A reflection from the Side With Love Sunday worship service.

We are not automatic lovers of self, others, world, or God. Love does not just happen.

Reader 1: We come today to gather together as Unitarian Universalists. Reader 2: We come today to join in the spirit of love and the service of life. Reader 3: We come today to be part of the stream of this living tradition. All: In our gathering, may we be blessed. Reader 1: Our shared faith is...

In the weaving of our story to the web of life, we must remember that we must not cut the strings, for there are others coming after us.

"A little bit of meditation is better than no meditation. Two minutes is better than zero minutes. Consistency sends a signal to your whole system, to the divine, to the planet that you want to serve that you’re showing up, that your attention is there. Just give it two minutes on the days...

The wellspring of decency is loving this life in which people die, people suffer, there are limits, and we make mistakes. The wellspring, then, of moral action is not utopia, not a counterfactual vision, not a declaration that the world could and should be otherwise....

Shirley Chisholm was asked why she, a Black woman, was running for president: "You don't have a chance. Why are you doing that?" And she said, "Because I am in love with the America that does not yet exist," and that's how Unitarian Universalism is also....

This group blessing is designed to be shared by many voices or read by just one. Alex suggests creating an altar with a chalice and testing supplies (which are then distributed to students as they need them). Speaker 1: We have come to the end of the quarter/semester/year. An end to these classes.

People of color—and other marginalized people—can’t just want things to be different. It has to be everyone wanting things to be different for everyone.

Eternal Spirit, from whom all things come and to whom all things return, We gather this morning in community seeking to live in the harmony. Each of us here gathered lives out our lives knowing our own story, our own private melody. Life – at its highest and its sweetest – is a sharing. Life is...

Hallelujah! is a dangerous word, especially in the mouths of the creatively maladjusted.* Hallelujah! is a dangerous word, for it comes always with an exclamation point. Hallelujah!...

I play this moment over and over again in my head: the day I heard of the Thomas Jefferson Ball, hosted by Unitarian Universalists in 1993. As a person of color, raised in a UU congregation, I felt a shiver down my spine as I learned something new and unsettling about the faith that I call home....

Let us open our hearts, still our minds and enter a time of prayer. Let us call forth and hold in our hearts the stories of all who have come before us, the memories of those who are with us today, and the hope for tomorrow and for all of those who will come after us. Let us be thankful for this...

Spirit of Life and Love, God of Many Names, we gather in awareness of the opportunity before us as Unitarian Universalists. We have been given many chances before today to heal the wounds of the racism and oppression that have beset our denomination for many years, and held us back from realizing...

Loving inclusion has been an elusive goal within our congregations. We are a covenantal people, and the promise of our faith, which was enough to bring us together, should have been enough to bind us together in love. Many hearts have been, and often continue to be, broken, time and again....

We kindle a flame of power, illuminating the Holy in each of our faces. We recognize in the flame a passionate commitment to our shared faith. We are held and carried from day to day, week to week, in the shining of the light. This flame is mine, as well as yours. We are brought together on this...

We light our flaming chalice as a beloved people united in love and thirsting for restorative justice. May it melt away the tethers that uphold whiteness in our midst. May it spark in us a spirit of humility. May it ignite in us radical love that transforms our energy into purposeful action....

We are Unitarian Universalists. When we lift up our Seven Principles, some of us think of them as a form of theology—but they are more important to our collective than that: they do not tell us what we should believe; they tell us how we should be. They tell us how we should act in the larger...

Spirit that runs through us all, help me to remember all the ways in which I am connected to others.

"I went back to church thinking that it would be like an epidural, like it would take the pain away… that church would make the pain go away. Faith and church was not an epidural for me at all; it was like a midwife who just stood next to me saying, 'Push. It’s supposed to hurt a little bit.'"...