My wife and I have been involved in a UU community in Cincinnati since November 2024, but I've been "UU adjacent" for a long time - reading publications, listening to musicians, absorbing the culture. I have a hard time imagining our lives in the last 8 months without this UU community.

One of my primary inspirations has been musician Jim Scott. I first heard him as part of the Paul Winter Consort back in the late 1970s. His solo recordings have been a part of my library for many years, and we are using some of his songs now in our UU community. (He has a number of songs in "Singing the Journey" and the new virtual hymnal.) He's continues to be a voice for progressive beliefs and practices, especially focused on environmental causes. I wanted to share his new presence on Substack that I wanted to share - hopefully that is allowed.

https://jimscott.substack.com/

"What do you believe in"? Is a possible question/response "What don't I believe in?"

My wife and I are atheist, but have gotten there via a lot of church background/baggage. We just found our way to a lay-led UU gathering in the months since the November election (after zero church involvement for over 15 years). We have close friends with similar beliefs, but I think our overall community (neighborhood, town, city) is more religious (aka American Christian) than not - a lot of that via culture and family transference.

I sometimes find myself answering a hypothetical question I would expect (and have occasionally gotten) about what "you people" believe. I'm also a pretty militant realist/empiricist. If there's not proof for something, or an identifiable path for exploration, I'd rather leave it unanswered for now, rather than waste time and energy speculating. My primary beliefs and counterpart to "religious inspiration" mostly come from moderately popular writings on topics such as astrophysics, evolution, biology, and technology. A lot of more subjective ideas come from music. I think a common opinion from people outside of liberal religion think we don't believe in much. My response at this point in time is, "I believe in soooo much stuff" I can barely contain the enthusiasm. I guess that's ecstatic scientific joy or something.

Inspiring quote for the day from Neil de Grasse Tyson:

I know that the molecules in my body are traceable
To phenomena in the cosmos
That makes me want to grab people in the street
And say, have you heard this??