Does God Feel Gratitude? Although we start each of our Sunday-afternoon circles with a particular topic, one can never be certain what we will end up talking about. For instance, we once got sidetracked when one of our members asked, “Does God feel gratitude?” How do you answer a question like that? First, what do we mean by “God”? Second, even if we could define that ultimate entity, how can we understand its experiences? After all, we don’t know that the Divine has emotions, at least as we understand them, and gratitude, as I am defining it, is an emotion. Which brings us to our third question: what is gratitude,…
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The Courage of Jephthah’s Daughter
The Unnamed Daughter Jephthah’s daughter has no name. That’s not unusual for biblical characters. Men and women alike are unnamed. The Wise Men, though important and respected, are identified only by their station. Many women exist as appendages of their men, such as Noah’s wife, Lot’s wife, Haman’s mother, and Samson’s mother. Others are named for where they lived: the Syrophoenecian woman, the Queen of Sheba, the Witch of Endor. Like men known as the Shepherd, the Rich Man, the Good Samaritan, the Friend, the Guest, the Builder, and dozens of other archetypal individuals, these people have no unique identity. Jephthah’s daughter is in good company. But for someone without…
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Our Plans and God’s Laughter
The Ultimate Joke As others before me have said, death is the ultimate joke. [1] At birth, and for years afterward, we imagine we have eternity to walk, sing, and build towers of metal or of ideas. We scurry through our lives, hoping to make a difference to at least one person, to touch and be touched. We have dreams, and some of us manage to fulfill them. Yet even fulfilled dreams are not the end. Indeed, death’s absurdity may be hardest for those who complete what they set out to accomplish, for when they reach their destination, there’s nothing left. To keep going, one must find a new goal.…
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Balance and the Autumn Equinox
Where Is the Balance? The equinox is a time of balance, when night and day are equal. In that moment of symmetry, all is well with the world and with the heart. For an instant, at least, there is calm. Or so I imagine. In reality, I fly through the equinox like though any other day, managing a smattering of exercise, scraping together enough food to keep me well, cleaning when I must, and creating when I can. In between, I snatch moments for rest and relationship. Time passes in a blur. Balance eludes me. Not everyone feels out of balance because of busyness. Some people are bored. The seconds…
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Waking Up and Creating Beloved Community
Out of the Pigpen In my work as a chaplain, I have met many people who could not get out of the pigpen. At Universalist Recovery Church, we’ve explored the parable of the prodigal son a number of times, using it to understand forgiveness, restorative justice, the importance of play, and most recently, the power of having a voice. Today we look at what it takes to wake up, get out of the pig sty, and create beloved community. As you may recall, in the parable of the prodigal son, the younger brother, after wasting his entire inheritance, accepts work tending pigs. He sleeps with them and eats what he…
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Shame, Shamelessness, and the Power of Love
The Evil of Shame The inquisitive engineer in our group asked, “Are love and shame opposites?” After a few moments of discussion, we tabled the topic until now. So here we are again, wondering how love and shame might be connected, or not. As I researched and reflected on this topic, I came to the conclusion that shame isn’t the opposite of love; shamelessness is. To understand shamelessness, however, we must first understand shame. Shame is that gut-wrenching experience of being found out, of having our nakedness – whether figurative or literal – revealed. Yes, we can feel shame in private, and we certainly can experience a fear of being…
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Our Natural State of Altruism
Is Altruism Real? Some people claim that altruism is a myth, that we humans do nothing except that it serves our own ends. True, there are those who calculate the value for themselves of everything they do, whether benevolent or hurtful. They don’t understand that altruism feels good. It boosts endorphins, increases oxytocin levels, and sends dopamine to our dopamine receptors, but only if we act out of a true desire to help and heal. [1] Perhaps those who discount altruism do so because they have no such desire, so have no idea what it feels like. Concerned more with their own reputation or financial well-being, their own comfort or…
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God’s Love and Father Love
What Is God’s Love? At our Mother’s Day service, one of our members asked, “What’s the difference between God’s love and a mother’s love?” Now that it’s Father’s Day, we could ask the same thing about the love of a father. Yet how do we answer that question if we don’t know what God’s love is? The God described in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures is a complex one. We’ll call this God “he,” since we’re talking about fathers. This God is full of both mercy and wrath. He forgives the sinner, then goes and wipes out entire cities of sinners, their cultures, and even most of the human race.…
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Flower Communion
Communion and Community We Unitarian Universalists have few rituals of our own. The Flower Communion, created in 1923 in Czechoslovakia by Unitarian minister Norbert Čapek, is one of them. The church he founded was only a few years old, yet already he sensed discomfort among the members. Having left behind Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish faiths, many of them struggled to open their hearts to something new. They didn’t trust one another. Knowing that ritual touches hearts and spirits, Čapek thought some kind of ceremony would help, perhaps something like the Christian communion. For many of his members, though, this practice would bring up old wounds. How could he bring the…
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Acting Out of Anger and the Power of Love
Acting Out of Anger For some reason, I’ve never been able to stay angry very long. The energy dissipates, and the resentment fades away. I suspect it’s because my attention span isn’t long enough. I get bored with the same old story, so I’m not likely to keep bitterness alive by rehearsing the injustice of it all. Nor can I convince myself of my own infallibility, so feeling self-righteous and aggrieved doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. That doesn’t mean I don’t get angry, though. Indeed, as recently as fifteen years ago, I liked my aggressive outbursts. Being a shy person, I didn’t act out in public, but…