Harm of one is harm of all.

May we release ourselves from the need to fit every truth neatly into our own language.

“Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.”...

God, teach us to consider also how others experience the world. To understand how my reality and their reality are different and yet they share qualities of the same core desire. Teach us to listen for shared feelings, for places of connection. Teach us to be curious and open to hearing differences.

America has not yet faced our history of slavery, nor the malicious colonization and oppression of the Indigenous peoples.

It's an impulse of the human self to be known fully, and that’s almost never possible unless we risk the conversations that help us see past our initial impressions.

I wanted so badly to break free and let loose—but I just couldn't. I was stuck in my own false ideas of the congregation's expectations of me. Luckily, there’s still time.

So much undone. So much to do. So much to heal in us and the world. So much to acquire: a meal a healthy body— a fit one— a lover a job a better job proof we have and are enough just around the corner of now. And up against it the reality of all that falls short and the limits of today. We honor...

One: Listening is not an act of the ear, listening is an act of the heart. Many: In these times when so much speaks: outrage, anger, disillusionment. One: Rage is a constant cry. Derision has found his voice. The despair of the fair and faithful speaks fast and often. The whisper of despair grows...

Someone had broken into our garage. We picked our way through the space, storage tubs strewn about, ready to make a list of what was missing: two wool sweaters and half a tent. Someone was suffering a misfortune here, but it wasn’t us.

Empathy isn’t just something that happens to us—a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain—it’s also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves. It’s made of exertion, that dowdier cousin of impulse. Sometimes we care for another because we know we should or because...

We offer blessings for life and the end of life. Blessings for the dying. Blessings for the caregiver, holding love and carrying burden. Blessed is the Body. Youth claimed by death. Elder claimed by death. Blessed is all creation moving toward one ending in order to begin again. Let us Bless the...

Someone called me a "bleeding heart liberal." It was not intended as a compliment. However, I will always consider it one of the biggest compliments of my life. My heart bleeds for the underdog. My heart fights for those who can't fight. My heart rejoices in seeing others overcome adversity. My...

Come sit by our fire and let us share stories. Let me hear your tales of far off lands, wanderer, and I will tell you of my travels. Share your experience of the holy with me, worshipper, and I will tell you of that which I find divine. Come and stay, lover of leaving, for ours is no caravan of...

For those of us who follow the Christian tradition, now is the season of advent, a time of waiting. And whether or not we are Christian I believe that Unitarian Universalists and progressives of any or no faith have something to learn from this Christian season of advent this year. Because we are...

A voice screeched gate assignments through a nerve-jangling public address system. Even if the announcements had been in English, I doubt that I’d have been able to make sense of them. But whatever was being broadcast to the cavernous waiting area of the Moscow airport prompted mobs of people to...