Loving sometimes takes all that we have.

Can I love all of me, even the peevish parts?

Love cannot be bought or sold; it does not make a profit. Love does not hide from truth. Love dives deep. Love takes on flesh. Love is queer. Love is platonic. Love is erotic. Love is asexual. Love confronts evil. Love delights in pleasure. Love touches and weeps and flirts and feeds and creates.

Every year, I tell the congregation not to worry about mistakes because there aren’t any; there is only us, telling an old story about love getting born into this aching world.

Spirit of Life I find you In those humble places. The quiet, still spaces where I am held in A love greater than myself. You are the wind in my breath; The fire in my soul; The subtle Heartbeat of creation all around me....

My soul nudged me from a hiding place to confess and to seek forgiveness, and only through the grace of the Great Mystery of Life unfolding around us did I receive the blessing of journeying with a beloved, grieving friend.

If a friend were in my situation, I would have seen their failings as human. So why hold someone to an unforgiving standard just because that someone is me?

It is my only memory of a lesson from Kindergarten Sunday School class. Maybe it’s the only one that counts.

As a child, growing up Catholic, my sense was that we should give away forgiveness like candy at Halloween: freely and readily, to anyone who comes asking. As an adult Unitarian Universalist, however, I have realized that forgiveness is a lot more complicated and challenging than that image would...

Open your hearts, my friends, And let yourself feel the reality of absence. Open your hearts, and acknowledge That we gather in the presence of death. Open your hearts. Make room For the healing balm of connection, the release of forgiveness. No matter what pain dwells within your spirit, Or how...

"We forgive ourselves and each other and begin again in love," from A Litany of Atonement, by Rev....

This piece can be read as a meditation, or used as a litany, in which the congregation responds to each line (in unison), "We ask a blessing on this day." In one way or another, each of you was born of a mother. Because we are human, it's likely that your relationship with that mother is, was, or...

For all who left a relationship in order to save your heart, may your own heartbeat be your blessing. Its rhythm, its particular kinships, its unique rhythm. May you know your own heart as God's blessing....

Let us tell the stories of mothers… stories that could be true. Let us tell of warm mothers, soft and round, likely to be found with flour on their nose, and always ready to pour you a glass of milk to go with the cookies on your plate. These mothers are increasingly rare. Let us tell of mothers...

We light this flame As our fervent plea to brighten the dark corners of our hearts; We hold this flame For in it is the promise of warmth for souls grown cold in loss and despair; We kindle this light That we might continue to find comfort in its warmth; strength in its light; holiness in its...

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; Therefore, we are saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; Therefore, we are saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; Therefore, we are saved by...

Love is knotted and gnarled, like an old tree fighting with the wind, like branches too brittle for their own good, like roots that relentlessly inform how deeply we can trust and how freely we can forgive.

Forgive me dear father For all the trouble I caused The missed curfews The missed classes Your unfulfilled dreams for me Forgive me dear father But your dreams are not my dreams Forgive me dear father And I will forgive you For missed moments That you sacrificed So that one day I could follow my...

We light our chalice, symbol of our faith, For truth, sought through a questioning heart and an attentive mind; And for love, pursued through obstacles inside and outside our own human heart; And for forgiveness, and all it entails— The place where truth and love meet and merge.