love
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Wounds Into Wisdom
Beloveds, today we turn toward a tender mystery: Why do we sometimes carry fears, reactions, and emotional patterns that we cannot fully explain? Why do some of us startle at joy, as if joy were something dangerous? Why do some of us feel the need to stay vigilant even when life is going well? Why…
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A boy and his father were walking along a road when they came across a large stone. The boy said to his father, “Do you think if I use all my strength, I can move this rock?” His father answered, “If you use all your strength, I am sure you can do it.” The boy…
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Transcendentalism, Part 1: Introduction
It was the Persian mystic and poet Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī who said, in the 13th century, “The task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” These words are at once hopeful and sobering. Love is a human potential.…
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There aren’t many people about whom it can be said that they transformed the very nature of their profession. That, before they arrived on the scene, it was one way, but when they left, it was something else entirely. But you can say it about Muhammad Ali. This was a man who, besides being the…
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Theology Outside the Box
Summers when I was a teenager, I used to teach Vacation Bible School at the Church of Christ in Palestine, Texas. We used popsicle sticks to create little Noah’s Arks. We played Pin-the-Animal-to-the-Ark. We ate a snack of animal crackers. It was a blast. It might not have looked like it, but we were doing…
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In her poem entitled “Prayer,” Daisy Rhau tells a story about her father when he was only ten years old, his life threatened during warfare in Korea, 1944. He was fleeing enemy soldiers with the rest of his family, hiding behind a burial vault in an ancient cemetery, waiting for the signal to run to…
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“On this day that honors Mothers,’ says the Rev. Victoria Weinstein, “let us honor all mothers, men and women alike, who from somewhere in their being have freely and wholeheartedly given life, and sustenance, and vision to us.” And with this, we begin our journey of exploring motherhood, but from a distinctively artistic standpoint. The…
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“The Unitarian Universalist Association will actively engage its members in the transformation of the world through liberating Love.” This statement right here is a first for us as a faith tradition. In all the years of our existence since Unitarianism and Universalism came together in 1961 to become Unitarian Universalism, none of our official denominational…
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“The morning wind forever blows,” says our Unitarian Universalist ancestor Henry David Thoreau in his classic book, Walden. “The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it.” Thoreau is essentially saying we are already wealthy but that this wealth goes unrecognized. A big part of…
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What Does It Really Mean to Love Yourself? (All About Love, Part 3)
Here is bell hooks, author of All About Love, the book we are exploring in this year’s year-long sermon series. Love is our focus all year long. Different aspects of love. Today, we look at the aspect known as self-love. And as bell hooks, says, “When I talked with friends and acquaintances about self-love, I…
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