“To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die…a time to keep silence and a time to speak…” The book of Ecclesiastes is also called ‘the teacher,’ and it is attributed to King Solomon, the wise. It’s included in that […]

Opening words from The Tao te Ching, Lao Tzu The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and Earth. The named is the mother of the ten thousand things. Ever desireless, one can see […]

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are referred to as ‘the high holy days.’ Rosh Hashanah is, of course, the Jewish New year: literally ‘head of the year.’ But it means more. It is the anniversary of the creation of the world. The Jewish legend says that God created the world 5773 years ago, as a […]

The New England Transcendentalist, Margaret Fuller, liked to summarize her religious philosophy by declaring, “I accept the Universe.”   Thomas Carlyle, a Scottish friend of Emerson, had a reputation for irascibility, combined with a well-honed sense of humor, was told of Margaret Fuller’s declaration, “I accept the Universe,” and responded, “Ye, gads, she’d better.”   […]

The word congregation is from the Latin congregatio, from the verb congregare, ‘to herd together…to collect into a flock.’     That sounds dangerously like a herd of sheep, which any self-respecting Unitarian Universalist rejects out of hand. Our Congregation is more like a gathering of shepherds, not sheep!  Like our U.S. declaration of independence we […]