It’s that time of year again and we are putting together our budget for next year. I’m wondering what your congregation spends on a guest speaker in the pulpit for the week per month when the minister is off.

I've been through a decades long religious/spiritual journey which has seen me go something like christian-atheist-jew-buddhist/atheist-sikh-buddhist-hindu-sikh... I love parts of all of them, especially Sikhi, but there are aspects of them that I can either just not accept as doctrine, or cannot adopt to my life mainly because of cultural and life circumstances, or parts that are important for the religion, but I don't see as a crucial part, or beneficial part for me. I am starting to realize that if I wanted to put a label on, or attend a congregation it is probably UU. I always wanted a religion though to be practice whole heartedly and be part of and I feel like UU is just religious pluralism (not that there is anything wrong with that!!!), but it is me also acknowledging I will never be part of a unique religious identity and it's a little challenging to accept. Anyone else go through things like this? Also, Do most UU people tend to have like a central religion they read/practice most, but don't take it 100% and get inspiration from other areas?

Hi everyone,

Anyone here active in the studio city CA UU community? My wife and I have a new child and I’m looking to get into some sort of local community. Coming from Catholicism, I’ve done some discerning for the last several years, reading several Baha’i texts and eventually A Chosen Faith, which really resonated with me.

I’m wondering what the vibe is like at UU Studio City and if it would be good for our new family. Looking forward to hearing from you!!

Would you say that UU and CUUPs are a safe-enough space for a Black female pagan/witch?

Would you say that UUers in general and even UU pagans specifically, regardless of race, are more likely to believe that Spirit has no race and thus be committed to strengthening Collective Consciousness?

I ask this as I am still debating as to whether or not I should give the seemingly nice, local pagan meetup +/- the local Unitarian Universalist congregation the “old college try.”

I am concerned I will find the same (or even worse) racist, exclusionary, and/or megalomaniac tactics I have encountered in other religious communities including Seventh-day Adventist Christian, non-denomination Christian, African/Kemetic, and eclectic pagan spaces.

Hi all! I was raised Catholic, and have been looking for a church/faith that suits me for many years. Long story short, I’m agnostic now, but I really love the rituals of the Catholic faith. I don’t want to pass on the junky stuff from my faith to my child, but I do want to give her a community and sense of cultural identity. My question for any folks raised UU is, we’re you able to have a sense of identity in a church that does not have a creed/set of specific holiday traditions? (Also my apologies if my question is ignorant) Thank you in advance ☺️

Are politics inherently part of this churches culture? Is there an expectation of political homogeny? I support LGBBT rights, women's rights, racial justice, but I don't particularly want that to be a keystone of a place I'm going for a spiritual community. Also, I've looked through local church websites and there seems to be an anti police sentiment.

I have posted this in Christian Mysticism and was quickly downvoted. Thought maybe sharing here would be more fruitful. I am trying to return to my Christian roots having been heavily influenced by Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism and Sikhi. Considering UU are open to finding truth in multiple places I thought this may get good reception here and would be curious to see what the Christian leaning folks here think:

Recently I have been wanting to return to my Christian roots, but am still struggling with certain teachings which seem central to the church, but not really central to me (meaning I care more about how to live now, not what is to come in the future). Mainly the teaching of resurrection of the dead (not necessarily Jesus' resurrection, but our own), as well as the second coming. I've come to view these teachings symbolically, rather than literally, and just wanted to discuss it here to see if this is completely heretical and if I am just bending Christianity to fit my views, or if maybe there is some support for my beliefs, which it seems like there may be.

My interpretation of our individual resurrection is more that we symbolically die and are resurrected as Christ-like/God-like, realizing the divinity within ourselves and being the living embodiment of Christ. Jesus does speak about needing to lose oneself to then be a follower of him and so seems like giving up ones life steeped in egotism and selfishness and being resurrected as a selfless being that is the embodiment of Christ. Jesus' own resurrection is kind of a symbol of this - he goes through suffering, asks God why he has been forsaken, has some disciples turn on him (Judas, but also Peter in denying him) - I see this personally as a spiritual journey that I have found can have mental turmoil and cost losing friends, or at least the types of relationships you once had - then once you "die" and are resurrected you are similar to your former self, but completely changed to the point that some don't even recognize the new you like one of the disciples not recognizing Jesus after his resurrection. In addition to this, I think that the second coming had and is already happening and in motion. In a couple ways: personally, I see the second coming when personally you resurrect and embody Christ - Christ then is living here on Earth through you. More broadly, I see the second coming as Christ living on in the church and its followers and the spread and growth of the church following the destruction of Jerusalem.

So, that is how I am realizing the resurrection and second coming. This seems, for me at least, to be a much more beneficial and healthy way to view these concepts. It gives me hope of real change to be realized in this life and rather than waiting around for Christ to return it calls on me to "Wake up" and accept Jesus into my life meaning that I lose myself and live as one with Christ. Curious to see what others think of this. Am I just batty and probably need to stop trying to be Christian because I'm perverting the teachings, or am I onto something that maybe has some legitimacy in Church history? Seems like St. Augustine interpreted some of revelation this way, but that's just my limited understanding from some brief readings.

Thanks in advance for the comments and feedback.

Paradigm shift in biology

https://www.simplypsychology.org/Kuhn-Paradigm.html

Scientists accept the dominant paradigm until anomalies are thrown up. Scientists then begin to question the basis of the paradigm itself, new theories emerge which challenge the dominant paradigm and eventually one of these new theories becomes accepted as the new paradigm.

Magister colin leslie dean has destroyed your biology with one sentence

you accept species

you accept species hybridization

thus

species hybridization-anomalies- contradicts the notion of species-thus making evolution ie evolving species nonsense

thus

a paradigm shift is required to take account of the fact that species and evolution are in fact nonsense

So why have no biologists in says the last 150 years seen the obvious which the Magister proves

evolution is nonsense ie evolving species because species is nonsense because of species hybridization so what is a species

Scientific reality is textual

http://gamahucherpress.yellowgum.com/wp-content/uploads/Scientific-reality-is-textual.pdf

or

https://www.scribd.com/document/572639157/Scientific-Reality-is-Textual

just a definition

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/species/

"A species is often defined as a group of organisms that can reproduce naturally with one another and create fertile offspring"

but

but species hybridization contradicts

that

https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2019.00113

"When organisms from two different species mix, or breed together, it is known as hybridization"

"Fertile hybrids create a very complex problem in science, because this breaks a rule from the Biological Species Concept"

so the definition of species is nonsense

note

when Biologist cant tell us what a species is -without contradiction thus evolution theory ie evolving species is nonsense

evolution is a myth

I really like my minister, but we had a bad conflict recently and I'm not sure how to work through it.

I don't want to get into the whole issue because my question is about rebuilding trust.

To try to condense it, I'll say I was in a very stressful situation and my minister deferred to a policy I didn't know about. The end result was that I lost a support and went into full PTSD over all of it. I set up a zoom call for tomorrow, and I'll try to explain the context and that it was a PTSD trigger. I'll listen to her as well, of course.

But I don't know how to move on because I feel so betrayed. Instead of taking the time to understand, I felt like she deferred on policy that seemed arbitrary, and she was defensive and inflexible. I'd never seen those traits in her.

​

I don't want to still be mad and hurt, but I am. She can't turn back time and is rigid on this issue, so in a way it seems pointless to talk knowing there won't be resolution. But I would like us to be on better terms.

What would you do?