This week is dedicated to the ideas presented in Rev. Robert Hardies’ essay, “Love the Contradictions,” printed in the UUWorld’s summer 2007 issue, from The Seven Principles in Word and Worship, edited by Ellen Brandenburg (Skinner House Books, 2007). Rev. Hardies serves All Souls Church, Unitarian, in Washington, D.C.

The essay is just packed, so I’ve broken it into three sections. The first describes Rev. Hardies’ personal realizations of the contradictory nature of the world, and his life within the world. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t struggled with this.

Part two can be found here, and part three here.

Love the Contradictions, pt. 1

by Rev. Robert Hardies

When I was in seminary, I had to take a test called the Minnesota Multi phasic Personality Inventory, a multiple-choice exam that asks questions like, “Have you been hearing voices lately?” When I sat down with the psychiatrist two weeks later to hear the results, he told me, “By and large, this is a healthy profile.” Then he pointed to a line that plummeted from the top of the page to the bottom. “But do you see this? This means that your soul is conflicted, filled with tensions and contradictions. Those tensions can either be a blessing or a curse; they can either stimulate creativity and vitality in your life, or they can shut you down.” Seeing my reaction, he reassured me, “Rob, you have to learn to love the tensions that are in your soul.” Love the tensions? I wasn’t sure I had heard him right.

Ten years later, I am still trying to discover what it really means to not merely accept the tensions and contradictions of life but to love them. We want to love the world, but does that mean we must condone all that is wrong with it, that we must quietly acquiesce to injustice? What is there to love about contradictions?

(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 … )

Today’s post comes from the Rev. Christine Robinson, from her “Psalms for a New World” project. Rev. Robinson, who serves the First Unitarian Church of Albuquerque, New Mexico, writes, “I’ve worked with the Book of Psalms periodically over the years in my own meditation and prayer, but always with mixed emotions, because, for all its beauty and wisdom, the Book of Psalms has limits which I found off-putting.”

And so, she improvised her own versions on the themes and ideas in the traditional biblical writings as a spiritual practice, the results of which she has generously posted on a blog for easy reference.

This is one that speaks deeply to me:

Psalm 14: Will we learn?

by Rev. Christine Robinson

We wonder, in our hearts, if there is a God,
   or meaning, or hope.
Even our humanism is shaken, when it seems that people
   care only about themselves
The ideals we have and the airs we take on
   seem foolish and vain.
Is there anyone who is wise?
Is there anyone who is just?
Any who treat their neighbors
   as persons of worth and dignity?
or who are centered and mature in their faith?

There is only ourselves; half-wise, attracted
   to justice, trying to be good.
Only ourselves and the ideals that burn like fire in our hearts.

What will open our eyes?
What will soften our greed?
What will give us a passion for justice?

Only the voice that speaks in the longing of our hearts
That lifts our spirits and makes us sing.

Source: Psalm 14: “Will we learn?” by Rev. Christine Robinson, minister of the First Unitarian Church of Albuquerque, NM, posted at Psalms for a New World.

posted with permission from the author

For this Independence Day, I’ve dug out a really rich, wonderful address by Rev. Thomas Starr King. I’ve chosen some excerpts that I feel speak to the ideas of Unitarian Universalist patriotism is these times, in contrast to the perilous times in which this particular address was written in 1851. If you would like to read the entirety, the Google Books project has archived Patriotism, and other papers in PDF format.

Rev. King was a remarkable man, credited by President Abraham Lincoln with keeping California in the Union during the Civil War due to his stirring orations. According to the Dictionary of Unitarian Universalist Biography: “Barely five feet tall and physically fragile, King was undistinguished in appearance. Well into his thirties he appeared no older than a youth. His energy and magnetism as an organizer, minister, and preacher, however, quickly impressed any who had mistakenly judged him by appearance. ‘But, though I weigh only 120 pounds,’ he remarked late in life, ‘when I am mad I weigh a ton!’

He also “organized fund raising for the United States Sanitary Commission, a civilian organization, headed by Henry Whitney Bellows, charged with overseeing the health and medical care of the United States army. By the end of the war California had donated one quarter of the money received by the Sanitary Commission. The first large donation, sent by King, arrived just in time to be of use at the battle of Antietam in 1862.”

Today, one of two Unitarian Universalist seminaries is named for Rev. King, the Starr King School for the Ministry, along with two mountains (one in New Hampshire, and one in California).

As with any document from 1851, you may want to substitute gender-inclusive language in your reading of this text.

Patriotism

by Thomas Starr King

The substance of this article is from a discourse, delivered in Boston, before the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, on the occasion of their two hundred and thirteenth Anniversary, June 2, 1851.

[Patriotism] is a constructive quality, quickening the intellect by its love of country to zealous ambition to improve it and raise it higher. It is an imaginative sentiment. Imagination is essential to its vigor. It comprehends hills, streams, plains, and valleys in a broad conception, and from traditions and institutions — from all the life of the past and the vigor and noble tendencies of the present, it individualizes the destiny and personifies the spirit of its land, and then vows its vow to that. So that it is of the very essence of true patriotism to be earnest and truthful, to scorn the flatterer’s tongue, and strive to keep its native land in harmony with the laws of national thrift and power. It will tell a land of its faults, as a friend will counsel a companion; it will speak as honestly as the physician advises a patient; and if occasion requires, an indignation will flame out of its love, like that which burst from the lips of Moses when he returned from the mountain, and found the people to whom he bad revealed the holy and austere Jehovah, and for whom he would cheerfully have sacrificed his life, worshipping a calf.

(Read on … )

This piece needs no introduction:

Out From Walden

By Rev. Dr. Patrick T. O’Neill

2005 Sermon of the Living Tradition
Delivered at The Service of the Living Tradition
At The General Assembly of the UUA
Ft. Worth, Texas June 24, 2005

Dedication:
Listed among the roll of ministers remembered this evening in the year of their death is the name of my first Unitarian Universalist minister, the Rev. David Osborn, whose wife and partner for his many years of ministry, Janet, also died this year. Some thirty-three years ago, it was at their dinner table in Oradell, NJ, that I first shared my secret longing to become a minister. I dedicate this sermon in love and everlasting gratitude to David and Janet’s memory.

The Sermon:
When I found myself enrolled in theological school in Chicago a year after that fateful, confessional dinner at the Osborns’ home, our great UU professor James Luther Adams reminded us in his church history class that the word “tradition” in church history can be translated with two very different meanings in Latin. The first root word of tradition is “traditum,” a heavy-sounding word, which means “the unchanging inherited weight and authority of history.”

But a second, much lighter translation of tradition is the Latin word, “traditio,” meaning “a sense of the living customs of a community; the ongoing creative dance of ever-evolving meaning and practice.”

As illustration of the difference between Traditum and Traditio, JLA offered us the larger-than-life example of Tevya, the devout dairyman of Anatevka, in Fiddler on the Roof. When first we meet Tevya, he explains to us that Tradition – the heavy obligation of Traditum – determines virtually every aspect of his family’s life and his life as a man, as a husband, and absolutely as a Papa.

But as the story unfolds, we watch how this good man’s tradition-bound heart is repeatedly and ultimately challenged and overruled by his love for his three daughters, and we listen in on his anxious conversations with God as his independent-minded daughters, one by one, teach him the primacy of love over custom, teach him to choose L’Chaim, Life, the dance of traditio, as the highest ultimate reckoning with his heritage. As he explains to God his daughter Tzeitel’s decision to marry for love rather than by arrangement: “They gave each other a pledge- unthinkable. But look at my daughter’s face-how she loves him….and look at my daughters eyes, so hopeful.”

Tradition!

(Read on … )

As the Unitarian Universalist Association’s General Assembly gets underway today, I bring you words from Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd of the Bull Run Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Manassas, Virginia. Nancy’s words call us to remember what it is we commit to in joining a Unitarian Universalist congregation, and what a church is really for, anyway — a message I find apropos as we go about the business of the denomination.

“Why Church Matters”

by Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd, November 27 2005

Today, I was supposed to preach about Joseph Priestley. In fact, this is the third time I have been scheduled to give this same sermon about Joseph Priestly from this pulpit and the third time, that, for one reason or another and with no intended disrespect to Mr. Priestley, one of the greats of English and American Unitarian history, I’ve found myself on the appointed Sunday preaching something quite different. Once it was because of a snow storm. Once I just had a better idea, but today, in this season of thanksgiving, I shelved old Joseph Priestley because I felt the need to give praise to something other than a fine historical figure in our long tradition. There is so much to be thankful for, here among us, in this place, this congregation, this church to which we come week after week. There is so much more to be thankful for about our tradition, and I’ve determined that the aspect most in need of praise today is the impulse that brings us here, the religious impulse itself, which, even unnamed, lies at the heart of all of our actions.

Since it’s prominent in the sermon title, let me begin with the word church and explain from the outset that by using this word I am not taking a measured stand on the official name of this, our congregational gathering. To be honest, I really don’t care nearly as much about what our name is as I care about is who we understand ourselves to be. In other words, I don’t care if we call ourselves a church. What I care about is whether or not we are able to live out the very best aspects of what a church can be.

For the purpose of this sermon, I’m defining the word “church,” as a specific religious community bound together by common religious purpose, and I believe that a church like ours can and does to do more than just get us in its doors. I say this because I have seen people, including myself and so many of you, be profoundly changed by the opportunity to live a deeply religious life within Unitarian Universalism.

(Read on … )