On this Labor Day, savor the final section of “Images for Our Lives,” the 2003 Berry Street Address by Rev. Dr. Laurel Hallman, Senior Minister at the First Unitarian Church of Dallas, Texas.

Part one can be found here.
Part two can be found here.

“Images for Our Lives”

by Rev. Laurel Hallman, Senior Minister, First Unitarian Church of Dallas, Berry Street Essay, 2003, part 3 of 3

I want to talk about another element of our linguistic crisis: that is the language of yearning. It’s not only that, but let’s start there.

Early in my ministry I began to question why people were coming to see me. The problems and issues they brought into my study were posed in psychological terms. I knew that there were enough therapists in town to cover the needs of my whole congregation. “Why were they coming to me?” I asked. Perhaps, I told myself, it was because I was a minister. They didn’t have the language to speak it, but they had the depth to feel it. They needed spiritual counsel.

(Read on … )

Today we continue with Rev. Dr. Laurel Hallman, Senior Minister at the First Unitarian Church of Dallas, Texas, and her fantastic Berry Street Essay from 2003, “Images for Our Lives.” Part one can be found here.

In this segment, Rev. Hallman references two poems — First Lesson, by Philip Booth, and The Rowing Endeth, by Anne Sexton. Because of copyright issues, the poems are not printed in their entirety in the essay, though links to the full texts are provided.

Come back Monday for the conclusion!

“Images for Our Lives”

by Rev. Laurel Hallman, Senior Minister, First Unitarian Church of Dallas, Berry Street Essay, 2003, part 2 of 3

I recently spoke to our Adult Sunday School Class in Dallas on the topic “Why I am not a Theist”. They packed the room to hear what I had to say, because of course they thought I was. Why did they think I was a Theist? Because I use the word God. Because I pray in the midst of the worship service. I was embarrassed a bit myself, to find that I had failed to make the distinction that the use of metaphors and poetry and scripture has to do with religious imagination, and not with one theological category or another. We had a lively and productive discussion that day, as I spoke, as I am today, about religious language, and how it communicates the depths of experience, and that it isn’t always what it seems.

I remember years ago, when the Principles and Purposes were being formulated in meetings all across our continent, Peter Fleck, of beloved memory, who was on the committee to synthesize those formulations—Peter Fleck said that he had noticed a curious thing. When he asked individual UUs where they stood theologically, he said, “They would juxtapose two seemingly opposite theological categories together. Like Christian-Humanist, or Agnostic-Christian, or Rational-Mystic refusing to align themselves with one distinct theology.” Peter was puzzled by this.

I now think it was the beginning of our attempts to extricate ourselves from the hard theological boundaries within which we had closed ourselves off from one another and from our experience of religious imagination, and deep reality.

(Read on … )

One could say that how we talk about religious and spiritual ideas is the most important part of how Unitarian Universalist churches minister to the needs of our members. The Rev. Dr. Laurel Hallman, Senior Minister at the First Unitarian Church of Dallas, Texas, delivered this essay to the Ministerial Conference at Berry Street in 2003, somewhat in response to the Unitarian Universalist Association President William Sinkford’s call for a greater “language of reverence” in our churches earlier that year.

This essay is quite lengthy, but very, very worth your while. I have broken it into sections — come back Friday for part two! (If you just can’t wait, the full text is linked at the bottom of this post.)

“Images for Our Lives”

by Rev. Dr. Laurel Hallman, Senior Minister, First Unitarian Church of Dallas, Berry Street Essay, 2003, part 1 of 3

I want to dedicate this essay to the memory of two men who died the same week in March. The first is Harry Scholefield, who was my mentor and friend and partner in the work of articulating a spiritual practice for religious liberals. The second, perhaps less known by many of you is Hardy Sanders, a layperson in my congregation in Dallas—a more passionate and devoted and generous UU I have not known. These two losses, and what these men stood for, in the midst of so much we have had to bear this year, have weighed heavily on me as I have prepared this essay.

Each one was devoted to our faith. At the same time, Hardy felt that we were frittering away our message with petty diversions. And Harry felt that we, especially we UU ministers, ‘used’ poems and wisdom literature, without having lived them. In many ways their lives and concerns shape what I have to say today.

(Read on … )

At the end of John’s second year of seminary, we attended the Unitarian Universalist Association’s General Assembly in Fort Worth, Texas. A couple of days before the big event gets started each year, the ministers and many of their partners and spouses gather for “Professional Days.”

That year, the annual Berry Street Address was given by the Rev. Burton Carley, now serving the Church of the River in Memphis, TN. It was nothing short of remarkable:

“The Way Home”

The Rev. Burton D. Carley
The Berry Street Essay, 2005

Delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly
Fort Worth, Texas
June 23, 2005

The desire may begin without understanding what it is exactly that you are longing for. One thing is for sure. The urge is wrapped with a hollow feeling that has all the weight of missing something. You cast about for what it might be that haunts you. A fleeting shadow comes and goes at the corner of the eye. Quickly you turn to capture it without success. After a while you try to dismiss it, rationalize it, ignore it, but the yearning persists.

A story seeps up from the internal depths, breaking the surface between sleep and waking. It is Moses and God in conversation. I never know whether to envy Moses or be among those who were wisely thankful that there was someone either foolish enough or courageous enough to risk being in the presence of such sacred power. In that narrative from the ancient past God warns Moses that no one can look directly upon the divine face and live. Then it occurs to me as if by some revelation that this deep down desire may have a source other than my own making, and that the way there does not take me to a strange, awkward, foreign, and forbidding place. It occurs to me that the way there is the way home, a path out of the hollow up to the hallowed. A sense of place becomes clear and Meister Eckhart whispers in my ear: “God is at home. We are in the far country.”

(Read on … )