Spiritual Themes>Living with Purpose|Quest Article

In 1990, a hundred and thirty American and Canadian Unitarian Universalist congregations formed one-to-one covenantal relationships with the same number of Transylvanian Unitarian churches. Later this Partner Church Program widened to involve close to four hundred churches on both sides of the Atlantic.

Some of my most intense experiences of faith have come at the small window that overlooks a field and a ridge, which I’ve dubbed Freedom Ridge. It is at this prison cell window that I have come face-to-face and, quite literally, nose-to-nose with spiritual teachers that have given me glimpses no human teacher could.

Some years back I read a story in the Indianapolis Star. It was a Sunday paper kind of an article about finding happiness. “The truth is,” says the column, “the real secret to happiness isn’t a secret at all. It’s just not that pleasant a truth. Nor does it rhyme.

What are we doing here? What is our business? The answer is simple: we are in the business of saving souls. You heard me right: what we are about is saving souls.

“I often think of humankind as a long procession whose beginning and end are out of sight. We, the living, are an evolutionary link between all life that has gone before and all that is yet to be…”

The old man must have stopped our car two dozen times to climb out and gather into his hands the small toads blinded by our lights and leaping, live drops of rain.