April is National Poetry Month, and so I will devote the rest of this month’s postings to poetry that is either written by Unitarian Universalists or that expresses ideas one might find in our worship services and spiritual discussions.

This is probably my favorite poem ever, written by Wendell Berry. I first heard it in a Unitarian Universalist worship service all about poetry.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

(Read on … )

The Rev. A. Powell Davies (June 5, 1902-September 26, 1957) was remarkable in the way he could say and write deeply profound ideas in just a few, well-chosen words. This short piece is from the collection of his writings edited by Rev. Dr. Forrest Church, Without Apology: Collected Meditations on Liberal Religion by A. Powell Davies. In it, an affirmation, and a challenge.

Is This Your Religion?

by Rev. A. Powell Davies (June 5, 1902-September 26, 1957)

We are the consummation of thousands of years of religious history. We are thousands of years that have stripped off superstition and battled with tyranny; thousands of years that struggled to take fear out of religion–to take it right out of human life; thousands of years that have marched, sometimes joyfully, sometimes in agony, toward spiritual emancipation. We are indeed the consummation of something.

Yet in this world of blood and sorrow it is scarcely important, hardly worth mentioning, unless in addition we are the beginning of something, unless our religion is new–the religion that has always been new in every prophet who died rather than forsake it; the religion that has been buried over and over again in creeds and rituals and sacred sepulchers and yet has always come to life; the religion that today is new all over the earth, stammering itself into utterance in every language known to humankind.

The religion that says freedom!–freedom from ignorance and false belief; freedom from spurious claims and bitter prejudices; freedom to seek the truth, both old and new, and freedom to follow it, freedom from the hates and greeds that divide humankind and spill the blood of every generation; freedom for honest thought, freedom for equal justice, freedom to seek the true, the good and the beautiful with minds unimpaired by cramping dogmas and spirits uncrippled by abject dependence. The religion that says humankind is not divided–except by ignorance and prejudice and hate; the religion that sees humankind as naturally one and waiting to be spiritually united; the religion that proclaims an end to all exclusions–and declares a brother-and sisterhood unbounded! The religion that knows that we shall never find the fullness of the wonder and the glory of life untl we are ready to share it, that we shall never have hearts big enough for the love God until we have made them big enough for the worldwide love of one another.

As you have listened to me, have you though perchance that this is your religion? If you have, do not congratulate yourself. Stop long enough to recollect the miseries of the world you live in: the fearful cruelties, the enmities, the hate, the bitter prejudices, the need of such a world for such a faith. And if you still can say that this of which I have spoken is your religion, then ask yourself this question: What are you doing with it?

Source: “Is This Your Religion?” by Rev. A. Powell Davies, as presented in Without Apology: Collected Meditations on Liberal Religion by A. Powell Davies, Edited By Rev. Dr. Forrest Church.

A video today, created by the Rev. Michael McGee, lead team minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington, VA. Rev. McGee has made four videos titled “Two-Minute Timeouts,” in which he gives a short reflection, with imagery, on Unitarian Universalist spiritual life. This is the first.

Two Minute Timeout

by the Rev. Michael McGee

Source: “Two Minute Timeout” by the Rev. Michael McGee, lead team minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington, VA, as published on YouTube. Hat tip, Shelby Meyerhoff at the UUWorld’s “Interdependent Web.”

In a religion that draws from many sources of inspiration and learning rather than one chosen scripture, it is the stories that we tell that communicate our Good News. This 2005 message from the Rev. Dr. Kenneth W. Phifer, now minister emeritus of the First Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Ann Arbor, Michigan, gives us four of those stories:

The Stories of Our Lives

by the Rev. Dr. Kenneth W. Phifer

Is there anything more compellingly interesting than a story?

Is there anything of greater importance to our lives than the stories we tell and the stories we listen to and the stories in which we invest our faith?

Life-like or fantastic, ancient or modern, short or long, poetic or prosaic, musical or visual, written or spoken, filmed or signed, stories are a vital part of the human scene. Epics, comedies, tragedies, novels, short stories, grand operas and plays, soap operas, situation comedies, even advertisements, and dozens of other forms of stories fill our lives.

One storyteller observed, “so much of living is made up of story-telling that one might conclude that it is what we were meant to do.”

(Read on … )

One of the challenges in a faith that does not profess a specific system of belief is the ultimate question of good and evil. How do we judge moral behavior without a supreme moral authority outside of ourselves? How do we live our values?

The answer is of course multi-layered, and open ended. This excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803-April 27, 1882) gives us a place to start in an ongoing dialogue.

Emerson is seen by some as the quintessential Transcendentalist, a true “father” of modern Unitarian Universalism. Although he graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was ordained as a Unitarian minister, he left the official ministry after just three years in the parish due to theological and philosophical differences.

He spent much of the rest of his life lecturing and writing, and much of his writing is now online. This snippet comes from one of his earliest sermons, collected at emersonsermons.com, before he left his parish, probably written in the late summer of 1827. His text is a phrase found in I Timothy 5:4, in the King James: “let them learn first to shew piety at home.” His own records show that he preached this message no fewer than 27 times!

As with any material from this time period, you’ll want to engage your internal translator.

from an 1827 sermon numbered “X” by Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803-April 27, 1882)

It is the duty of but very few of us to command armies or rule or counsel nations. If we therefore keep our virtue in store till it find a field which we shall think worthy of its action it will wait long, or rather it will never exist for virtue exists only in action.

(Read on … )

Sometimes even the briefest of statements can lift our hearts and strengthen our resolve. These closing words by Rev. Susan L. Van Dreser, recently retired from the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Winnipeg, Canada, do just that.

Let us sing the magic of imagination

by Rev. Susan L. Van Dreser

Let us sing the magic of imagination by which we know one another and learn the lives of eras gone by.

Let us sing the magic of creation by which we build the world of our soul and teach its wisdom to others, young and old.

Let us sing the magic of our lives together, holding and shaping by the movement of breath from heart to lung all new life that is to come.

Go now with singing. Go now with magic in your fingertips. Touch this world with life.

Source: “Let us sing the magic of imagination” by the Rev. Susan L. Van Dreser, recently retired from the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Winnipeg, Canada, from the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Worship Web.

On Monday, Doug Muder reminded us why we belong to religious community.

Today, Rev. Audette Fulbright, from the Unitarian Universalist Church of Roanoke, Virginia, reminds us that what we find inside the walls of our religious communities is something that deserves a greater audience than just those sitting in the pews.

UU Evangelism/Sharing Our Good News

by the Rev. Audette Fulbright

Let me start with a combination story/article that comes from a UU Minister and someone now serving as a district exec., the Rev. John Morgan:

“A few weeks ago, I happened to use “evangelism” in a sermon. As I was gathering together my notes and heading for the coffee, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that someone was marching toward me, faced flushed, angry eyes looking for a landing spot on my psyche.

“Don’t ever use that word here,” she said.

“What word?” I asked innocently, already knowing from past experiences what she was going to say.

“Evangelism!” She drew back as if the word itself had caught in her throat. I think it had. “Don’t use it again. We have newcomers here today!”

(Read on … )

Welcome to the new year!

I find that January is one of the most difficult months of the year, because of all of its implied new beginnings and resolutions and obligations that we seem to put on ourselves.

But I do find that, after the hubbub of the December holidays, it is somewhat of a relief to come back to “normal” church, to gathering in religious community to better ourselves and the world, and that January is just as good a time as any to rededicate oneself to engaging in such work. So, today I bring you an essay by Doug Muder from September, where he talks about what it means to belong to a church community, and to engage fully in it.

Doug is a member of First Parish Unitarian Universalist in Bedford, Massachusetts, writes for UUWorld Magazine, and blogs at DailyKos.com as Pericles, as well as at Free and Responsible Search.

Reflections on the Beginning of Another Church Year

by Doug Muder

It seems like an odd thing to do, when you stop and think about it.

Why give up a weekend morning, make yourself and your family presentable, and go to church? Why join its committees and work on its projects? Don’t you have more urgent things to do with your time? Why contribute money that you surely could apply to some other purpose, money that you could put aside towards (say) a nice vacation or use to pay down that worrisome balance on your credit card?

Why church?

(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).

Why do we gather in religious community? What is religious community? How do we tie our diverse religious beliefs and yearnings together into one community?

The Rev. James Covington, serving the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Briarton, Croton and Ossining, New York, takes a stab at answering some of these concerns in a sermon delivered last January.

For consideration: What binds you to your religious community? What values do you have in common with those who hold different beliefs than you?

What it Means to Be Religious

by Rev. James Covington

What does it mean to be religious? My, what a question! I wonder what your answer would be. I am certain we would have as many different answers as there are people sitting in front of me. It is a question always on my mind—not urgently so, but at least, somewhere peripheral. It has been on my mind more so recently. I wonder why. Well, we live in a time when the world about us is so rife with political and religious conflict, one cannot help but despair of it all. Sam Harris’s book, The End of Faith, certainly has been an evocative reading. And as an association, Unitarian Universalists are presently, it seems, attempting to address the question amongst ourselves—if we are a “liberal” religious movement, then what do we mean by that? What do we mean by “religious?”

(Read on … )