Throughout our lives people come to us in distress, saying they need someone to talk to about a difficult issue. We want to be helpful, but few of us know how to listen in a way that truly helps. We struggle for the right thing to say. But the truth is that most often it is usually […]
Rev. Shiels asks, “Are you funny looking? Even a little bit? How about someone you love? Can you imagine what it’s like to live with a disability or a disfigurement? Has anyone ever made you understand their experience?” National Disability Month (October) may be a good time to try to see a “dis-abled” person as […]
Angels I Have Known with Rev. Joan Shiels Rev. Joan Shiels has dedicated most of her life to the search for God. She has always found it a great adventure. An educated theologian and an accomplished storyteller, she has been bringing her messages to UUFDC for over 20 years.
The God of Your Understanding Part II with Rev. Joan Shiels I used to have this really great dog. She came from the pound. She was a mixture of about ten different breeds, but seemed to have inherited the finest features of them all. She was brown. When people asked me, “What kind of dog is that?” […]
The God of Your Understanding Part I with Rev. Joan Shiels Many Christians were offered a vision of God as children and young people that did not satisfy them as adults. As a result, some people abandoned God altogether. Others found a mature vision of God which is, as it turns out, is quite different […]
How We Survive the Bad Stuff with Rev. Joan Shiels About the Message: Some people survive conditions of horrendous physical extremes — lost at sea for six months, fallen into a deep crevasse on Mt. Everest, seriously injured deep in the Amazon jungle — while others do not. We live in a culture that’s always […]
This is a short, miscellaneous collection of things Joan thought everybody knew. She recently learned that not everybody does not know them–she but thinks they should. Included in this miscellaneous collection; How to Solve a Problem and How We Die. Rev. Joan Shiels has been bringing messages to the UUFDC for 16 years. The focus […]
Because no one has seen God, religion can only use metaphors to try to describe what God is like. Buddhists. Christians. Muslims. Sikhs. Confucians. Taoists. Hindus. They all employ metaphors. They say, “Look at THAT and you can understand God is.” But some people have never been offered a metaphor that makes sense to them, […]
Along with Judaism, Hinduism is the world’s most ancient wisdom tradition. And it is exceedingly wise. Hindu theology offers a non-Christian trinity, a more useful list of “commandments” and understands that God always enters a person’s life through a private door. Huston Smith, the great religious scholar, wrote, “I was perfectly content with Christianity until […]
Ask any ten people “What is an angel?” and you will usually get ten different answers. Joan intends to tell us about angels she has known personally. And some other stuff. Rev. Joan Shiels has a Masters Degree in Religion, another in Theology and another in Divinity. Besides all that, she’s really interested in religion […]