Last night, I tried to finish reading On Being Human, by Jennifer Pastiloff. I was more than a page into the last three pages, the very last chapter, when I just couldn’t read anymore. No, it wasn’t a brain aneurysm, or an emotional overload–it was time to make dinner for the big St. Faudrey’s Day* feast. […]

And in the din I found you, The God of my imagining You were, as Bonnie Raitt said of a lover, ‘every bit of him, and a whole lot more.’ I am awake to you, now. You are in the hand extended to the silly white dog with the brown patch around his left eye […]

Do you have any friends you haven’t met, like face-to-face? I remember having a pen-pal once when I was a kid and that was the closest I got to having friends I never met until about ten years ago, when I started blogging. There were a bunch of Unitarian Universalist ministers, seminarians, and just plain […]

Content Warning: Miscarriage . . . I don’t tell this story on its own. When I tell this story, it is as a piece of a litany of stories we lived through in 1996: a cross-country move with an infant, a toddler and two cats, joblessness, moving in with my mother-in-law with cancer, an unwanted […]

Maybe she was just tired. Holding up the ceiling and the ceremony and the secrets and the hegemony for 800 years very well might have been her undoing She is not mine. I do not claim her, having never been to witness the history and the holy, and, even still, I can hold the hurt […]

When my kids were little, I would pay a sitter to watch them so I could go somewhere else to write, supposedly without distraction. Just now, I handed my debit card over to my two adult children so they could go have brunch and leave me alone in my house. Like I told my friend […]

I forgot the first rule of woodworking: ventilation. It was too cold to go to the garage to stain the board I’ve been laboring over for at least a month, but I really wanted to do it. So I set up a makeshift staining stand in the basement and everything was going along nicely until […]

There is a cat standing on my legs, posing like a ram on a mountain ledge. Another one (cat, not ram), is snuggled into the blanket at the end of the couch, giving me side-eye as I move my feet to more comfortably accommodate the ram. We are jostling each other, these cats and I. […]

You can support Fresh in any way you find possible, but here’s one more thing to consider: part of the dream Fresh has is to create a system that starts with growing fresh food (especially mushrooms) on some land in Michigan while living frugally in the Airstream, but then connects people to the land and the food with healing retreats, and then spins out means of sharing the food (and its healing powers) with people in marginalized communities. If farming isn’t the thing that gets your debit card out, how about economic development? How about job training and skill-building development? Fresh wants to help people do nourishing work that involves all of this. You can read more on Fresher Together at the GoFundMe page.

This is my view this morning. From right to left, the beginnings of a sock, tucked into a variegated skein of yarn; my blue mug of coffee; Ursula K. LeGuin’s final book of poetry, So Far So Good; TV remotes buried under the book and on top of the printed instructions for that sock; and […]

I’m pondering the new year as the bells in the church behind my home tell me it is noon with the canned recording of “O little town of Bethlehem.” Sometimes I wonder what makes New Year’s Day such a thing to celebrate any more than the start of any other day. My friend Hannah posted a […]

Writing has taken a back seat to many things lately. Actually, writing has been the kid I forgot at home, lately. I can feel it when it has been too long. So today, in the spirit of early fall, I shall muck out my brain with the hopes of it fertilizing the things to come. Because I […]

I’ve been mulling over that old phrase about a high tide raising all boats. I’ve been thinking about the boats that are only good on dry ground because the owners couldn’t afford preventative maintenance, or about those who don’t own a boat at all. For the people for whom the high tide floods, not raises, […]

Congratulations to GLOW(Glorious Women of Wrestling) for their recent Emmy nominations. My daughter introduced me to GLOW on Netflix earlier this summer. She was in the middle of binge watching the second season when I sat down and pretty soon, I was hooked. The show follows a group of women and a few men who, […]

Earlier this year, or maybe it was last summer, I did a sermon at my home congregation wherein I shared the secret that consumed most of my life for the previous several years. I revealed the depth of my depression, a depth from which I finally had to admit out loud and to people that […]

This whole civility conversation makes me want to scream–in someone’s face. I’m not going to give you a full rant. I don’t have it in me today to do that. I’ll just pop into a few phrases about what is making me angry these days: children in cages not to mention not being cleaned or […]

We are meant to resist tyranny and fight inhumanity. We are, miraculously, wired that way. And so we fight with whatever tools we have, be they asking the chief liar of the liar in chief to leave our place of business, or surround members of the cabinet with cries of shame with the hope to awaken their own wiring for justice.

They are living it, every single day, wondering when the bullet in the Russian roulette of school shootings will pierce them. Whether these kids are physically harmed in these slaughters, they are wounded deeply by the fear they live with daily, and with the aftermath of seeing what they saw, survivor's guilt, and the replay in their heads of the day their friends were killed.

Maybe you don't want progress. Maybe you just want to be left alone to solve your own problems. Maybe you don't have that luxury anymore.

Nothing is more important than that, and nothing is more important than finally being able to say: I can't hide this anymore and I need you to love me anyway. That's vulnerability reaching out for radical love.

You deserved to live, Mr. Vassell. As did Alton Sterling, Trayvon Martin, Stephon Clark, and the list just grows. And until it stops, until mental health is a priority for everyone, and until police learn how to respond to a black people the way they respond to white people, until we all learn how to respond with civility and courage, I believe outrage will be my overriding emotion.

It is nearly 2:00 p.m. and I am crouched over my computer, still wearing my pajamas, still barefoot, even though the air is cold. I entered the worm-hole this morning. I came online with the intent of adding the audio of a worship service I gave recently to a blog post I put up a […]

Dear @Emma4Change, I want you and your friends in Parkland, and Maryland, and Chicago, and Sacramento, and everywhere gun violence has ripped a hole in the continuum of normalcy, I want you all to know that there are many adults out here who have your back. Not just your back, but are holding you tenderly […]

Be better at taking compliments, I told myself. Of all the things you can put on a New Year’s resolution, this was the one I chose. Say “thank you,” and shut up, is what I told myself. Because when people tell you that what you did or said was good or helpful and you dismiss […]

Make art. Make protest art. Make art that has no use other than to make you cry as you create. 

Way back in January, when I offered to fill the pulpit at my congregation on March 11, I had no clue I would be preaching on Daylight Saving day. But I did it. I preached about beginning again, in love, after the Litany of Atonement reading by Rev. Rob Eller-Isaacs, which is included in the […]

How do we come out of these moments with hope, when, as one of my favorite hymns says, "hope is hard to find"?

Perhaps we do need a wall. This morning, my first read of the day was by Bethany Webster on the mother wound in men and boys as the last link to understanding misogyny. I reposted it on my facebook page as something worth considering in light of the issues around violence against women, perpetrated more […]

As Unitarian Universalists, we try to live into this ideal of respecting people for the mere reason that they are. Ours is a faith of grace: we aspire to honor the "inherent worth and dignity of every person."

I bought a desk calendar, the big kind you can either use as a desk pad or put on the wall. This morning I downloaded all the appointments and commitments on my phone/computer calendar, and ones I’d scribbled in notebooks to my desk calendar with a nice gel pen. I forgot how these calendars count […]

He was the kind of outspoken man who wrote letters to the President and his representatives and stood up to the policies that criminalized blackness. ... He was the kind of man who would have a file with the FBI under Hoover. 

it made me think of those little advent stockings and the treats we stuffed into them. It made me think of all the intangibles I would rather put in my daughters' lives, not just for a day, but forever. So here is my advent list for my daughters:

Mitch McConnell says “I believe the women,” and I hate that I feel my body relax, when my brain is yelling, “about f@cking time!” But the body, she knows. She is the proof that men say they want, but don’t see because they are looking only at parts and not the whole; looking with scientific […]

I’m back in my couch today. It’s a sunny, but cold day, and I have pulled a blanket over me and one cat has crawled on that. I’m content right now, in a way I wasn’t when the couch seemed to be my 24/7 home. I have a warm cup of coffee, some seasonal candy […]

This is not a well-considered post, nor a well-manicured post, nor one where I think deep thoughts and posit them back for you all to chew on and consider and get back to me about it. This post is the spewing of shame that I’ve carried since I can’t remember when, carried in my bowels […]

Yesterday I rambled in body, doing physical things, like sorting the laundry, maybe even washing and drying a load or two, though the folding waits, as usual, like a child at the curb on their birthday for the parent who always says they’ll come but never do. I wandered in and out of rooms, though […]

There is a mosquito in my house, devouring my flesh one infinitesimal poke after another Along the hairline that area that is neither cheek nor chin neither scalp nor ear And on the back of my neck and inching down my arm leaving minute hickeys loving me, my body, my blood he cares not for […]

I licked chocolate pudding off the foil top while Lucinda Williams sang “Little Honey” and the sun faded behind a darkening cloud and the missing you feeling that sits always in some part of me let loose a happy melancholy that matched the taste of chocolate pudding and Lucinda’s sweet and sour sorrow Missing you […]

I believe in my daughters. I believe in their generation. I believe in the creativity and passion that keeps them going in the face of all the hate they have engendered for simply growing up in our houses, with our values, and in a society and economy that taught them to suck it up and accept less. And then they didn't.

And maybe you are doing all those things and I’m just missing it because your email subject lines TURN ME OFF. Darling, if you want to be in a relationship with me, you have to stop begging and demanding, in turns. We want the same things, but when you yell at me all the time, I just stop listening.

I've tried to tell my Senator, Todd Young, what the ACA has done for my family, but he's not interested in listening to constituents that don't agree with him. As one public figure might say, SAD! But I also know from friends who are solely self-employed that the ACA is not perfect. Premiums are too high because of the complete coverage offered. I get that. I understand that. I understand that the ACA is not perfect.

I know, I know–there are more important things to say today than what I am about to, but this is helping me exist in these awful and awe-filled times–but today I am totally in love with my curly hair. See this pic? That’s my hair after sleeping on it after washing it yesterday and letting […]

I’m happy to announce, bluntmoms has published one of my pieces. Find it here.  

At what point did I stop marveling at the abilities of my limbs to work in conjunction with each other to propel me up, over and forward. Or even backward. At what point did I lose joy in my body because it wasn’t “her” body. How old was I when self consciousness took over and I lost the ability to even dance like the leaves of the trees.

I came away from this book wondering all the ways I used shame as my children were growing up—shaming them, shaming myself, amplifying the “bad” behavior. It’s only recently, as my children have become women, that I recognize all the signs of ignoring the why while focusing on how that why manifests.

I remind myself as I type that that perhaps that is not all bad. Perhaps shredding a dream that left out more than it let in is the first step.

It was a chilly day for summer, but still I sat on the deck as the wind ruffled the pages of the book I was reading and tried (and failed) to keep the watermelon juice off the pages. I had cut the watermelon the way my mother always did: in half, then halving the half, […]

The crows woke me up this morning, yelling at each other from trees in my yard to those skimming the branches in the next door neighbor’s yard. It came to me, in that moment while I was waking, that this must be why a group of them is called “a murder.” I was certain they […]

So hot today. Sticky hot today. Hair not working hot today. Went outdoors and sweat so quick and then back inside where the air nearly froze my skin to my clothes. And back outside. Home again, to dry clothes and a blanket against the air conditioning. And then that rain. No wait. First there was […]

The bonfire was huge, lighting up our corner of the universe and the faces of the friends who gathered. But I didn’t take one picture. Earlier, when the sun was still up, but definitely at least at a 30 degree angle, there were more people than chairs, huddled around tables and make-shift conversation areas, laid […]

What’s beautiful here is a house whose furniture belongs in a house of old, old things and old, old people. Broken or nearly-so. Fragile fabrics, like thin skin, bruising at every brush of a knuckle or seemingly kind word. What’s beautiful here, where everything seems to be lightly stitched and held by twines and tufts […]

Lately, I’ve been feeling like I’m sinking. Not bobbing up and down like I’m treading life, nor even my own weird little breast stroke toward a known shore. Just sinking, a teensy bit here and a teensy bit there. I can feel the tug on my ankles, on my spine, and even, sometimes, at the […]

I came to my blog not to write about UULent, but to give voice to the panic that is arising within me as world leaders play chicken with the threat of nuclear annihilation. And then I peeked at the calendar where I wrote the topics that I have been ignoring for way too long. (Did […]

I didn’t see how my whiteness wore me like a protective bubble

Attached media: https://www.tinalbporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/My-whiteness.m4a

Today I put on the music and cleaned the kitchen: stove, microwave, oven and floor, even. Women sang to me today. They sang of broken hearts and broken homes, of hopes and dreams, and of purpose. I thought of all the women who have sung to me in my life, who have encouraged me, who […]

My engagement this week has been strictly political and passive. I have been watching cable news coverage of all of the news this week, so much so that yesterday I pulled the plug for a while and re-upholstered a chair. The chair reminded me of what I’ve not allowed myself to remember in a long […]

Today, my solitude came in the sound of blueberries gently popping in the heat of the oven, and then in the smell of meat, vegetables and sauce simmering, bubbling over the edge of the pan and leaving a sputtering mess.

I am a bit of a klutz. Part of it is a balance issue, but most of it is just from rushing to get a thing done that I don’t want to do in the first place, like, say, the dishes. Tonight was one of those nights. Washing the dishes that need to be hand-washed and […]

I didn’t take any photos, but today I took a walk through the wastelands. I hit a private milestone today, and afterwards, I went through some of my favorite haunts: vintage, thrift and antique stores. I should have taken a photo. Instead, I ran my hand along a table older than me, maybe even older […]

Last night I was sitting in the living room of a woman I’d never met before with about 10 other women I’d never met and it was a place bristling with energy. I only wish I’d thought to take a photo then. Two weeks ago, a small group of women decided to put on a […]

During my first cup of coffee, while I was sitting on the couch under two blankets, one cat walked toward me and settled in on my legs. Sometime after my husband refilled my cup, a second cat slunk up and decided that she, too, needed to be on me and took up residence on my […]

Peter Morales As religious people we have two essential tasks: we must offer sanctuary and preach our gospel. Peter Morales As religious people we have two essential tasks: we must offer sanctuary and preach our gospel.

On our last night in Tucson, we danced to a live band in a hotel ballroom and I was reminded how much we like to dance–and how seldom we take the time to do so. The crowd had dwindled by the time I kicked off my dress-up flip flops (how does anyone dance in flip […]

I’ve been ruminating on love today, a day where I am home alone with three cats who have been insisting, in turns, on being adored. But I went to the stored photos on my phone, thinking I could find a suitable selfie with my husband as my “love image.” And I did, but then I […]

I woke up thinking about Jesus. This is not typical for me. While I am participating in the Unitarian Universalist Lenten practice (#UULent), I must be as clear as possible: I do not identify as Christian. And, yet … I woke up thinking of Jesus. I wasn’t thinking of the things Jesus said. I was […]

I was getting ready to write about Surrender in the context of giving in to my chronic illness and the neediness of my cats, who surrounded me on the couch today, insisting that I lay low one more day after 10 days of travel. But then, I looked up and saw the snow coming down […]

It is very late here, right now. Others are observing lent by giving things up (like chocolate or alcohol) or adding things in (like exercise and sleep), but I am–as a non-Christian, non-observant type of person–going to try to follow the #UULent practice, as outlined, here: And now, I realize, I have started it out […]

Join me at a Poetry Reading and Open Mic event hosted by Community Supported Art Valparaiso: March 11 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. Red Cup Cafe in Chesterton, Indiana I would love to have your support and also to hear you read. Join me, it’ll be fun! Here’s a link to more information.

Oh, I’m super excited. Next Saturday, I’ll be joining some of the other authors in the Chicago-land area for an author meet-and-greet/book signing for Here In The Middle. If you are in the area, join us (details, below). If you can’t make it, here’s a slide show to share some of the people in the […]

B. Safe “B. Safe” she wrote on my wall as I ready myself to join a wall of resistance B. Safe. B. Safe. B. Safe. It rings in my ears almost like it always has B. Safe. Don’t ride the bus that late Don’t walk alone at night Don’t leave your drink Don’t wear that […]

A Toast for 2017 Use love this year. Be fearless in love as we usually are to our beloved, but be fearless also in loving the foreigner, the frightened, the false, and most especially to those who believe that they are foes. Fearless love is no silent witness, but an active leader in reshaping a […]

I carry the revolution wherever I go she’s with me urging me on to choose the good over the simple to choose the many over the one She urges me on in song and prayer and in the big yellow moon in a sky of slate and in the wind of resistance she begs me […]

Thai food is a treat almost as much as seeing you, my love, my baby, my friend. How lovely to look up from my noodles that slap my face and soil my shirt to see you there, looking back at me. Precious, rare, sweet and spicy– pad see ew and you.

I’ll sing a song to you tonight, a song of tender love; drowning the sound the old cat makes as he bathes and bathes and bathes. The song will be forever sweet, so sweet your lips ache and smack for chips in need of a sting like when I used to sing to you before […]

Fat cat on the counter knocking dirty dishes about as she searches for … god knows. Me on the couch knocking back nothing as I search for … god knows. People in a city room knocking on boundaries searching for safety or … god knows. A hard and bitter dread knocks around in my chest […]

I dream of skateboarding fluid and free like the young woman on Van Buren so many months ago How she used her legs as power and steerage on those tiny little wheels with her kohl-rimmed eyes and silver-studded ears and hair dyed what I now know is ombre–dark to light– sailing behind her and her […]

Today, I put my faith in stones, in earth, mesquite & clay in bats, heat & prickly pears I put my faith in a desert that knows how to return to itself. I put my faith in stones as I wonder what we have made of this earth and each other that knows as much […]

Here is the way of the world tension fright retreat complacency narrowness and then a bomb not nuclear but maybe molecular a bomb that makes smallness and complacency no longer tenable retreat then takes the form of the warrior knowing when to retrench in order to face the fright with the soul purpose creating more […]

You are the reason the world moves forward. You hold the traits of many a grandmother within your DNA, within your heart You have the kindness and tenacity and moral outrage of women in numerous lines stretching back through harrowing circumstances, and they survived, resulting in you. They live in you, with their fierce love […]

Yesterday’s poem opened with a pomegranate martini the deep hue, elevated by a thin, glass stem, a fluted triangle of red No. Yesterday’s poem didn’t open there. It opened decades ago in public places when it was revealed that my body was not my own to control Or did it open at the dawn when […]

Join us and @SideofLove next week in Phoenix, AZ! Check out the call to action from @BstandsforB #AZTippingPoint http://ow.ly/G7Z53056VXi 

Back in 2010, the New Humanism online magazine asked me if I’d write an article introducing Unitarian Universalism to Humanists. I sent them a text titled “Unitarian Universalism: A Church for Humanists?”, which they posted under the title “A Church that Would Have You as a Member”. 

So far so good. But recently it has been pointed out to me that the New Humanism web site no longer exists, and so links that used to point to my article now go to some page that’s trying to sell you something unrelated. I’ve googled lines out of my draft and haven’t gotten any hits, so I don’t think the article has moved somewhere else.

So I’m going to repost it here. I didn’t keep track of my agreement with New Humanism, so it’s possible I’m violating copyright by doing so. If so, and if that bothers whoever has a right to be bothered, they should just leave a comment. I’ll happily take this post down if you can point to somewhere else on the internet where the article can be found.

Bear in mind: What I have in my records is the article as I sent it to them, so it’s missing whatever edits they might have made, for better or worse. I fixed a mistake. (James Barrett died in 1994, not 2003.) Also, I’ve had to fix the links, which may not go to the original places anymore, but should go somewhere relevant. Anyway, here it is:

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A Church That Would Have You as a Member

Unitarian Universalism has long had a unique relationship with Humanism. What other religious group would showcase an outspoken atheist at its national convention, as the UUs did when they invited Kurt Vonnegut to give prestigious annual Ware Lecture at the General Assembly of 1984? UU Humanists have their own national organization (HUUmanists) with their own journal (Religious Humanism). In a 1998 survey, nearly half of UUs identified themselves as Humanists. New Humanism's publisher Greg Epstein spoke at the 2008 General Assembly, and has been invited to speak again in 2010.

Unitarians were largely responsible for the first Humanist Manifesto, and in his 2002 book Making the Manifesto, former Unitarian Universalist Association President (and the AHA's Humanist of the Year for 2000) William Schulz claimed that there were more Humanists in UU churches than in the American Humanist Association. 

Few other religious organizations have so consistently stood with Humanists in those battles where traditional morality and human rights take opposite sides. The lead plaintiffs in the Massachusetts same-sex marriage case took their vows at the Boston headquarters of the Unitarian Universalist Association, with then-UUA President William Sinkford officiating. About a hundred UU ministers -- a significant fraction of the entire UU clergy -- marched with Martin Luther King in Selma in 1965, and the murder of one of them (James Reeb) provided the white martyr that President Johnson needed when he urged Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act. Another UU (James Barrett) was murdered in 1994 while trying to protect an abortionist from religious-right violence. Linus Pauling, the two-time Nobel laureate who led an international groundswell of scientists pushing for a nuclear test-ban treaty (and co-founded the International League of Humanists) was a UU.

UU General Assemblies have passed more than a dozen resolutions supporting the separation of church and state. People for the American Way founder Norman Lear was another Ware lecturer in 1994, and a Unitarian Universalist (Pete Stark) was the first congressman to announce in public that he did not believe in God. 

Small wonder, then, that when Humanists go looking for a like-minded community -- a place to raise a child in humanistic values, look for social-action allies, solemnize a wedding or funeral, or perhaps just be reminded once a week that American consumer culture is not the only alternative to God -- the local Unitarian Universalist church is a prime option. There are about a thousand UU churches around the country (far more than Ethical Culture societies or other Humanist-friendly groups), and you can find at least one in every state of the union.

But is the humanist-community problem really that simple? Should we all just go join UU churches? As a Unitarian Universalist myself -- I am, in fact, more comfortable identifying myself as a UU than as a Humanist -- I wish I could make that sweeping recommendation in good conscience. But while many Humanists are happy as UUs, many others are not, and every year some number of UU-Humanists stomp out the door in disgust. 

So would you be a contented parishioner or a stomper-out-the-door?

*

Probably the best way to get a handle on UUism is to understand where it comes from. Believe it or not, the story (or at least the Unitarian branch of the UU family tree) starts with the Puritans. When they came to the New World in the 1600s, the Puritans weren't any kind of Humanists or even particularly liberal Christians. But Puritan churches lacked two features that anchor religious institutions against the progressive forces of evolution: They didn't have a creed and they didn't have a hierarchy. 

Each local congregation was supposed to read the Bible for itself, and no external authority could force a congregation to read it any particular way. Puritans believed that an external authority was unnecessary, because the Holy Spirit would keep pulling congregations back to Christian truth. What happened instead was that many of those congregations drifted towards liberalism. 

The drift was gradual, but over the centuries the small changes added up. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, people like William Ellery Channing started interpreting the Bible according to reason rather than tradition, and noticed that some of the more unreasonable Christian doctrines, like the Trinity, were also un-Biblical. So they affirmed the unity rather than the trinity of God and became known as Unitarians.

By the middle of the 19th century, Ralph Waldo Emerson was challenging the uniqueness of the Bible itself, which he saw as the record of one people's inspiration. People in other times and places (like us here and now) might hope for their own divine inspiration. And if that was the goal, why not look to Nature or Art rather than to scripture?

From there, each generation of Unitarians became a little more humanistic than the last, until by 1920 Unitarian minister Curtis Reese could announce to his colleagues (in public, no less) that God was "philosophically possible, scientifically unproved, and religiously unnecessary."

The fact that Cotton Mather was not rolling over in his grave was, in itself, powerful evidence against the Afterlife.

Reese-style Unitarian Humanism was controversial for about a generation, but by the time of the merger with the Universalists in 1961, it was the majority point of view in most UU churches. Since then things have drifted in a different direction, which we'll get to in a few paragraphs.

*

This unique history explains the otherwise bizarre combination of features you will find in a typical UU church. If you walk into a UU Sunday-morning service wearing earplugs, you might imagine you are in a Christian church. Families arrive together and children go to their classes. Adults stand up or sit down in unison. Sometimes they sing together or read something out of the hymnal together. There might be a choir and an organ. Candles might be lit. More often than not, a minister will stand up and give something that might be called a "talk" or an "address," but looks an awful lot like a sermon.

UUs might appear to be imitating the more popular Christian denominations, but they're not. Like the evolutionary product it is, UUism comes by all that stuff honestly through a common ancestor -- the same way that dolphins get their lungs.

No matter how naturally those Christian trappings arise, though, they provide the first test of whether you'll be happy as a UU: If they drive you crazy, independent of the the service's intellectual content, then your life as a UU will be difficult. Don't torture yourself.

But if you can tolerate the appearances -- I've grown to like them myself -- then take out your earplugs and listen. You'll hear a message that is not always capital-H Humanist, but is decidedly humanistic: People of goodwill need to look past their disagreements about metaphysics and start fixing the world -- where fixing means creating the conditions for human happiness and fulfillment here and now, not preparing our invisible souls for some higher happiness after death. The world's many scriptures are read for inspiration, not for authoritative pronouncements, so a UU discussion doesn't end when someone quotes the Bible. Prayer is a community meditation on human needs and desires, not a request for supernatural favors. Science's description of the physical world is accepted, and while UUs may at times be skeptical about whether technology is creating a Heaven or a Hell for us, they completely understand and sympathize with the scientist's desire to solve whatever earthly mysteries might be solvable. Unlike Bluebeard's castle, a UU universe has no locked rooms.

*

Before you say "sign me up," though, you need to consider the continuing drift of recent decades. There was a moment in the 1960s or 70s when Unitarian Universalism might have become an unofficial Church of Humanism. Humanism was clearly the dominant philosophy and all forms of traditional religion were in retreat. Many UUs felt that their centuries-long evolutionary journey was done now: They had shaken off the barnacles of orthodox Christianity and had arrived at Humanism.

Many still feel that way, but the community as a whole has gone in a different direction. Particularly among the ministry, there is a trend to view traditional religion not as an encrustation to be shaken off, but as a resource to be mined. The solid shore of Humanism is largely taken for granted, but from that shore many 21st-century UUs dive back into religion, to see what can be salvaged: community-building rituals, teaching stories, techniques of personal transformation, invocations of awe and wonder, and so on.

And so, religious words that once seemed to be on their way out -- worship, prayer, God, holy, sacred, salvation, divine, and many others -- are on the upswing again. If you tap on those words, if you ask what UUs are trying to get at by using them, chances are you'll hear an explanation largely compatible with an underlying Humanism. But if you view the words themselves as the carriers of a dangerous infection, you'll find today's UU churches to be unhygienic environments.  

Finally, UU congregations are tolerant to a fault. Literally anyone can show up at a UU church, believing any kind of craziness, and will not be told to go away. (In fact, if you take it on yourself to tell someone he or she doesn't belong, you are the one who is likely to be reprimanded.) If you mingle at the coffee hour after the Sunday service, you may run into astrologers, crystal gazers, faith healers, and new-agers of all varieties. They won't be anywhere close to the majority and most of them don't stay more than a few months. But if one such encounter ruins your whole week, you won't be a happy camper.

In short, if you are allergic to the appearances and words of traditional religion, Unitarian Universalism is not for you. If you are looking for a community of pure and unadulterated Humanism, you won't find it at a UU church.

But if you want to be accepted for the Humanist you are, without any fudging or hypocrisy, you can have that. If you want allies in the struggle to make the world a better place, you can find them. If you are stimulated by diverse points of view and enjoy engaging people who frame the world differently (but not too differently),  a UU church is a good place to meet them.

If you came to my church, you'd be welcome. You might be happy there, or you might not. Only you can judge.

The mums are out and a pumpkin or two and the tree right smack in front of the house sheds a dusting of large dark green and red. Red, white and blue signs line the road along the side of the lot, not far from where the swing set once sat on the other side of […]

Wherever they are they inhabit the space fully with their shoulders, legs, egos, words, even their hot breath and the smell of their cologne that comes in like whispers or blunt objects striking us blindly taking us back to the day of the first or second or maybe tenth assault on our being Signaling through scent […]

In the moment I wanted you to win I wanted you to have the victory you needed desperately it made you lose sleep, weight, yourself In the moment I wanted to hold your hand and tell you how right you are to feel exactly as you do But that moment has passed and I no longer […]

My fingers hurt in a new way today for reasons unknown after two days in a sick bed for a little, bitty cold or sinus infection or wee bit of a tumor, I told my children, to make them wail for me from the far reaches of their new lives Perhaps my fingers were curled […]

It’s a puzzle and some pieces have gone rogue like cowboys or minor superheroes hiding under carpets or placemats or ice cream bowls even under each other switching up their nubs and colors, sneaky four-cornered chameleons so the parts that made sense to each other no longer do either to each other, or the group huddled up […]

Baseball on the television frogs and crickets singing in through the open windows a blanket covering my feet a glass of very pulpy orange juice and a box of tissues My world is tiny today, not much larger than this cushion on the couch But it is glorious Especially because it is time to let […]

I don’t remember knowing that the last time I held my baby to my breast would be the last time I don’t think I did know I think it just occurred and weeks or maybe days later I realized we were done. It felt that way today Alone in the house nursing a cold instead […]

Tucked up in the letter “a” on the neon “beauty” sign @ the 24-hour drug store the grass pokes out and would be enough lined with errant receipts and candy wrappers but with the red- lit heat, 24/7 how comfy you must be, neon baby

Be silent and let your heart breathe Again and again like shampooing like weeding like breathing, itself repeat, as necessary it is always necessary Be silent and let your heart breathe

Grateful to @ignitekindred and @SideofLove for organizing tonight's event! We ready. pic.twitter.com/L1OTaM0Cee

The Sheets are rumpled up hefted from the drier where they sat and cooled and never ever were ironed Looking like the furrow on my mother’s brow or the laugh lines at my father’s temple or the weathered skin on the back of my hand Never smooth never flat like the aprons my grandmother wore […]

cheers to you this and every night we’ve shared, cheers to a life well-loved

For #WhatCanWeDoWednesday check out episode 3 of @SideofLove's Fortification https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-3-reina-gossett/id1144982373?i=1000375851672&mt=2 …

I’m longing, again Longing, and my heart’s not yet sure Is it family I seek? a caramel cupcake? or a quiet place to think? I’m longing again and still for all the things ephemeral Oh, Autumn, it’s you who whispers in my heart be quick you say act now you moan urging me to wallow in what […]

I tangle my tongue trying, trying, trying, to let loose words like banners announcing undying allegiance to justice and then I remember it’s not about me and there my tongue is loosed but silent

If I follow the line from my door to your harbor one foot after the other striking pavement heel to toe heel to toe heel to toe the echo thudding against my ribs my skull as I pace myself to you What is the strength of your sanctuary? Will it wall off the wolves who gnaw […]