Dear Readers,

My plate is too full and my cup runneth over — therefore this blog will be on hiatus for awhile while I figure out my schedule and list of things to do. Please browse the archives for all kinds of good things to read — the Tag Cloud page is a good place to start.

Thank you for your patience!

As I am traveling today, I encourage you to peruse the archives of this site. Here are some of my favorite selections tagged “connection:”

• “from outsider to belonging at the table. . .”
• “we have to go down into the wave’s trough. . .”
• “Everyone saw one another’s real faces that morning. . .”
• “A path out of the hollow up to the hallowed”
• “the circles of love radiate out. . .”

Enjoy!

Beginning Thursday, I will highlight writers who will be presenting at General Assembly, which starts next week in Fort Lauderdale, FL. Stay tuned!

Dear readers,

I do apologize for not preloading a post for this morning, as I am currently on a train somewhere in Kansas and using a borrowed Blackberry. Do check back later and I should have something wonderful for you to read!

Best of UU will now publish substantive materials on Tuesdays and Thursdays, as I’m finding it difficult to keep up with the necessary research involved in finding good stuff to post three times per week.

I will also post smaller tidbits on an irregular schedule as I find them.

Feedback is always welcome both for submissions and ways to make the site better. Please comment here or use the contact form in the side bar.

Thank you for reading!

I don’t have a reading for you this morning, but rather a series of questions.

This site’s readership is between 30-50 pageloads per post, not counting random Google searches. So, I’m at the point where I need some help.

What do you want to see here?

What is working, and what isn’t?

Am I choosing things that are too long, too short, just right?

What kinds of themes are you interested in?

Are there subjects that are not adequately represented?

Am I spending too much time on certain things?

Does the Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule work, or should I go to Tuesday-Thursday?

Any specific suggestions on authors I should be looking at?

The more constructive comments you all can provide, the better I can make the site. Please speak up.

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!

Dear readers, this site is undergoing a MASSIVE spam attack and I am busy behind the scenes trying to get it under control. Stay tuned for today’s posting.

UPDATE:

This took forever! During my upgrade and trying out new anti-spam tools, I got an additional fourteen thousand spam comments.

So, you’ll notice a new image-verification requirement when posting comments, which will hopefully cut down on the problem. If you posted a comment that has not appeared on the site, please send me a note through the Submissions and Contact page and I will do my best to restore it.

Back to regular posting on Friday.

Dear Readers,

I apologize for not having a regularly scheduled post up for you this morning. Due to the untimely illness and death of my cat, Hobbes, and my impending move to New Mexico, things are pretty crazy around here!

So, Best of UU is going on hiatus for the next three weeks as my family gets this move out of Chicago over with. Look for a new post on Monday, August 13th.

Until then, here are words from singer-songwriter Patty Griffin, from her new CD Children Running Through. You can listen to the song and an interview from NPR here.

I’m not sure if Patty is a Unitarian Universalist, but her songs resonate with many of us (I look forward to singing this one in church someday!).

Enjoy.

Heavenly Day

by Patty Griffin, from Children Running Through

Oh heavenly day, all the clouds blew away
Got no trouble today with anyone
The smile on your face I live only to see
It’s enough for me, baby, it’s enough for me
Oh, heavenly day, heavenly day, heavenly day

Tomorrow may rain with sorrow
Here’s a little time we can borrow
Forget all our troubles in these moments so few
All we’ve got right now, the only thing that
All we really have to do
Is have ourselves a heavenly day

Lay here and watch the trees sway
Oh, can’t see no other way, no way, no way
Heavenly day, heavenly day, heavenly day

No one at my shoulder bringing me fears
Got no clouds up above me bringing me tears
Got nothing to tell you, I’ve got nothing much to say
Only I’m glad to be here with you
On this heavenly, heavenly, heavenly, heavenly
Heavenly day, all the trouble’s gone away
Oh, for a while anyway, for a while anyway
Heavenly day, heavenly day, heavenly day

Source: Singer-songwriter Patty Griffin, from Children Running Through

Thanks to AnnaBelle’s helpful suggestion, I have activated an email subscription service for Best of UU through Feedburner. Regular posts to the site will be Monday-Wednesday-Friday, with occasional announcements like this one, so it won’t clutter up your inbox too badly.

There’s a link in the sidebar, or you can click here to sign up. Enjoy!

Over on the Resources page, I have assembled a bunch of links to web sites that might be interesting to people reading this archive. It’s obviously not an exhaustive list, so I need your help.

I’d like to keep the links somewhat general in nature - you’ll notice that I haven’t linked to any specific blogs, for example, but rather to places people can find blogs they might enjoy reading.

What is missing? Should I have a Religious Education section? Any suggestions on what to put there?

Please do contribute your thoughts to this process if you can.

From the Reverend Adam Tierney-Eliot:

We need to come together to be what we dream.

. . .

We come here to make sense of the world. This is where we come when we are in grief or in shock, when we are confused and lost. It is where we share our victories and recover from our defeats. It is an avenue for reaching out to the world and looking within ourselves. Ultimately, that is what church is. It is a place that challenges and heals and should do so with all the fullness and grace that its component souls can provide.

An abundant church should think in terms of abundance and of possibility. We should try to embody our goals of inclusion and our dreams. We dream for ourselves, for our children and for those people in the near and distant future who will be proud to say that “This is my Church.”

from “The Abundant Church,” sermon given April 29, 2007 at the Eliot Church in Natick, MA