People come in to Unitarian Universalism for many reasons, and sometimes for nothing more than basic human companionship. What one person finds within our communities may be completely different than another, and our reasons for staying are just as varied.

The Rev. Suzanne Meyer, who serves the First Unitarian Church of St. Louis, Missouri, shares wisdom from an unexpected source in this sermon from 2003:

We Are All About Saving Souls

by the Rev. Suzanne Meyer

They say confession is good for the soul, and since I am talking about souls this morning, I’ll make a confession. Those cheap, paperback murder mystery novels are my guilty pleasure. I buy and read tons of them and know the names of all the authors. So one day when I was prowling around Border’s bookstore in the religion section, scanning the shelves in search of sermon fodder, I noticed a new book by a familiar author, a woman who calls herself Nevada Barr. She is the author of one series of those paperback mysteries to which I am addicted. What was that book doing over here in the religion section? I just assumed that another customer who shares my book browsing and buying habits had picked the book up in the mystery section, had walked over to peruse the religion section, and had absent-mindedly set the book down and forgotten it. So I picked up what I thought was another one of those murder mysteries with the intention of glancing at it and either buying it or returning it to its proper shelf.

The title of the book was Seeking Enlightenment . . . Hat by Hat. Odd title for a mystery, I thought. I turned to the table of contents, and much to my surprise, I discovered it had not been misshelved, after all. In fact, it is a book about the author’s search for spirituality. Oh, dear, I thought, not another one of those “I’ve found it” books. A mystery writer finds God, gets saved, turns her life around, becomes an evangelist . . . Nevada Barr, you disappointment me!

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Today I bring you writings from one of American Unitarianism’s patron saints, A. Powell Davies. Rev. Davies is probably best known for the cluster of churches in the Washington, D.C. area founded during his ministry at All Soul’s Church from 1944 until his untimely death in 1957.

From a biography by Manish Mishra in the Dictionary of Unitarian Universalist Biography:

Davies was a dynamic and prophetic preacher, claimed by many to be one of the finest orators of his day. He used his pulpit to remind people of the primary human calling: the cultivation and development of character and action. As Davies eloquently captured it, “life is just the chance to grow a soul.” With the skill of a poet, Davies probed and illuminated the human desire for connection and meaning. “There is no mystery greater than our own mystery,” he preached. “We are, to ourselves, unknown. And yet we do know. The thought we cannot quite think is nevertheless somehow a thought, and it lives in us without our being able to think it. We are a mystery, but we are a living mystery.”

According to Davies, spiritual life is the core of religion. “In the mind’s dimness a light will shine; in the spirit’s stillness it will be as though a voice had spoken; the heart that was lonely will know who it was it yearned for, and the life of the soul will be one with the life that is God.” God is a living spiritual reality encompassing the totality of the spirits of all beings. “God is what the soul ‘breathes’ as the body breathes air.” He sought God in the pursuit of religion, not its establishment. “For there is a God who never dies, the one and only living God whose face is ever set towards tomorrow.”

Read here a sermon called, “What to Do with Gloom,” given at All Soul’s Church on May 4, 1947, and archived by the Davies Memorial Unitarian Universalist Church.

(As with many documents from this time, you may find it necessary to substitute gender inclusive language in your reading.)

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The Reverend Dr. Tim Jensen, newly called to First Parish Unitarian Universalist in Portland, Maine, writes:

Out of the Mouths of Babes

by Rev. Dr. Tim Jensen

“It’s a blessing we were born,
and it matters what we do,
What we know about god
is a piece of the truth,
Let the beauty we love
be what we do,
And we don’t have to do it alone.”

These are the lyrics to a song written for “Chalice Camp,” a Unitarian Universalist summer day camp created by Laila Ibrahim and the Reverend Sheri Prud’homme for six to twelve year-olds in California’s Pacific Central District. I learned about Chalice Camp from Jory Agate at our last Mass Bay District UUMA meeting, and was delighted by how well these simple words written for children expressed the lessons I’ve been trying to teach to grown-ups for the last quarter-century.

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