Filed by Chelsea at 11:05 am under Religion, The South
2 Comments

Tuesday, 5 February 2008, was Mardi Gras.
You know, the holiday where a million tourists descend upon New Orleans to drink themselves into oblivion and commit random acts of nudity for the price of crappy plastic necklaces? It’s all about decadence and exposure and making a fool out of yourself before the church-imposed wasteland of Lent, right?

Well, kind of. Not really.
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Filed by Bil at 11:28 pm under Religion, Shameless Plugs
3 Comments

See if you can figure out what it is.

A Joy Filled and Kingdomized New Year

This is a reading of a spam message that somehow found its way to the tech support queue where I work. I can’t even tell you how much joy it brought to my day, though perhaps not in the way that the author intended. I thought I needed to share it.

Filed by Bil at 9:53 pm under Fightin' Words, Humanism, Love
1 Comment

We’ll start with the shoes.

I don’t really have that much to say about my shoes, other than it had been over a year since I had my own (functioning) pair of Converse All-Stars, but thanks to a Christmas miracle, I am once again strapped in canvas and rubber, burning down highways and ready to kick ass at a moment’s notice. Life is a thousand times better. These shoes will make 2008 SO much better. This pair especially, the first after a dark age in my life, will not only get me around, they will serve as a symbol that my spirit is running strong. When there is a roadblock, they will make a brief squeak on the floor and we’ll all just pick right up again, fast as before. In fact, these shoes will probably help me fly. Literally.

And speaking of Christmas miracles, several orphans in Chicago had a VERY merry Christmas this year thanks to my place of work and a little bit of war – penny wars, to be exact. Much of the credit of the success goes to my team, I might add.
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Filed by Trevor at 6:24 am under Atheism, Fightin' Words, Pop Culture, Religion, Social Issues, UU
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“Sure, I know I sound like a reincarnation of a flower child, but really, do we have to be so crass during the Christmas season?” — Roland Martin

I’ve kept silent up until now regarding the apparent controversy of preferring “Happy Holidays” to wishing “Merry Christmas” to the odd passerby, choosing instead to grab a front-row seat to Bill O’Reilly’s yearly frothing about the “War on Christmas” and other such nonsense. Frankly, I find the phrase useful since I encounter many people from varied religious backgrounds on a daily basis, as we all do. For example, if I know someone is an observant pagan, Jew, Muslim, or Christian, I will tailor my greeting accordingly, but one can hardly feign such intimate knowledge of the random strangers we encounter; “Happy Holidays” both conveys the spirit of “Merry Christmas” while acknowledging the existence (and validity) of a great many other religious holidays occurring around the same time. Thus, I find that those who take issue with this greeting are themselves going out of their way to be offended — not the opposite.
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Filed by Stephen at 8:06 am under Humanism, Religion, The Arts
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Snowfall –
Blanket of silence and cold descending
On the world, destroying, preserving,
Beautiful and terrible.

In the darkness and drought
Of life and love that is Winter
We search for a flicker
Of Why in each other
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Filed by Stephen at 10:56 pm under Activism, Religion
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“Charity and personal force are the only investments worth anything.”
– Walt Whitman

The first year I was in Chicago, my heart broke at the homelessness everywhere. In my hometown in Ohio, there were no homeless people. At all. And in the “big city,” which was Akron, you’d see one or two homeless people a week. It just wasn’t heard of, and when you did see them, you were safely in your car so you didn’t have to make the hard choice to lie to them and say you don’t really have any spare change in your pocket.
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Filed by Stephen at 6:53 pm under Fightin' Words, General, Religion, The Arts, UU
9 Comments

The Absolute works with nothing.
The workshop, the materials
are what does not exist.
Be a spot on the ground where nothing is growing,
where something might be planted,
a seed, possibly, from the Absolute.
– Rumi

Since my becoming unchurched, I have had some time to think about what speaks to me spiritually. And I’ve come to no conclusions whatsoever. What I have learned, however, is what I don’t like.

One of them is bad sermons.

Sadly, if you’re a Unitarian Universalist, unless you’re attending a church that has hired an amazing minister that always knows just what to say to draw people in, or keep people around, or whatever that congregation wants to do at the time, you’re pretty well guaranteed to get bad sermons at least half the time. And that’s if you’re lucky.
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Filed by Devon at 12:03 pm under Atheism, Damn Hippies, Love
3 Comments

It’s not like I’ve been slacking. Really. I have not had a day off in WEEKS. And between the fact that I’m never home and the fact that when I am, I’m in the midst of a very moody, angry depression brought on by grief, I’ve not been much in the mood to write about anything. My cats have even noticed. They are cuddling more with me than usual. But maybe that’s just the fact that it’s getting cold.
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Filed by Stephen at 8:35 am under Religion, UU
8 Comments

…for there are those who find us wanting.

I Attend a Unitarian Universalist Service by D. J. McAdam

An enlightening article that I stumbled upon during my weekly crisis of faith.

Filed by Trevor at 11:06 pm under Religion, Social Issues
1 Comment

In his latest post, Stephen once again touched upon something particularly relevant to recent events — in this case, Hatemail. As you will see below, a rather innocuous Myspace bulletin instigated a fairly intense discussion between a friend from college and myself. I’ve decided to post it here as well as on the Hatemail site because it not only outlines the deeper purpose of this project, it also deals primarily with the greater issue of forgiveness.

I’ve reprinted the conversation almost completely verbatim, save for changing her name and removing sensitive personal details from both sides of the dialogue. Discuss!
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