I’ve decided to take a deeper look at the 7 Unitarian Universalist principles. As I look back on my life, and my spiritual practice in martial arts, mysticism, as well as my professional life, I have come to realize that I’ve been living these principles whether I identified myself as Unitarian Universalist or not. I guess being raised with these values, I internalized them.
I am also going to take a look at the Unitarian Universalist sources. In the future I will start a reading list of books on spiritual leadership, life development and maybe even put up some original materials. We’ll see.
So, here are the 7 Principles and 6 Sources that we use in Unitarian Universalism, from the UUA web site (http://www.uua.org)
There are seven principles which Unitarian Universalist congregations affirm and promote:
- The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
- Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
- Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
- A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
- The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
- The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
- Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
I kind-of think that “promote” is not strong enough a word; these principles are central to our lives, our faith that we can provide strong yet diverse community, and our paradigm that leads us to seek salvation of this world, in this life-time. What I am going to do is take 1 principle for each post. I’ll make a new category so that they are easy to search and read.
Unitarian Universalism (UU) draws from many sources:
- Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life;
- Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love;
- Wisdom from the world’s religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;
- Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God’s love by loving our neighbors as ourselves;
- Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.
- Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.
The sources are places from which we draw wisdom. As I ruminate on them in another series of posts we will talk about how we treat our sources and what we learn from them.