Rabban Simeon ben Gamliel whose words are at the heart of the piece the choir just sang, was a Jewish sage and leader who lived a little less than 2,100 years ago. Rav Muna, the other rabbi quoted in the choral piece, was one of the two rabbi who edited an early version of the Talmud, […]

The theme this month is Awe. It is a grand thing, awe. The very nature of awe is that it defies words. So this brings a dilemma of how to talk about it. So, I decided to break it down into five explorations to share with you this morning: Awesome, Awh! Aaaahhh, Shock and Awe, […]

It was just after 6:00 in the evening on Thursday, April 4th.*  The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had arrived in Memphis just the day before.  His plane out of Atlanta had been delayed because of a bomb threat, but he’d made it there in time to speak as scheduled at Bishop Charles Mason Temple.  The address […]

There is a story in the Hebrew Scriptures about a man named Nehemiah.  You might be expecting me to tell the story of Queen Esther and how she outed herself as Jewish just after the King declared his intention to exterminate all of the Jews in his kingdom, saving her people.  That’s the story that’s the basis of Purim, which was […]

What makes you feel at home?  What makes you feel welcome? That’s not a rhetorical question.  Really … what makes you feel welcome and at home? I read an article this week in which the author pondered this question.  She came to the conclusion that she felt most at home, most welcome, when the place looked like someone lived […]

INTRO We are just a week and half away from the first day of spring.  The world around us is doing its annual transformation.  And we humans have a chance to think about transformations in our lives, also.  The butterfly is a class example because of its change from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to […]

Langston Hughes wrote “I Dream a World” in 1929.  34 years before the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously talked about his dream in front of approximately a quarter of a million people at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. Another 49 years would pass before the UUA published the Tapestry of Faith curricula, “Building the World We Dream About.”  There’s a whole lot of […]

The choir just sang what is easily one of the most recognizable hymns ever composed.  (And the arrangement was by our own Scott DeVeaux.)  “Amazing Grace” was written in the mid-1700s by a preacher named John Newton.  As a young man Newton served as a mate on a slave ship where he, “gained notoriety for […]

Whether we call it “Chinese New Year,” the “Spring Festival,” or the “Lunar Festival,” this major Chinese celebration (which began this past Tuesday and will continue on through a week from this coming Wednesday) is a really, really big deal.  It’s celebrated by more than 20% of all the people in the world – that’s something […]