Month: June 2012

Inspiration: 

 

Imagine that your consciousness is an empty bowl. Into that bowl place every thing of beauty that you love – music, art, poetry, nature, the images of those you love, until the bowl overflows with beauty.

The Great Fullness

It’s nice to set aside a few minutes each day to do nothing but practice gratitude. In the morning, I have embraced lighting the flaming chalice, Unitarian Universalism’s centering symbol, as my time of intentional strengthening of the gratitude muscle.

Before I light it, I sit with the great fullness of the chalice itself, empty though it may appear. I call to mind all that surrounds and supports me: ancestors, spiritual leaders, beautiful sights, people and animals and plants, and I sit with the great fullness of all there is. The members of CLF are central in this great fullness practice, both the folks I have spoken with and the ones I have yet to meet personally.

Once I am full of all of the gifts of life, I light the chalice flame, a symbol of thanksgiving. Flame offers light and warmth, without qualification, to all. “Be ours a religion which, like sunshine, goes everywhere,” wrote Theodore Parker, a prominent Unitarian preacher in the 1800s. And there is the flame, happy to offer itself, like sunshine, without limitation or holding back, to all who seek light or warmth.

By Rev Meg Riley, Senior Minister, Church of the Larger Fellowship TO READ MORE

Inspiration: 

 

What feels like being crushed could be the process which separates the gold from the ore.

The Engaged Soul

Do this for today…and maybe for tomorrow:
As you move about in the world…notice
your assumptions…notice where you need to pause and breathe deeply.
Notice where you need to
pay attention

But more than that: ask someone –
“What have you seen or noticed today that astonished you?”
And then, open your heart and listen.

By Rev Alicia Roxanne Forde, Unitarian Universalist Association Program Coordinator, Multicultural Growth & Witness. TO READ MORE

Inspiration: 

Dream Song of Thunders:
Sometimes
I go about pitying
Myself,
While I am carried by the wind
Across the sky.
― Frances Densmore

Season of Mud

The season of mud begins with thunder and announces change; it is the season of transition. Transitions are times when the thick skin of habit that protected us surrenders to the possibilities of growth and renewal. The inner thawing renders us sensitive and vulnerable to the unpredictable, until we emerge comfortably into new ways of being. We aren’t sure who we are or where we will end up.

In the midst of the mud and muddle of all transitions, the seeds of promise stir quietly beneath the surface like spring bulbs drinking the snow.

by Rev. Sarah York, TO READ MORE

Inspiration: 

“In the point of rest at the center of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each [person] a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses.”

― Dag Hammarskjöld

A Case for Religion

Religion is about connection. It is about community. It is about accountability. Religion is about having people to share your spiritual experiences with.

Religion is not necessarily about dogma. My chosen faith, Unitarian Universalism, is a creedless religion. We believe it’s more important for people to be in community with one another than to agree—even about the big things like God or death or salvation.

We learn from one another. We challenge one another. We support one another. Sometimes, we even irritate one another, and our response to that irritation teaches us how to live in the world with people we don’t necessarily like.

But we wouldn’t have any of these things—the good, the bad, the uplifting, the challenging—if we chose the path of individual spirituality.

by Rev. Michael Tino, minister of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Northern Westchester in Mount Kisco, New York. TO READ MORE

Inspiration: 

 

Spirit flowing through all things, may I find ways to move with that flow.

Love First

What we need is a revolution in our values, a revolution that turns our attention more reverently and responsibly to the interdependent, relational character of life. What we need is a spiritual and practical revolution that embodies love for neighbor and for the world through sustaining structures of care and responsibility….We need to love from the start—not as an emergency strategy when everything has gone wrong.

by Rebecca Parker, president of Starr King School for the Ministry TO READ MORE