Today is May Day, Beltane, a celebration of spring for many people, especially including those who choose the path of earth-centered, or pagan, religious traditions. This creation story comes from Lady Abigail, high priestess of the Ravensgrove Coven in Greenfield, Indiana, and was taught to her by her great-grandmother. It strikes me as a story that would be most welcome in our Unitarian Universalist circles as well.

Mother Earth and Sister Moon: A Beltaine Story of Creation

by Lady Abigail, remembered from her great-grandmother

In the beginning, there was no land and no water, no stars and no sky. Only a great void filled with all that could be. Living within the void was creation, not yet by name for no words had yet been spoken. Silence was the void.

Then like a whispering wind gentle on a summer night, a sound crossed the great void. Our Grandmother of the Night called to the Grandfather of the Day. “Grandfather, do you see we are alone and have no children; our sky is empty and our hearts alone.”

Suddenly, Grandfather Day spoke in a deep thundering voice. “Then we shall have Children: daughters, two daughters.”

(Read on … )

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 … )