Daily Compass

Inspiration: 

 

Here and now is all there is. But there is more to here and now than you think.

Do You Believe in God?

Within Unitarian Universalism, you can be, of course, a theist, a pantheist, or a Deist, or you can take any other religious position that pleases your heart and satisfies your mind, including atheism. In A History of God, the author, Karen Armstrong tells us that the statement “I believe in God” has no objective meaning at all, that each generation has to create the image of God that works for it. Unitarian Universalists are unified in that we are our own theologians, and the choice is ours, not once and for all, but throughout our lives.

BY JANE RZEPKA, MINISTER EMERITA, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP  TO READ MORE

Inspiration: 

 

A fish cannot drown in water,
A bird does not fall in air.
In the fire of creation,
God doesn’t vanish:
The fire brightens.
Each creature God made
must live in its own true nature;
How could I resist my nature,
That lives for oneness with God?
― Mechthild of Magdeburg

Oneness

As a Unitarian Univeralist I draw upon the rich tapestry of theology, which helps us to understand our human relationship with divine mystery and collaborative efforts to fortify justice. We never have to settle for the concept of a separate God who operates over and above us. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that all human being are connected to a God through a transcendent OverSoul. The 18th century Universalist evangelist Judith Sargent proclaimed the oneness of divinity with the “spirits of the human race”  20th century Unitarian theologian Henry Nelson Weiman said that God was creativity itself. Universalists and Unitarians have boldly proclaimed that divine powers are within all of creation, including humans. God blesses bountifully and loves every person. Ultimately I don’t know what of this is metaphor, mystery or just well-intentioned guesses about life.  Many people wish to call the divine by the name community, light, nature, joy or spirit of life. They all work for me.

from “Alcoholism,” by Kent M., Philadelphia. TO READ MORE

Inspiration: 

 

We win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.
–Mahatma Gandhi 

Come, Ye Disconsolate

The most influential minister of my childhood and early youth was a Baptist minister from Georgia. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to the brokenness and suffering caused by injustice in society. His words, echoing the messages I heard from the pulpit, named injustice and oppression as evils that had to be transformed—but King went further. He called the oppressor as well as the oppressed to a vision of beloved community, a society of love and justice that all people were responsible for creating.

by Taquiena Boston, Director of Multicultural Growth and Witness for the Unitarian Universalist Association. TO READ MORE

Inspiration: 

Spirit of Life, connecting each to all, help me to remember that my every action affects the Web of Life. 

Repairing the World

Acts of justice, or repairing the world…take place in much smaller, less public, ways. Perhaps today you have composted your kitchen waste or chosen to walk when you were tempted to drive, choosing small ways to protect the web of life. Maybe you pointed out to someone at work or at school that you don’t like to hear people described as “retarded.” It might be that you called your senator about internet censorship or school funding. One way or another, you may have taken some small step that nudged the arc of the moral universe in the direction of justice.

That’s the other thing I would say about justice. It shapes the future. Bringing soup to your sick neighbor is kindness. It’s important, but it’s a thing of the moment. Visiting a friend in the hospital is an entirely worthy act of compassion. But justice tries to shape the world, to make a future in which a few more pieces of our common destiny are healed. Justice, in the end, is the foundation of hope.

By REV. LYNN UNGAR, MINISTER FOR LIFESPAN LEARNING, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP TO READ MORE

Inspiration: 

 

 

How do you choose to bless the world?

Give It All Away! Wisdom of the plants

As I go into the fifth or sixth summer of having turned my yard into flowers, herbs and vegetables, it is imperative that I give stuff away.  If I don’t, if I try to hold onto all of the abundance for myself, the whole thing will die…I go to farmers’ markets, see people paying $5 for rhubarb, $25 for a hanging basket full of morning glories, and though I want farmers to make a good living, still I want to whisper, “I’ll pay you to come to my house and take that same thing!”  I refuse to allow a friend I am there with to buy morning glory plants, my voice so sternly admonishing, you would think she wanted  to eat kittens.  I convince a friend into native foods to try to eat Jerusalem artichokes; I happen to have hundreds. I offer plants to neighbors who walk by and stop to admire, to friends planting gardens at their kids’ schools.  I plant lupines and ferns and hostas in pots from garage sales and sell them myself at a garage sale, to start others on their gardening journeys.

There is so much wisdom, so much life, in what the garden is teaching me about giving it away.

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