugo Chavez was either the tragic loss of a heroic defender of the poor or the timely end of a socialist thug. Now, I’m not interested in taking sides on this one. I make no pretense at being any kind of expert on the…
Read MoreBodhidharma Proposes to the Wall
2013-04-11 Bodhidharma sat there, they say, nine years, but you know how they talk. Bodhidharma there to wonder why he thinks this could be different from that. To wonder what it might have been we think differentiates one depth from another. Isn’t that the secret? Bodhidharma said to the wall. You won’t know your self…
Read MoreWhy I am a Unitarian Universalist
At college I found a small group of humanists who called themselves Unitarian Universalists. They were joyful people whose values of commitment and compassion I admired. I was not alone.
Read MoreThis Is What’s Happening
2013-03-08 This is what’s happening, now. It is the last day of our week-and-a-half West Coast trip. We are in Portland, Oregon, the city where I was born and grew up, where I know a thousand places I would love to go–this and that bookstore, that cafe, and oh, the breakfast places I would love…
Read More…born and re-born again
2013-03-09 “Love, yes, love your calling, for this holy and generous love will impart strength to you so as to enable you to surmount all obstacles.” ~St. Mary Euphrasia Pelletier In the late 1820s, a “change in inner conviction” led the Rev. Dr. Theodore Clapp to begin preaching universalism in New Orleans. This change inspired…
Read MoreAbolitionist Ministry
2013-03-11 There is growing attention within Unitarian Universalism to the calls for justice coming from behind prison walls. There are a growing number of UU ministers and congregations getting authentically involved in the work to put an end to the New Jim Crow, a framing popularized by Michelle Alexander. Many congregations across the US are…
Read MoreRelationship First
2013-03-12 “If words come out of the heart, they will enter the heart, but if they come from the tongue, they will not pass beyond the ears.” Al-Suhra Wardi , Persia, 12th Century This morning I listened to the Diane Rehm show on my local NPR station; she interviewed Deborah Hicks who has written a…
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