November 5, 2017
Mr. Alan Weisman came out with his book “The World Without Us” some ten years ago. In it Mr. Weisman uses a very fanciful premise to play out some very factual, and scientifically based, scenarios.
All Sermons
A Story from an Old Yearbook
October 29, 2017
The memento I brought for the service today is an old high school yearbook, published in 1927. Among the senior class pictures is one of an attractive young woman known as “Lottie.” I never even knew she had that name until I discovered the book after she’d died, and I was helping clean out the house in which she’d lived for much of her life.
Where Race and Class Unite? Part Two
October 15, 2017
Today I want to bring this matter of class closer to home. Home in this case being our Unitarian Universalist movement, and this congregation as a part of that movement—our UU Association. I’ll be drawing in part on a report that came out last summer, just prior to our UU General Assembly, by our Association’s Commission of Appraisal titled Class Action: The Struggle with Class in Unitarian Universalism. And I’ll be throwing in some of my own stuff as well.
Where Race and Class Unite? Part One
October 1, 2017
- Rev. Steve Edington
- Nickel and Dimed—On Not Getting By in America
- White Trash: The 400 Year Untold History of Class in America
- class
- race
“Where is our Holy Church? Where race and class unite.” When these lines appear in our hymnal there’s a question mark after the words “Holy Church.” “Where race and class unite…” is offered as a response to the question. Perhaps that question mark is misplaced. Or maybe those words should be offered as a vision or goal we’ve not yet reached but still aspire to—be it in our UU congregations or in society at large. It’s not an easy topic, but one we can ill afford to ignore on either level.
The Ties That Bind Us
September 17, 2017
When I offered my “Kick Off the Year” sermon from this pulpit one year ago this Sunday I assumed I was leading into my final year with you. I’d say there’s an object lesson there on not relying too heavily on one’s assumptions. Sometimes they can fool you.
Looking Back…Looking Ahead
June 11, 2017
“I have learned that the read church can be defined as our most intimate relationships: How we smile and trust each other; How we talk and touch each other; How we share and protect each other; How we welcome new friends and forgive old enemies; How we love each other—in all the myriad ways that love can be expressed. That is the church.” — Rev David Rankin
Lessons from Our Universalist Story
June 4, 2017
“This is the highest activity of your mind and heart, this Oneness…to see all the relations and the connections between all objects, forces, peoples, and creatures…This is why all great religions preach the central idea of Oneness.” — Woodie Guthrie
Three to Remember
May 28, 2017
“…the true measure of our lives is about how we touch and guide and nurture the lives of others as we are given opportunity to do so. “
Two Stories for Mothers’ Day
May 14, 2017
What these two women [Julie Ward Howe and Anna Jarvis]—from widely differing stations in life—had in common, then, was a vision and a desire for a reconciled human family. This is the vision we should all be striving towards in whatever great or small ways we can, using whatever means and resources are available to us.
The Awakening Earth. Our Awakening Lives
April 16, 2017
…when it comes to the rhythms of our lives, in all their great glory and in all their deep tragedy, we are the ones who must be agents of resurrection. We are the ones who still have to reawaken when our bars of the spirit are lifted. We are the ones who have to do the shaping in order that we may fulfill the promises of our own lives.
April 9, 2017
I do believe in resurrection, of a sort. I believe as do most Christians and non-Christians alike in keeping alive the Jewish Galilean prophet’s subversive wisdom. While I no longer adhere to the doctrines that have come to make up the religion about Jesus–doctrines he never promulgated himself–I find much that is worthy in the religion of Jesus. And I’m grateful for the role that our Unitarian and Universalist forebears played in making that distinction.
Immigrants All
April 2, 2017
I will say now that we—individually, as part of citizen action groups, as members of this congregation—seek and act in ways to be a part of the positive and uplifting piece of our immigration narrative.
The Many Meanings of Ministry II
March 26, 2017
A covenant, within the context of ministry, is a promise the minister and the congregation make to one another for as long as they each and all wish to maintain it. Without getting chapter and verse about it here, I’ll say it is a covenant in which the minister and the congregation pledge to one another to bring together their resources, their time, skills, energy, knowledge, love, compassion, and care in order that real ministry can happen. It is more than a contractual agreement, that is to say. It is a pledge to walk together towards the ongoing fulfillment of a commonly shared mission and vision.
What is Holy
March 12, 2017
… we are then called to renewal and to recommitment to be persons of faith in the best sense of the term; the faith that we can be agents of healing and reconciliation and transformation in the broken places of life.
Kurt Vonnegut’s Wrestling Match with God
March 5, 2017
[Vonnegut] did not usually make his God references in a dismissive or cynical way, although cynicism is part of his literary stock in trade. He made them instead in the more […] paradoxical way of someone who is honestly searching for something that he thinks isn’t there but who believes the search is worth the effort anyway.
What the Devil?
February 19, 2017
I think this is what ultimately keeps evil—for all the horror it can inflict—from having the final word. It is not about some cosmic battle between supernatural forces and their human agents; rather it is about people, often plain and simple people, who do the right thing at the right time; people who can still see the essential humanity in the eyes, faces, and hearts of their fellow human beings whose humanity is being denied or diminished, and respond accordingly.
Mr. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy and Mine
February 12, 2017
The question we religious liberals need to be exploring is what kind of a vision to we have to offer those in that culture in crisis? They may well not be ready to hear or respond to anything from us now, just as my father was not ready to hear the world view I was coming to, but that doesn’t remove the question from us.
No Such Thing as a Sure Thing
February 5, 2017
Spiritude. It’s a trusting attitude towards a life guided by the spirit, or spirits, one calls on. Call that spirit what you will: The human spirit, the life spirit, the spirit of the universe, the spirit of God–whatever feels the most authentic to you.
The Road or the Simple Highway
January 29, 2017
… for those of us who seek to stand on the side of love, for those of us who seek to be agent of that moral arc of the universe bending towards justice, the road ahead is anything but a simple highway. It will be a terribly difficult road at times, as has been well demonstrated in just this past week. The way in which we travel in the days ahead will determine whether were as a society are headed for yet another dawn in the life of our nation, or for the dark of night. I came away from last weekend hopeful that we will choose to work towards yet another dawn rather than surrender to the forces of the dark of night.
We Need You Martin
January 15, 2017
The content of your faith, or my faith, need not be the same as was Dr. King’s. But bear in mind that as we meet the challenges, and respond to the calls to action, that surely will lie before us, that whatever our skills, abilities, and energies may be, there will be times when we will experience our human vulnerabilities and human limitations and perhaps our own times of self-doubt and wondering.
Seasons of Life: A New Year’s Homily
January 8, 2017
Control of one’s life is a hope we want to see realized up to a point, but only up to a point; because it is a willingness to let go and be vulnerable to such things as hurt and fear and sadness and loss which, ironically enough, makes genuine human relationships possible.
A Place for Myth and Fantasy
December 11, 2016
… we bring our whole selves, our whole lives, [to church]: Our feeling selves, our wondering selves, our selves that are in need of good tidings of comfort and joy and of hope and of healing. I happen to believe there is a place, an important and valued place in our liberal religious community, for legend and stories and mythology when it comes to offering such good tidings.
When There Really Was a “War on Christmas”
December 4, 2016
As a human community and as a liberal religious community we should rightfully celebrate the presence of joy, hope, peace, and love in our midst; and seek to extend the blessings of each and all of these things in whatever ways are available to us. In doing so we will honor the many meanings of these Blessed and Holy Days.
What’s Good Today?
November 20, 2016
For me, what’s good today is that I’m here; here with you in a setting with people whose values and principles I share. What’s good today is that I am called to keep faith with you, even as we—each and every one of us here—are called to keep faith with one another.
A Pre-Election Reflection
November 6, 2016
…our political processes—at any number of levels—offer an opportunity for citizens to bring their highest principles and values to the public, civic arena. … it’s important, even crucial, that this ideal be held up … as a reminder of what responsible and dedicated and caring citizenry means and requires.
Just What is Atheism
October 23, 2016
THAT—I would submit—is the real God question. It’s not about whether or not there is a Supreme Being who knows who we are and can catch us in our misdeeds—like, say, swiping fudge. It’s about whether or not there is any Greater Meaning to our lives that both encompasses and lies beyond the earthly meanings we cultivate and nurture for ourselves.
Shall We Pray
October 16, 2016
Prayer, as I have come to see it, is an attempt to touch what Ralph Waldo Emerson called the “spark of the Divine” that is in all of us, and to sense the presence of the Sacred that lies beyond us as well. It is part of our human condition to reach both within and beyond ourselves when it comes to finding true meaning in our lives, when it comes to finding what is Really Real for us, when it comes to discovering what it is that ultimately sustains us and makes us whole persons.
Atonement and Forgiveness
October 2, 2016
Religious communities, whatever their orientation and however liberal or conservative they may be, are also human communities. As such they contain within them the best that is in men, women, and children; as well as our human foibles, shortcomings, and failings. These are the lives we bring to the religious communities to which we belong, as we seek greater wholeness, seek greater levels of relationship, and sometimes seek the forgiveness and the reconciliation we need to get to those levels.
Belief as the Enemy of Religion
September 25, 2016
I think we need ways of saying to the larger communities in which our congregations are located that we offer a way of being religious in the best and most basic sense of the word. We offer a place where you can grow a soul, where you can in the company of other seekers, search and find what it is that finally and most meaningfully binds your life together and gives you a sense of wholeness.
The Many Meanings of Ministry
September 18, 2016
“When I see the faces of the people at my church I can always find my way home.” Granted, a church or a house of worship however named is not a place to hide out from the world. But it is a place to bring your spirit for renewal and recommitment, so that you can then re-engage with the world. And wherever one’s heart finds renewal, wherever one finds a newness of life—that indeed is a holy place.
Recovering the Universalist Vision
August 7, 2016
A vision that persons of all stations in life—stations of race and class and belief—can each and all be a part of a sustaining mosaic that will allow us to continue to meaningfully live on this pale blue dot.
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