June 2012
98 posts
4 tags
“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that...”
– Rachel Carson, Sense of Wonder, p. 35
“To begin each day as if it were opening for the first time into the freshness...”
– Max Kapp, Earth’s Common Things: Lenten Manual 1941 (Unitarian Universalist, minister, educator)
8 tags
Digital Steeples, Digital Sanctuaries
One of the traditions my own denomination, Unitarian Universalism, cherishes is our tradition of theological innovation and adaptation. As economies and ecologies, scientific understanding and liberation movements have changed, so has my faith community, sometimes leading, sometimes following. Being open to what’s new for faithful people is the first of the five foundational practices for liberal...
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“Hatred never ceases by hatred
But by love alone is healed.
This is the ancient...”
– The Buddha
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Questions for Faithful People
Faith communities are both communities of worship and reverence and communities where we learn how to be faithful people. How do faithful people respond to a family in crisis? How do faithful people welcome strangers? How do faithful people engage respectfully with differences? How do faithful people attend to when we hurt one another, to legacies requiring reconciliation, to bullying and greed...
“Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the...”
– James Russell Lowell (Unitarian, poet, critic, editor, diplomat)
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“Caregiving consecrates life by nurturing a person’s ability to reach out.”
– Beth Witrogen McLeod, Caregiving: The Spiritual Journey of Love, Loss & Renewal p. 214
“We cannot too constantly remember that prayer is a spirit not a form. It is not...”
– E. H. Chapin, Discourses on the Lord’s Prayer (1850) p. 203-204 (Universalist, minister)
6 tags
Faithing Publicly
How does your faith tradition teach generosity, a genuine interest in and compassion for other people, gratitude, and tending to wisdom and reverence?
The best practices of social media are the sorts of practices faith communities I know have been seeking to teach for ages and ages: generosity, caring, giving thanks, acting for mercy and for peace, seeking wisdom, engaging in multifaith dialogue...
3 tags
“Those who deliberately refuse to repent sin continually; those who sin without...”
– Ilias the Presbyter, Philokalia
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Microlearning for Maximum Faithing
Yes, there are people using social media to share their little sighs and their daily candy consumption, just like, before private telephones, folks used to hang out on the party line and gossip and listen in to their neighbor’s business. But if we can learn about how many candy bars a person consumed in a day, we can also learn about other things. Social learning is a life-long educator’s dream:...
“Energy, even like the biblical grain of mustard-seed, will remove mountains.”
– Hosea Ballou (Universalist, minister)
1 tag
“No man can be happy without imparting a share of happiness to others; no man can...”
– James Eddy, Thoughts on Religion and Morality, p. 40 (Unitarian, Free Religious Movement, entrepreneur, engraver, art curator, abolitionist, temperance advocate, social reformer)
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“…reverence is the recognition of something greater than the self —...”
– Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith p. 20
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“Service is the rent we pay to be living. It is the very purpose of life and not...”
– Marian Wright Edelman
“They tell you the poet is useless and empty the sound of his lyre
That science...”
– Bernard O’Dowd, “The Poet” (Rationalist, Free Religious Fellowship, Theosophist, activist, anarchist, poet, educator, journalist)
“The fireflies, twinkling among leaves, make the stars wonder”
– Rabindranath Tagore, Fireflies (Brahmo Samaj, reformer, nationalist, author, poet)
9 tags
