What exactly does it mean to be a people who care about integrity? A people who endeavor to live lives of integrity? The dictionary says that integrity has something to do with honesty and strong moral principles, and suggests that integrity conveys a sense of wholeness, a certain unity of value, principle, and action. That all sounds pretty good, but also perhaps not that hard, right? Act in line with your beliefs, speak what is true – what’s hard about that?

As in all things, what seems easy from a distance gets more complicated up close. As Unitarian Universalists, we believe in the inherent worth and dignity of all people, and yet even the smallest glance at the contents of most of our wardrobes would reveal clothing almost certain to have been made in conditions oppressive of the workers making that clothing. Or we believe in the acceptance of one another and encouragement to growth in our congregations, yet bristle if metaphorical language for the unknowable mystery of the universe steps too far or too frequently into terrain that triggers us. Intentionally or not, the message conveyed is that acceptance has boundaries and growth is for others. Continue reading →

I love the time between Christmas and New Years. The anxiety and stress around gift-giving and fancy meals is past; the house is littered with wrapping paper and there are plenty of leftovers. It’s a great time to read a novel, play board games, enjoy the lights on the tree before they’re taken down. A breathing time.

It’s also a time of preparation, albeit perhaps quiet, internal, preparation for what is to come—another number on the year, a new decade beginning this time. New challenges and activities and transitions. New tasks to accomplish and conversations to be had.

I’m not one to make New Years’ resolutions; they always feel like a set up to me for quick and certain failure. I am one to take stock, to evaluate, to strategize and to plan, however. This week feels like a soft gift to begin to do that, an in between time. The older I get, the more these in-between times feel like the most important of all. What we do or don’t do during them often shapes our big active moments later. Continue reading →

At 10:19 pm on Saturday, December 21, we arrive at the Winter Solstice. This occasion of midwinter marks the shortest amount of sunlight in a day — for us in the Twin Cities, 6 hours and 51 minutes shorter than June’s Summer Solstice. No matter where one lives, the solstice happens at the same moment for everyone on earth.

But the solstice marks more than an astronomical event. This is a time when we are surrounded by joy even when we may want to weep. This is a time when we are enveloped in shadows even as we may glow with brightness. This is a time of contradictions and complexities within ourselves, our relationships, our lives. Continue reading →

Awe.

Awe can be a rather slippery notion for us. It’s easy in this world we inhabit to stay plugged into a life that leaves little room for the miraculous around us, either because we’re philosophically averse to admitting there’s anything beyond our ken, or simply because we’re hustling too hard to notice there’s much beyond the next task, the next appointment, the next bill that needs paying. There are many reasons why it isn’t hard at all to live small and foreshortened lives. 

Church exists to break into and through this feature of modern life and shake us out of our torpor. Church is here to grab us by the metaphorical shoulders, jump up and down, and point at the moon and say “do you see that!” Church is here to gesture around the wide world and say “we are part of all of this!” In other words, church is here to poke, prod, cajole, and otherwise encourage us to cultivate more awe in our lives as a way to wake up to the wonder of the world and find our place in it. Continue reading →