Two years ago today, Rev. John Cullinan led this meditation at the Christmas Eve service at Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Oak Park, Illinois, where he served as the ministerial intern. He now serves the Unitarian Church of Los Alamos, New Mexico, where we will happily celebrate Christmas Eve in story and song with family and friends.

Bright blessings on you and yours, and Merry Christmas.

Postings will continue in the New Year, so stay tuned!

Christmas Eve Meditation

by Rev. John A. Cullinan

Put away, for one moment, all the anxiety and obligation of this season.

It is another time, another country– a place shattered by violence, oppression, and poverty. Its people cry out for peace and for love.

On a silent night much like any other night, to a family much like any other family, a child was born who would answer that call.

Tonight, we come together in celebration of that one night. It is a different time, a different country, and yet so much now remains the same. Our world is still touched by violence and fear, still cursed with poverty and oppression.

Tonight, we still cry out for peace and for love.

(Read on … )

Today is the shortest day of the year, the Winter Solstice. Many Unitarian Universalists celebrate this holiday either in conjunction with Christmas or in place of it, and many UU churches hold rituals or services today as well.

Beloved author Susan Cooper, while not a Unitarian Universalist, has written a poem used by many revels programs and in UU churches in celebration of this day.

The Shortest Day

by Susan Cooper

So the shortest day came, and the year died,
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - Listen!!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, fest, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!!

Source: “The Shortest Day” by Susan Cooper

Right about now is when I look up from all of my December busy-ness and try to remember just what it’s all about. Rev. Jane Rzepka, the senior minister of the Church of the Larger Fellowship, comes to my rescue, with this selection printed in the December issue of Quest.

The Mystery of Christmas Past

by Rev. Jane Rzepka

The middle of December. I know what it’s like. I know what goes on. The time has come. You bundle up, start the car and drive in the drizzle over to The Mall. You can’t find a parking place. Finally you spot somebody—a fellow walking to his car—and slowly, you follow him as he wanders around the parking lot, drifting from aisle to aisle, lane to lane, until he finally finds his car, fumbles with his packages and car keys, gets in, smokes a cigarette, and vacates the parking space. Why are you in single-minded pursuit of this space? You need this parking space because 2000 years ago, a baby was born in a stable.

The store is crowded. It’s 30% off, plus the 10% off coupon you hope you really did put in your pocket on your way out the door. You purchase the percolator for your mother-in-law even though as it turns out, the 30% off does not apply to “small appliances” and the coupon wasn’t in your pocket after all. You harvest a number of Christmas presents, a baby doll — “Baby Wiggles and Giggles” to be precise — an electronic dart board, a large bottle of rum, a gingerbread house with M&Ms on it, a chain saw, an oversized tin can of caramel and cheese flavored popcorn, and some gift bags with illustrations of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer on them. Oh. And an inexpensive Grinch wristwatch for yourself, and a red sweater, too, for those parties coming up.

Why are you buying the reindeer bags and the chain saw and the gingerbread house? You spend your money and your time on percolators and popcorn because—well because once upon a time, it is told, a wrinkled little baby was born to a mother named Mary.

(Read on … )

The days grow shorter and shorter, and so a reflection on the Darkness seems appropriate.

Poet Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was raised by Unitarian parents and strongly influenced by Unitarian minister Ralph Waldo Emerson, among other like-minded individuals, and so is often claimed as a Unitarian Universalist. Her poems are used in many modern Unitarian Universalist churches, and this one is particularly apropos at this time of year.

419

by Emily Dickinson

We grow accustomed to the Dark –
When light is put away –
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye –

A Moment — We uncertain step
For newness of the night –
Then — fit our Vision to the Dark –
And meet the Road — erect –

And so of larger — Darkness –
Those Evenings of the Brain –
When not a Moon disclose a sign –
Or Star — come out — within –

The Bravest — grope a little –
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead –
But as they learn to see –

Either the Darkness alters –
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight –
And Life steps almost straight.

Source: Poem 419 by Emily Dickinson, via Google Books, Emily Dickinson, selected poems, pg 57.

On Wednesday, I gave you the the Rev. David Takahashi Morris’s distillation of the Unitarian Universalist Commission on Appraisal’s report published in 2005, “Engaging our Theological Diversity” (very long PDF).

Today, I give you the sermon that he preached in response to his interpretations of the report, which I find gives us a few more pieces in our individual puzzles of how to answer the fundamental question, “What is Unitarian Universalism?” Rev. Takahashi Morris is co-minister at Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church Unitarian Universalist in Charlottesville, Virginia, and preached this sermon on December 5, 2005.

Three D’s and an F: Unitarian Universalist Theology

Rev. David Takahashi Morris

In a community as liberally sprinkled with teachers, scholars, and others connected with education as ours, I know the title of today’s sermon has a certain ominous resonance. There are certainly those who would say that three “d’s” and an “f” make a pretty accurate report card for Unitarian Universalist theology. Critics argue that without a creed or an easily articulated belief statement, we are a religion that offers no solid ground to stand on. And in a troubled time, a religion without solid ground can’t be much of a refuge.

(Read on … )

Why harp on this question, “What is Unitarian Universalism?”

It seems there is no end to materials that explore the idea of Unitarian Universalist identity. As a faith movement of individuals bound in community without adherence to dogma or doctrine, we struggle with limited human language to express just what it is that draws us together. We try to use reason in all things, even when faced with the ineffable, and therefore we strive to explain the unexplainable.

Personally, I am drawn to these discussions because I feel it is vitally important that we as individuals have the tools to reach out beyond our congregations, to bring our “Good News” out into the world to those who would join us. By exploring ideas and language from many sources, it is my sincere hope to provide a variety of these tools to choose from, so that perhaps, when an individual is asked, “What is your church all about?” they can draw upon language that makes sense to them in order to answer coherently.

So, with these things in mind, today we look again at the report from the Unitarian Universalist Commission on Appraisal published in 2005, “Engaging our Theological Diversity” (very long PDF), as distilled into these twelve statements by the Rev. David Takahashi Morris, co-minister at Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church Unitarian Universalist in Charlottesville, Virginia.

For consideration: As a Unitarian Universalist, how do you identify with these statements? Are there any that do not resonate with you, or any that resonate strongly?

Unitarian Universalist Theological Identity

Adapted by Rev. David Takahashi Morris from Engaging Our Theological Diversity, A Report from the Commission on Appraisal of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

Do all diverse Unitarian Universalists stand upon any shared theological ground? Respecting the identity of individual perspective we offer the following statements of who Unitarian Universalists are theologically.

1. We are a grounded faith. We are a faith with roots, however lightly held, that go back two thousand years and more.
2. We are an ecological faith. In the West, the vision of interconnectedness has had an uphill struggle to displace a more hierarchical vision of the nature of the cosmos. We have placed the interdependent web squarely at the center of our shared worldview.

(Read on … )

Dear Readers,

I’ve been working working working under deadline today, so unfortunately I don’t have a post for you. I’ll come up with something fabulous for Wednesday, never fear!

Today’s selection is really a treat. I went looking for Unitarian Universalist perspectives on the events in Pearl Harbor, the attack that happened on this day in 1941, and came across the writings of Rev. John B. Isom (December 2, 1909 - April 23, 2004), who served as an Army chaplain during World War II. He was a Baptist minister, who then underwent a theological crisis and became a Unitarian in 1955. He served churches in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Louisville, Kentucky, Wichita, Kansas, and the First Unitarian Church of Des Moines, Iowa, where he was named an emeritus in 1975.

Rev. Isom was quite a prolific writer, and his children and grandchildren have collected many of his works for the public to read. The excerpt I chose for today is from “As I Remember Me,” Rev. Isom’s memoir, specifically dealing with his theological crisis. His reading of Albert Schweitzer’s The Quest for the Historic Jesus was a major tipping point for him, which he describes here. What strikes me is the pain that is evident in Rev. Isom’s realizations that he can no longer believe what he was raised to believe, and his sense of loss as he comes to these realizations.

I hear echoes of the sermon I posted last Friday, in which the Rev. James Covington states, “No, my friends, you and I are not free to believe anything we choose. You and I believe what we must. The beauty and genius of a faith like ours is that we are not asked to pretend to believe things we do not believe. You and I are not free to choose what we believe, but we are free to stay with our religious community when we grow and when we change our minds.”

For consideration: Have you experienced a crisis of faith? Have you experienced a conversion to Unitarian Universalism, not just from another religion, but perhaps a moment of realization of your commitment to your faith?

From “As I Remember Me”

by Rev. John B. Isom

When I went to Spartanburg, as I have already confessed, I had some serious doubt about some things I was expected to believe and teach as a Baptist minister. I knew then that I had no hard evidence to justify me believing some of the very basic assumptions which were essential to the Christian faith of Baptists and most other Christian believers, such as the Bible being the holy word of a supernatural being called God, who created the heavens and the earth and all life therein; the supernatural events associated around the birth, life and death of Jesus; Heaven and Hell as places for the eternal abode of all human beings. By the time I read “The Quest for the Historic Jesus” I knew I had no evidence for believing such assumptions. All I had left was a very dim hope that such evidence might still be found. After reading “The Quest for the Historic Jesus” that dim hope was no longer possible. There are a number of reasons why that book made me face up to the truth of my disbelief in the basic essentials of the faith as taught in most Christian churches.

(Read on … )

Celebrated German poet Rainer Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926) would have been 132 years old yesterday. While he was not a member of a Unitarian or Universalist church, his words are heard in many of them today.

This particular passage, from Letters to a Young Poet, is particularly inspiring to Unitarian Universalists in context with the Fourth Principle of our Association, “We covenant to affirm and promote a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.”

For consideration: How do you approach your own search for truth and meaning?

from Letters to a Young Poet

by Rainer Maria Rilke

My dear Mr. Kappus: I have left a letter from you unanswered for a long time; not because I had forgotten it — on the contrary: it is the kind that one reads again when one finds it among other letters, and I recognize you in it as if you were very near. It is your letter of May second, and I am sure you remember it. As I read it now, in the great silence of these distances, I am touched by your beautiful anxiety about life, even more than I was in Paris, where everything echoes and fades away differently because of the excessive noise that makes Things tremble. Here, where I am surrounded by an enormous landscape, which the winds move across as they come from the seas, here I feel that there is no one anywhere who can answer for you those questions and feelings which, in their depths, have a life of their own; for even the most articulate people are unable to help, since what words point to is so very delicate, is almost unsayable. But even so, I think that you will not have to remain without a solution if you trust in Things that are like the ones my eyes are now resting upon. If you trust in Nature, in the small Things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge. You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within you the possibility of creating and forming, as an especially blessed and pure way of living; train your for that - but take whatever comes, with great trust, and as long as it comes out of your will, out of some need of your innermost self, then take it upon yourself, and don’t hate anything.

Source: from Letter 4 of Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926).

Every person on this earth has once, at least, been a stranger. In church communities, it can be difficult to figure out just what visitors, strangers at first, need on their first encounter with a new congregation. There are countless books, seminars, websites, commentary, etc on how to welcome the stranger, on how to change one’s thinking to better accomodate new faces.

But sometimes, what matters is a little, seemingly insignificant thing. Like a cup of coffee and a smile. Rev. Erika Hewitt, serving the Live Oak Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Goleta, California, preached on this very subject a few weeks back.

For consideration: What do you expect from the first time you walk in to a church community? What steps does your congregation take to welcome visitors, and are they effective? How does your faith call you to practice hospitality?

Hospitality: Not Just a Cup of Coffee

by the Rev. Erika Hewitt

The Universe tested me a few weeks ago.

I didn’t know that the Universe was testing me until it was all over – it’s not like a man in an “Official of the Universe” uniform approached me with a clipboard and a number 2 pencil.

It’s just that I found myself – in that mysterious, wily way that we all find ourselves, from time to time – at the butt of a giant but gentle joke that no one but God herself could have orchestrated. And by “God,” I don’t mean that man-with-a-clipboard-in-the-sky; I mean the wise, twinkly-eyed Auntie who chuckles us into good spirits and knows how to bonk us over the head in the most loving, nurturing ways when we need it most. That’s the God who set up this test, I’m pretty sure, the subject of which was hospitality, and which I passed, I’m absolutely sure, but not with flying colors.

If the Universe is keeping track on a clipboard somewhere, I think I probably earned a B+ on the test. But I’d like you to be the judge, and give me a grade yourself.

(Read on … )