Today’s selection ties the ideas from Monday and Wednesday neatly together. Why, in a Unitarian Universalist setting, where people believe in “at most, one god,” is prayer an important part of so many congregations’ liturgy?

What is prayer if it is not talking to a god?

Rev. John Cullinan explored these very questions in this sermon, “Prayer,” preached at the Unitarian Church of Los Alamos, New Mexico this November 4th.

For consideration: Do you pray? Why or why not? Do you think prayer has a place in your congregation’s worship life? Why or why not?

Prayer

by Rev. John Cullinan

I.

I have had a rocky relationship with prayer. Even in my early life as a Roman Catholic, prayer was never a large part of my routine, outside of Sunday Mass. When I put aside the church in my early adulthood, I put aside all thought of prayer as well. And when I returned to the church through the doors of Unitarian Universalism, I returned to a congregation that did not, as a rule, pray. I assumed it was not a UU practice, and at the time, I didn’t feel as though I was missing anything.

My reconnection with prayer began during my time as a hospital chaplain. Prayer is, more often than not, the stock in trade of the chaplain. I assumed I was going to have deep theological conversations with the sick and the dying. I can’t begin to tell you why I assumed that. To say it was a false assumption is being kind.

No, what most folks wanted in the hospital, patients and families alike, was prayer. And I was going to have to find a way to be with them in they way they needed me. I didn’t trust myself to do it “right” in those days. I didn’t feel as though I had an authentic Unitarian Universalist vocabulary for prayer, and I was fearful of winging it. And, since most of the patients in the hospital were Catholic, it seemed logical to fall back on the familiar words of my past.

(Read on … )

At first glance, this speech by Rod Serling (December 25, 1924–June 28, 1975), the television writer who brought The Twilight Zone into the world, is pure politics. But, if you read to the end, you’ll find a message of hope and truth that echoes, I think, far into the future.

Rod was a Unitarian Universalist, having converted from his childhood Judaism upon marrying Carol Kramer, a Protestant. The couple were active members of the Unitarian Community Church of Santa Monica, California, and Rod often spoke on behalf of the newly formed Unitarian Universalist Association. This speech, in 1968 at Moorpark College, took place in the height of the Vietnam War, a time when the echoes of Senator Joseph McCarthy still rang. At that time, it was not unusual for organizations to require speakers to sign oaths of loyalty to the United States, something Rod adamantly opposed, and refused to comply with:

Speech by Rod Serling

delivered December 3, 1968 at Moorpark College, Moorpark, California

There seem to have arisen some complications relevant to my appearance here this evening that should be clarified before I begin. Plainly and simply. I refused to sign a loyalty oath which was submitted to me as a prerequisite both for my appearance and my pay. I gather that your local newspaper and some of its readers read dire and menacing implications in this refusal of mine, and I broach the whole thing only by way of a kind of personal disclaimer.

Number one, I have no interest in overthrowing the government of the United States and number two, to the best of my knowledge I have not or am not now a member of a subversive organization whose aims are similar. I know there are many of you out there who’ve put me in a genetic classification of someplace between a misanthropic kook and an ungracious dope. Actually, I’m neither. I did not sign the loyalty oath and I waived my normal speaking fee, only because of a principle. I think a requirement that a man affix his signature to a document, reaffirming loyalty, in on one hand ludicrous—and on the other demeaning.

(Read on … )

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

The Good News of Unitarian Universalism is too often unshared. This archive seeks to highlight the very best of this religious faith, by collecting inspiring, challenging writings of the Good News of Unitarian Universalism from ministers and lay people of all walks of life.

To start, I will post materials three times a week, with the first on Friday, June 1, 2007.

Submissions and suggestions for resources are highly encouraged! Please use the contact form or the comments to respond to what you read here, and to add to it. I’m only one person and can’t read the whole internet by myself.

And so it begins.

From Rev. Lawrence McGinty come these opening words:

To this house we come bringing our boldest dreams — seeking here the inspiration and strength to make them be! To this house we come hoping to bury broken dreams, to be sustained through their pain and to discover new ones amidst their tears. We come here lonely, isolated from meaningful human contact, searching for warmth and closeness and care. Needing to grow beyond plateaus of the commonplace, we seek here challenges and commitments productive of greater wholeness and deeper meanings.

We come intense and constructed, hoping for encouragement to shed our pretenses and to be ourselves. Filled with despair and self-doubt, we seek affirmations prodding us to say “yes” to ourselves and to life. Somehow, always putting happiness ahead of ourselves, we enter this place trusting that what happens here will enable us to make and to accept a little bit of it now — today!

Strange place, this house — here we cry, sing, laugh, hurt, dance, touch, survive, celebrate, grow, search, doubt, hope, rejoice, pray, trust, care, learn, think, wonder, be, become! Yes, this morning, to this house we come.

Source: UUA.org “WorshipWeb,” by Rev. Lawrence McGinty, most recently of All Souls Unitarian Church of Indianapolis, IN, before his death in 1996.