Archives: Services

The Lucky People

What does it mean to be lucky people?  Is good fortune a creation we can bring to pass on our own or are we far more dependent on external circumstances? Rev. Phyllis B. O’Connell recently retired from parish ministry after 25 years.  She served the Melrose UU Church for ten years and the UU Society … Continue reading The Lucky People

The Present Moment: Everything Will Change Again

Unitarian Universalism Today: the state of our faith and its yearning for wholeness.   In 1997, the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly passed the Business Resolution calling upon the Unitarian Universalist Association, in all its many forms, an anti-racist and multi-cultural organization. In time, that phrase “anti-racist and multi-cultural’ was a broadened to be “anti-racist, anti-oppressive, … Continue reading The Present Moment: Everything Will Change Again

Cleansing

Diverse paths in spiritually coming to terms with the pain of personal transgressions The Rev. Dr. Robert R.N. Ross is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister in Final Fellowship who is also accredited by the UUA to work specifically with congregations in transition.  He has recently been a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and the Graduate … Continue reading Cleansing

The Great Reformation

That sustaining, creating, and transforming current that carried Unitarian Universalism through the 60’s seems to have vanished in the early 1970’s. But it re-emerged from a new source: the Women’s Reformation of Unitarian Universalism. It changed almost everything. The Women’s Reformation   In January 1970, right at the beginning of the decade of the 70’s, … Continue reading The Great Reformation

The Inner Quest 

All around the world and throughout all of our history, human beings have found the metaphor of a journey, quest, or adventure especially well-suited for describing the process of coming to understand one’s own self. We find the language of ‘journey’ in myths and legends, religion and spirituality, and even in modern traditions like psychoanalysis. … Continue reading The Inner Quest 

Dancing in Rhythm with the Times

In 1961, the Unitarians and the Universalists merged into the present Unitarian Universalist Association. It was also the year that John Kennedy was inaugurated as President of the United States, proclaiming that “the torch has been passed to a new generation.”  The first sit-ins resisting segregation at lunch counters had just begun the previous summer. … Continue reading Dancing in Rhythm with the Times

Marching to the Beat of A Different Drum

Contemporary Unitarian Universalism was formed during the 1940’s and 1950’s. Some of the very eldest UU’s still remember those days. It was during these decades that Unitarianism shifted from thinking of itself as “the most enlightened wing of the Protestant Establishment” to staking out an identity as religious non-conformists at odds with the religious mainstream. … Continue reading Marching to the Beat of A Different Drum