This Sunday, we’ll be doing two of the rituals of community. The first is our membership ceremony. This we do fairly regularly, as a way to welcome in new members, to share our enthusiasm that these members are now committed parts of our community, and to ritualize the change that...

This year, the annual gathering of Unitarian Universalist called General Assembly is entirely online, June 20-23. You can attend workshops, participate in worship services, and watch this year’s Ware Lecturer,  Julia Watts Belser. Most importantly, you can take part in the business of the General Assembly. As a democratic organization,...

Most religions have some type of ceremony to mark the arrival of a baby or child and express the commitment a community gives to the child and their parents – baptism, Bris, etc. For Unitarian Universalists, we have a dedication ceremony, usually done during a regular worship service. This ceremony...

In 2016, my colleague, the Reverend Nancy McDonald Ladd, delivered a sermon at that year’s UU General Assembly, where she explained that she was tapping out (what wrestlers do when they are having a fake fight but it’s getting too close to real injury) of fake fights. Let me immediately...

I was in Houston after Hurricane Katrina, when over 200,000 evacuees from Louisiana poured into the city, many of them sheltering in the Astrodome. They were traumatized from all that they had experienced and seen. Counselors, clergy, and other volunteers were coached that what was most needed was for the...