“Claiming our Mission” Day 2, Day 3 of Classes. “A church that is not growing has a mission problem.” – Robert Latham Mission is simply a bit misty and hard to nail down unless you are working on one. It seems, from the coursework, and my thought, that our mission…
RLLS: Our Covenantal Faith
Covered an amazing amount of ground today; covenantal faith, mission, vision, Universalist history, Unitarian history and small group discussion. Literally some 14 hours of dialog, music and worship. What stood out the most? Even though today was about mission, the importance of our covenants to our faith was what stuck…
RLLS: Gathering
First night at RLLS (Russell Lockwood Leadership School) tonight; we met, did introductions, an ice-breaker name game where everyone added an adjective to their name (there are almost 40 participants so that took a while and was much, much harder than it sounds), broke down into Covenant Groups then back…
Is Everything Possible?
One of my favorite songs is “Everything Possible” by Fred Small. Of course, we cannot be certain what an artist means by the lyrics of a song, I think that is part of the magic; a good song speaks to each of us as individuals. This past June, I had…
Liberty and Ben’s Chili Bowl
As I think about the principles of our country today, I find challenge in the bipartisan nature of modern politics…we seem to no longer stand for the principle of liberty for all, but for liberty of those who are like unto us. Our founders were not of one faith, but…
The Power of the Moment Sermon
In 2008 I had a life-altering injury. I fell, broke my neck and damaged my spine. The paralysis extended from my mid-rib area through all 4 limbs. Possibly the most devastating thing about the injury was that there was absolutely nothing that could tell me whether I would walk again,…
Appreciative Relations Sermon
In August 2009 I gave a short sermon on appreciating our relationships with one-another. I sought to remind myself and many others of why we engage in our covenants in our Unitarian Universalist faith, to reflect upon how we can sustain our values and principles in our every day relationships.…
Being in the Now
This is my first post. For some time now I’ve been planning on starting a personal blog about my spiritual work, my own journey, and the trials and tribulations that both life and I have put me through…and yes, there are plenty of trials that I created for myself. Part…