WELCOME HOME
Posted on May 27, 2020
You may have noticed some changes at UU@Home!
While the vision of UU Faith Formation practices for home began almost 12 years ago, the need for these resources has never been greater. My hope is that as this new version of UU@Home continues to take shape, you will find something to help you on your journey and to help you stay connected to your faith community.
You may notice that not all things are in place just yet– stay tuned over the next weeks and months as we continue to add more to the site.
Here are a few tips and tricks for your UU@Home experience:
Build community: consider setting up a monthly or weekly virtual meeting with friends to check-in about new at-home practices.
Share Your Experiences: Share pictures and reflections about your experience implementing at-home practices in the comments or send them to UUatHome@gmail.com.
Contribute: Whether you are using these resources as a congregation or individually, please consider financially supporting this work by looking for links at the bottom of each post. Please remember to credit the appropriate contributor each time you share work. Are you interested in being a UU@Home contributor? email UUatHome@gmail.com.
5 Smooth stones
Posted on April 29, 2020
The stories we share as Unitarian Universalists come from so many different sources– today, I share a story with you about a Unitarian named James Luther Adams. He was born in the early 1900s, and he was a minister and a teacher who spent a lot of time studying lots of different stories and ideas.
One of the stories that James was interested in was a story in the Hebrew scriptures about David and Goliath. David was the youngest and smallest of many brothers who lived in a land called Israel, and they lived at a time when the Philistine army was getting ready to invade, and their army included a great, big giant, named Goliath.
Now it happened that now a single soul in Israel thought that it was possible to defeat this giant–except for David. So David volunteered, as he prepared to meet the giant, he thought about what it is he would need and decided that rather than a big suit of armor, what he required was something small, something that he could keep close at hand. So he stopped at the river bed and found 5 smooth stones and put them in a pouch– and it was with these that he defeated Goliath.
This story made James Luther Adams think; he thought: even if we have never had to face actual great, big giants like Goliath, sometimes the things that face us in our lives feel like great, big giants and sometimes these things might make us feel scared. So he wondered– what 5 things do we all need to keep at our sides, as religious liberals, when we feel like the way forward is impossible? And so, he wrote about the 5 smooth stones of Liberal Religion.
Read MoreHow the Forest Came to Be
Posted on April 28, 2020
Once there was a mouse who loved his home in the forest.
On warm, summer days, he would go for long walks through the woods; the canopy of the great, tall, trees providing shade from the hot sun above. In the fall, mouse would scurry through the fallen leaves along his path, listening as the leaves rustled and crunched. In the winter, mouse would occasionally venture out to listen as the trees creaked and groaned in the winter wind.
But mouse’s favorite season was springtime.
The ground that was once frozen was now soft and squishy, and tracks of friend and foe were easy to spot in the mud.
The forest floor, while still scattered with gray, soggy leaves, became spotted with little specks of green pushing through the soil.
The towering trees, whose branches were covered in buds, seemed ready to burst open at any moment. Mouse loved the trees best of all. And so every spring, mouse would wander through the woods, and stop at each great, enormous tree waking up from its long, winters nap and wonder, “how did you get here? Where did you come from? How could something so giant and magnificent just…be?”
Read MoreA Story for All Ages
Posted on December 24, 2016
This is a story that begins, not once upon a time and far, far, away, but one that takes place in homes all over the world, and right here, right now.
And how does it begin?
With people gathered together and a spark, the striking of a match, a cloud of sulfur, a flame that erupts from nothingness into suddenly being. The candle is lit, the lights are dimmed, and a small, curious voice breaks the solemn silence on this holiest of nights and asks, as children often do, “Why? Why do we light candles tonight?”
The child’s words seemed to hang in the air forever as the adults in the room desperately search their own memories—what is that story again? What words shall we use? What are the most important parts of the story to share with the next generation? And then it occurs to the elders: they don’t remember hearing these stories for the first time, or what words were used, or even who told them.
The stories are just part of them, the stories are in their bones.
Read MoreWhen Tragedy Strikes
Posted on October 24, 2014
A couple of years ago, news broke of a tragic shooting in Colorado. Saddened and distraught, I started looking for resources aimed at parents, like myself, who were searching for ways to help their kids process the news of this unthinkable event. So I searched. And I found a few good resources and put them together in a short post.
Then the next tragedy struck. So, again, I searched and I added a few more resources to the list. Then the next… and the next. In fact, every time news of a shooting in our country has occurred, more and more resources have become available and the list in this post has become longer and longer.
While it is wonderful that there are so many great articles, books, and videos available to parents, the length of this list pains me. Each time I revisit this post I find myself confronted by the ugly thought that perhaps one day I will apathetically skim past these breaking news stories and choose to no longer add to this list out of a sense of complete hopelessness. What other tragedies, I wonder, do I already neglect to make lists for, neglect to help my children process, forgetting that they may see my indifference as acceptance? Most of all, I wonder if the world will allow my children’s hearts will be soft enough to feel the sting of senseless violence or if they will grow to no longer take pause if they continue to be surrounded by stories of children being murdered in their own backyards.
And so, I offer this list to you again, but this time with the recognition that our job is not to help our children become immune to the sadness of tragedy. Instead, let us help them feel secure with them knowledge that they are loved and cherished; let us model for them a reverence for life, and open their eyes wide to injustice, and also remind them to look for the heroes who bring us hope.
Read More
UU@Home Conversations
uuathome.com 