Healthy Relationships I’m told that some couples start out their marriage happy and stay happy the whole time they live together, easily getting along, yielding, loving, being kind and gentle, even in the mornings, but for most of us, relationships are difficult. Sometimes we have to set aside our own needs, forgive thoughtlessness, and not take ourselves so seriously. Most young people aren’t so good at this. I certainly wasn’t. In my experience, healthy relationships mature over time. Quiet, peaceful partnerships develop as we age. The early years of my own marriage were stormy. My husband and I hadn’t figured out what really mattered and what didn’t. After 40 years together,…
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Tu B’Shvat and Our Connection with Trees
Tu B’Shvat and the New Year for the Trees As a child, I spent a lot of time in trees. I especially liked the pine tree where two branches formed a sitting nook and the crab apple with its wide limbs and puckery fruit, but I wasn’t particular. If I could climb it, I was content. Recently, I learned that the Jewish people honor trees during Tu B’Shvat, the New Year of the Trees. A legal rather than religious holiday, its original purpose was to provide guidelines to farmers for their tithing. Now, it’s a day to get together with friends, eat fruit, plant trees, and promote responsible stewardship of the…
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On Anger and Building a Movement
Outrage and Resistance Early in my career as a director of religious education, I developed a class I called “Outrageous” that was designed to help children and youth figure out how to turn their outrage into practical solutions, such as providing service to the homeless or writing letters to senators. Maria Harris describes a version of the curriculum in her book Teaching and Religious Imagination: An Essay in the Theology of Teaching. You start with an evening of outrageousness. Hold after a party where kids eat gooey tacos and goofy sundaes, listen to wild music, share the most outrageous things they’ve done, play silly games, and talk about crazy teachers…
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“Only Love Can Do That” – In Honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Praying Without Apology Years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King, attended Unitarian churches. King was drawn to liberal religion for “its devotion to the search for truth, its insistence on an open and analytical mind, and its refusal to abandon the best lights of reason.” [1] When they chose a tradition to align themselves with, however, the Kings chose African-American Christianity. In her article, “To Pray without Apology,” Unitarian Universalist minister, Rosemary Bray McNatt describes a meeting she had with Coretta King. At that meeting, McNatt commented that she was a Unitarian Universalist minister. King said that she and Martin had attended Unitarian churches in…
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Jesus, Resistance, and the Holiday Season
Jesus in Mark When I first read the Christian Scriptures, I was struck by the Gospel of Mark. Carefully-crafted and well-plotted, the story moves quickly toward its climax of death and resurrection. The book describes the ministry of a man both human and holy, who risked his life to spread his message of love and nonviolent resistance. The gospel is clearly political. Its first sentence, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” is a veiled challenge to the Roman Emperor who called himself the “Son of God” and whose birth was proclaimed as the “good news.” For me, Mark’s story seemed more like an…
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Faith and Insecurity
Faith in Love What do you have faith in? When I ask myself that question, the first thing that comes to mind is that I have faith in life itself. I have faith in our resilience as a species, and in the resilience of the earth to revive, no matter what we do to her. That doesn’t make acceptable the abuse of one another and destruction of our habitat, but I do believe in the power of life to revive itself again. Next, I think of love. My faith in love is unwavering. Even though hate seems rampant right now, and even though at times in my life I tried…
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The Election and Amazing Grace
Newton the Slave Trader The theme for this week’s service is “Amazing Grace,” the hymn written by transformed slave trader, John Newton. His story is hopeful and uplifting, reminding us of the power and potential of grace. After this week’s election results, I want to believe in grace, but it has become more difficult. I will talk about that, but first I want to share Newton’s story. Newton got a job on a ship that, among other things, traded in human beings. At first, he didn’t think about the misery of the people packed into the ship’s hold, some of whom died on the journey. He joined the other crew…
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In Faithfulness Is the Salvation of the World
Faithfulness and Lamplighters What does it mean to be faithful? Does it mean always telling the truth to the people you love? Is it being monogamous? Perhaps it means obeying God. Can you be faithful to strangers? What about co-workers or employers? In Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, a lamplighter is faithful to his orders. Every evening at sunset, he uses a torch to light a flame lantern. In the morning, at sunrise, he blows it out. The job started out pretty good, except that over the years, the revolutions of his tiny planet sped up until now a day lasts only one minute. This means the lamplighter can…
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Black Lives and the Wise Fool
Beauty and My Back Yard Last week, I gave myself a gift. I sat in the shade of our back yard and watched. Not much happened. Insects fluttered past my face, a scrub jay pecked at an apple in the neighbor’s tree, a breeze touched my cheek, swallows sailed over houses. I heard traffic noises, the trilling of a bird, a dog barking, someone talking. With their blue flowers flared open, the borage plants attracted big honey bees and fat, black ones, their heads marked with yellow, their legs dabbed with the orange leavings of stamens. All this happened, and more. In places I couldn’t see, like the recesses of…
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Punishment versus Forgiveness
Imprisonment and Punishment In the wake of the Supreme Court’s June 20 decision in Utah vs. Strieff that gives police officers the right to stop you for no reason at all, discover you have an outstanding warrant, search you, and then use anything they find as evidence against you in court, I feel a kind of despair. Our insatiable need to contain, corral, and punish those who threaten our money, power, or comfort is so strong we’re willing to erode all safeguards against police overreach. In her rebuttal to the court’s decision in the Utah vs. Strieff case, Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “We must not pretend that the…
