Thoreau said “Every time something is gained, something is lost.” When it comes to growing old, it’s easy to see what is lost but sometimes hard to realize what is gained: a meditation on the good, the bad and the fabulous. Joan Shiels is an old friend and frequent speaker at our Fellowship. She has […]
FAMILY THANKSGIVING BREAD SERVICE Gary Synder, a Buddhist practitioner and writer who grew up in a Christian home, wrote an essay entitled “Grace”, meaning the words you speak before a meal; he said that “…grace is the first and last poem, the few words we say to clear our hearts, and teach the children, and […]
In a deep and profound sense, trouble and problems are the very best thing that could happen to us. It is rare in my experience to have anyone give thanks for their trouble at the time it is happening. Most of us have been conditioned to move toward being freed of all our distresses and our troubles and ills. […]
The religious imagination is a wonderful companion for daily living. Imagine my shock when I had a startling twinned Buddha-encounter at 10,700 feet in China – and such insights sort of keep on happening. I can hardly believe it myself. Cynthia Johnson, a retired Unitarian Universalist minister who served UU congregations in Texas and Oklahoma, joined […]
“I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is that they must change if they are to get better.” – Georg C. Lichtenberg Research shows that civility, if embraced by one person, and then another, and then a few more, can suddenly and profoundly impact the community in […]
Rev. Phil Sweet & Friends (Angela Lensch, Bob Bultman, Keith Koch, David Smirz) While traveling in India, Joseph Campbell met with Sri Krishna Menon, a renowned Hindu teacher. Menon asked him if he had a question. Indeed Campbell did. “Since in Hindu thinking all is Brahman, all is a product of divine energy, no matter how […]
Shame can often mold and shape us. If can make us believe things that are not true about ourselves. If we keep our shame hidden and in the dark it will always have power over us. But what if we dragged our shame out into the light? What if we chose not to let it […]
Upon seeing this title some of you may be thinking, “Are you putting us on? This is 2015 and we are a UU Fellowship, not a monastery or convent. You can’t be serious…are you?” I am serious. Maybe, just maybe, we might be both surprised and reminded of a few worthwhile thoughts and practices. Dick […]
Some describe paradise as being idyllic and someplace else – whether left behind in the myths of our origins or awaiting us in stories of an afterlife. Inspired by Henry David Thoreau’s death bed words — “One world at a time!” — we will look for the glimpses of paradise to be found in the […]
There are five primary responses to conflict. All of us use all five of them in different contexts and for different reasons. Our politicians, however, use a particular response to conflict as their dominant response to disagreements, in political campaigns, and during legislative debates. It is this response, which they use so ubiquitously and so […]