Multicultural Ministries Sharing Project

I just finished taking this survey put out by the UUA's Racial Justice and Multicultural Ministries. It was looooong, but I think your input could be very informative and helpful. Besides, they are asking for help getting the word out for the survey, and here I go spreading the word!

SO - if you self-identify as a Unitarian Universalist who is "historically marginalized by ability (including chemical sensitivity and food allergies), sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, race, and/or ethnicity", I encourage you also to participate in this project.

You must be over the age of 13 to participate, and the new deadline is November 30, 2013.

Please participate!

http://www.uua.org/multiculturalism/287941.shtml

THANKS!

Union Sunday 2013

Are you in the Baltimore area? Come to the Union Sunday service at the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore tomorrow morning, May 5, 2013 at 11AM!

This special service commemorates the sermon given in 1819 by William Ellery Channing at the ordination of our first minister, Jared Sparks. The sermon, titled "Unitarian Christianity" and popularly know as the Baltimore Sermon, was essentially the first public declaration of Unitarianism as a distinct thread of Christian thought in the United States.

Although we are no longer predominantly or nominally Christian per se as a body, each year on the first Sunday in May, we invite a distinguished Unitarian Universalist to challenge us in a manner that pays homage to the way Channing's original sermon challenged the orthodoxy of his day (and ours?).

This year's speaker, from the Unitarian Church of All Souls in New York City, is Rev. Galen Guengrich, preaching on "A Departure from the Course Generally Followed".

All area Unitarian Universalists are invited for this wonderful service, and as usual you are welcome to join us! It's going to be packed, so come early to find a good seat. See you there!

Click here to read Reverend Channing's "Unitarian Christianity".

Click here to see the facebook event for May 5, 2013.

Meditation On Prayer

What is prayer?

Is prayer the corpus of statements, learned by rote in my childhood, spoken to a God up in heaven and in the name of Jesus and by the medium of the Holy Spirit?

Is prayer the emptying of my mind, so that I might become the receptacle of wisdoms passed down by sages across time, understood through the lens of my experience and made incarnate in my life through decisions I make and actions I take?

Is prayer sitting in a field on a warm day, soaking up the sun, smelling the blossoming flowers, tracking the flight of a shimmering hummingbird, and perhaps writing an inspired haiku? Or dancing with abandon, or shedding a tear in the theater, or a standing ovation after a grand symphony? How about reading a good book and reflecting on the themes it presents, and their potential impact on my life?

Is prayer being in a living sanctuary, surrounded by the inhale-exhale sing-shout of a community of people seeking to understand, or to be loved, or to make a difference?

Or is prayer the realization that I am not the center of the universe, the acme of space, the pinnacle of time, and that I am one small speck in the stream of all-that-is-was-and-will-be? Is prayer the contemplation of the significance of this reality? The striving to understand my brief role in the grand scheme of the drama of existence?

Is prayer silence? Is it speaking? Is it listening? Is it communication, back and forth? Is it an activity? Is it an experience? Is it a question, an answer, a method, a cause, a result?

Is this a prayer?

Amen.