I have been involved in my wife's UU church for a couple of years now. And I never really did understand what would make such a church tick. I've read the seven principles. I've asked and gotten the standard answers. But I still thought "People who believe in everything really don't believe in anything", or "it is all just intellectual".

Then sitting in the last plenary session of GA I heard something that made a difference. The moderator was talking about issues of raceism. And she talked about finding the point of pain and then staying in it. Staying there until ....

One of the reasons that I am a UU is that I hold a Universalist belief that, if there is religious truth to be found, it can only be found through the confluence of human discourse and ideas... That revelation will happen, sometimes through inspiration, but also through seeing trends in the thought of yourself and others.

On my own discussion forum, we have recently been discussing morality and the Golden Rule, and I desired the opinions of my fellow UU's on the idea of how, what I term as Reciprocal Morality, actually represents a Universal principle.

In recent days, I have been pondering the idea of “evangelizing” Unitarian Universalism, and why we as UU’s are often likely to be “in the closet” about our faith, even when we are public about so many other things. We can often be “out” when it comes to liberal politics, but “in” when it comes to liberal faith.

And some of us have trouble telling the difference between Liberal Faith and Liberal Politics.

OK, I've been thinking about this ever since I had trouble finding writings/sermons about the Beloved Community online. I don't know about you guys but this is a term that I have heard used a lot in UU circles, yet there is very little said about what the Beloved Community is (and is not). I've heard it used so many times as our goal, "working towards the Beloved Community" that I started to sarcastically refer to it as "UU Heaven." Sounds great in theory but it will never work in practice. Then I found this web site that describes the Beloved Community as Dr. King envisioned it:

In the United States, an unknown arsonist recently destroyed small churches. In Iraq, Sunni-Shia enmity has destroyed the Golden Mosque of Samara and othe mosques. I believe that people of faith need to look carefully at these losses of holy space, for holy space is space where people can become whole

We covenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

Q: What is the basis for that inherent worth and dignity? Why do we have it? Why is it inherent?

Q2: If it is inherent, can it every be lost? How do evil and sin relate to this inherent worth and dignity?