The debate that raged inside my head and my heart these last few weeks over whether or not to give this sermon has been fierce. Most of you who have known me for any length of time know that sustained personal attention is something I avoid with a passion - yet there is no [...]
I am told that the Boston Globe recently highlighted the idea that November is a month during which there is a particular focus on dying and death - which is hardly surprising here in the northern parts of the northern hemisphere, since all around us nature is shutting down. The month begins with All Saints [...]
Some years are trickier than others when it comes to giving voice to the spirit of gratitude people are feeling, or should be encouraged to feel, for being favored with all the blessings that abound.
Imagine my trying to ascertain a common spirit among us. I think of those who you who got out of the [...]
I apologize to those who find November gray and somber enough without sermons about death and dying, even if that is the message of the season here in New England, with the leaves losing color and falling, and fiercer frosts convincing even the hardier perennials that the season is over.
Still, I don’t think the season [...]
It is hard to distill a religion of any complexity whatsoever into a bumper sticker. It is hard enough to say what a religion is about in what is called an “elevator speech,” what you could tell someone in the thirty-five seconds between the first floor and the fourteenth. The president of the Unitarian Universalist [...]
I don’t know if you have noticed, but for over a year the Newcomers Committee has arranged to have a really nice column in the Wayland paper every week about the upcoming Sunday’s service and other church activities. I am grateful, and I know many of you are as well.But it does mean that I [...]
If you are new to this area, you may have been surprised that in the spring, there is some flooding. River Road is impassible for a time most years. You may not yet know that some years, the waters can even overflow Route 20. During one such flood of Wayland Center, I went up into [...]
Have you ever had someone suggest that our religion doesn’t have what a religion is supposed to?
Well, not every religion even attempts to provide the same things. As Wilfred Cantwell Smith wrote, “…The various religious traditions of the world differ not only in content but in form; not only in the answers they give, but [...]
The director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York recently said of one of the Museum’s supporters, David Rockefeller, no less, the former, long-time president of the museum’s Board, “He’s the lifeblood of the institution. Of course, his benefactions range from the hundred million he just pledged us to the great Cezanne [...]
“Where Did We Come From? Who Are We? Where Are We Going?” [The text of the preceding choir piece] Those of us in the Boston area have the good fortune to have the painting of that title hanging at our own Museum of Fine Arts, arguably the most important work of Paul Gauguin - he [...]
This is the Sunday, the day before Memorial Day, when I recall some of the accomplishments of some of the people who have died since the last service of this sort. As Emerson said in his Divinity School Address, “Society lives to trifles … when [people] die and we do not mention them.”
Lucky for me, [...]
This is the Sunday, the day before Memorial Day, when I recall some of the accomplishments of some of the people who have died since the last service of this sort. As Emerson said in his Divinity School Address, “Society lives to trifles … when [people] die and we do not mention them.”
Lucky for me, [...]