“One Needful Thing”, Part 2: UUism and the Transformative Experience
In Part 1, I traced the development of Unitarianism since the early 19th century to the present and argued that UUism has, since its inception, been characterized by what William Channing called a “too...
View Article“One needful thing”, Part 3: Letting go of the side of the pool
In Part 1, I traced the development of Unitarianism since the early 19th century to the present and argued that UUism has, since its inception, been characterized by what William Channing called a “too...
View ArticleUnitarian growth and Pagan (dis)organization
Over at The Wild Hunt, Jason Pitzl-Waters has posted about the growth of the UU over the last 10 years, a growth of 15%. This is notable in the face of the general decline of other liberal...
View ArticleA Devotional Practice with the World at its Center
I realized that devotional practice is not limited to deity-centered religion. There can be an earth-centered or nature-centered kind of devotion too. What I needed was to develop a devotional...
View ArticleWhy I have hope for Unitarian Universalism
What if, instead of trying to create religious space for everyone to "believe what they want", we UUs were to build a church around the idea that every person's beliefs and experiences contribute to...
View ArticleAn atheist Pagan, an animist, and a devotional polytheist walk into a ritual …
We have to accept that we can define words for ourselves, but not for others. And we have to be willing to hold hands and circle with someone who may have a very different interpretation of what is...
View ArticleChurch is no substitute for religion, Part 2: The Spirituality Gap
"Religion" is about symbol, myth, and ritual, while "church" is about community, morality/ethics, and ideology/politics. Here in the West, it seems we've gotten the church cart before the "horse" of...
View ArticleWhy I am joining the First Unitarian Church
Tomorrow I will become a member of the Unitarian church. This may be shocking to some people who follow my blog, since just over a year ago, I wrote a post here entitled, "The Baby is the Bathwater:...
View ArticleA Unitarian Wheel of the Year
Vespers in the winter, the Flower Communion in the spring, Pride Day in the summer, and the Ingathering / Water Communion in the autumn constitute a kind of liturgical year or Wheel of the Year for our...
View Article“Naturalistic Polytheism and Our Patron Goddess” by Tom L. Waters
UUs, as individuals, certainly find transformation through many different processes–we serve (and are saved by) many different gods. But is there a distinctively UU god, a particular transformative...
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