Inspiration:

 

Do something foolish today. Then think about how habitually giving yourself permission to be foolish might change you.

April Fools Day Jokes and Pranks

 

The Story of Uncle Ben

Dear Dr. Science,
What was Uncle Ben’s rice before it was converted?
from Marlene of Zionsville, IN

Uncle Ben was one of the first Unitarians, a dogma-free religion that pretty much lets you believe whatever you want, and will defend your right to believe it. Before he adopted this remarkably even-handed approach to matters of faith, Uncle Ben was an elder in the Church of the Practically Insane, a mind-control cult that ran a string of Nudist camps in Northern Arkansas and Southern Missouri. The rice connection came from a bet he once made with an agnostic. Uncle Ben claimed he was such a good preacher that he could even convert rice. His attempts to convert a bowl of white basmati rice caused the personal epiphany that led Uncle Ben to abandon his current belief system and embrace the relative tolerance of Unitarianism.

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Happy April Fool’s Day from the Church of the Larger Fellowship!

Join us at 7 pm ET tonight for our service of Reflection & Connection: http://www.livestream.com/questformeaning

Inspiration:

 

After the wind storm
A tree has crashed on the path.
Just the place to sit.

–Lynn Ungar

Multi-Racial Families

Most people who talk about multiracial families talk about the beauty and joy of loving across difference. And there is plenty of beauty and joy. But there is pain too. In my family, there is the pain of hearing my twenty-year-old son say, “You can never understand how it is,” and being unable to deny that what he says is true. I will never know what he faces as a young black man in this still painfully racist culture. My white privilege has allowed me a lifetime of naiveté, keeping me blissfully unaware of the effects of racism on the soul: addiction, incarceration, violence, and despair. I never imagined my beautiful son would struggle with every one of them. My eyes and heart have been broken open and while that has given me room to grow, it has also been very painful.

In that struggle, I’ve had to search my heart and my faith tradition for strength, and I’ve been blessed to find it. Our commitment to diversity and justice is real and it matters, both in individual lives and in building a better world. That comforts and inspires me. But I’ve been surprised to find that what comforts me more is the messy and very human way we’ve had to learn about what it means to put our vision into practice. For every amazing, proud moment of justice-making, there have been assumptions and false starts, mistakes and missteps on the journey. Our best moments have often been when we’ve listened and learned and taken the time to make amends and a new beginning—picking up pieces and using them to build something new and beautiful.

In my family and in my spiritual community, I need to know that my imperfect efforts will be accepted and even blessed. That my heart—as many times as it has been broken and mended and broken again—is good enough and strong enough, even if the cracks sometimes show.

 

Inspiration:

 

Today you will lose something, but also gain something. This will happen tomorrow as well. 

 

 

 

 

 

Missing God

“I can’t believe what I was taught to believe,” said the woman facing me. “I’ve just read too much. I know that stories in the Bible were drawn from other cultures and myths, and reason and my experience have taught me different things. So I can’t believe what I used to believe.” She paused, and looked at me sadly. “It’s just … there’s something in me … I …” She looked at me, a bit sheepish, a bit sad.

“You miss God?” I asked. She nodded.

I understood.

I’d gone through my own stripping-away, discarding things that no longer made sense, setting aside immature, not well-examined beliefs. But out in nature, or at the end of the day, when I used to “talk to God,” I missed what I used to have. A connection, or a conversation, with … what?

A wise friend, sensing where I was, sent me a quote by John Shelby Spong:

I do not experience God as a supernatural power, external to life invading my world in supernatural power. I see no evidence to think this definition is real. The problem is that most people have so deeply identified this definition of God with God that when this definition dies the victim of expanded knowledge, we think that God has died.

So … even though my previous understanding of God no longer held value, might I find another understanding, with new value to me? I embarked on a journey, one which I am still on. I’ve explored panentheism, process theology, and world religions. Some things I keep, some I discard. All help me to expand my view of “God,” and connect with the transcending mystery.

For you, perhaps you’ll decide that “God,” as a word, holds no value for you. That’s fine. As many have pointed out, “God” is not God’s name.

But for those of us missing God, the journey to find a definition that fits our experience can take us to places of insight and reward; places where we feel we can embrace both reason and Spirit.

 

Inspiration:

 

I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.
–William Stafford 

 

 

Brokenness and Origin
 Rev. Meg Riley

“I think we would have been out there, climbing that tree, if we’d been in the garden.”

 

Inspiration:

 

 

Spirit of Healing, today help me to recognize and encourage some pocket of health.

 

 

 

 

How Does Our Faith Hold Brokenness?

I have come to believe about human beings that we require food, water, shelter, air, and stories. Something in us needs to speak and to be heard, to forgive and be forgiven, to sing and hear music, to speak our truth and listen for the truths of others. Part of our vocation as human beings, and as religious human beings, is to aid and abet the transmission of beauty and truth.

My husband will say on those occasions when the weight of the world is closing in and the evidence against hope mounts as I read the news, when I start confusing cynicism with pragmatism, and I sigh, “I’m so tired, I’m so discouraged”—he’ll say, in the kindest way: “What kind of entitled grandiosity of privilege is this, to think that you or I or anyone has the right to sever the bright thread of hope, the tradition of dedication to the common good and faith in the people’s power to imagine great change and great risks and then take them; the beautiful, proud history of work for human rights and freedom? We’re only here to pass it on,” he’ll say. “All you have to do is keep the fire burning for a little while, and pass it on. You have no right to put it out.” Not in so many words, but that’s about what Ross will say.

It’s what we say every Sunday. The sacrament of celebration involves memory, as much as it involves forward-looking hope. The church can hold evil and injustice only if it holds the story of resistance, too. It’s not the mourning, but the dancing, that will move our people out of the sanctuary and into the street, into the statehouse, where the life of prayer is embodied.

by Victoria Safford, senior minister of the White Bear Unitarian Universalist Church in Mahtomedi, Minnesota.TO READ MORE