Question of the day

What makes love more important than doctrine and how do we nurture the right focus?

When You Try to Change People That’s Not Love, It’s Domination

By Broderick Greer, "When You Try To Change People That's Not Love, It's Domination" on the On Being blog on 10/27/17

"Public theology is at its best when it creates the space necessary for people of various gender identities, religious affiliations and non-affiliations, ethnicities, and economic levels to be known as their full selves, not pushed into a mold not meant for them. It is being less concerned about finding surface-level common ground than about holding space for people’s unique experiences of divinity and humanity."

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Editor's note:
What I have learned in life of 71 years is that love comes in many forms. The form is not what is important or significant, the love is.

Public theology is creating the places and the connections where this love can manifest.

Standing on the side of love is a vision for a way of life

Religion is based on tradition and doctrine. Spirituality is based on experience and love. Which do you prefer?

It might be asked, "Can I have both?" The answer at first, if one is reasonable, appears to be "yes," but in practice love must trump tradition and doctrine every time for an authentic spiritual life. Jesus said that the way to heaven is "to love as I have loved." What did Jesus mean by that?

Jesus came to eschew tradition and doctrine in favor of love and they killed him as a threat to the organizations of the day. Jesus' life teaches us that we can't have both. There is only one choice, and He clearly tells us it is love. You will find peace when you chose rightly, chose love.

Unitarian Universalism has a slogan, "Standing on the side of love." This isn't just about social justice issues, this slogan is a vision for a way of life. The slogan captures the message of Jesus and many other enlightened beings.

Question of the day.

What is the "mighty cloud of witnesses" on which we stand? Name the names of people in your cloud.

Creating the beloved community - Come By Here, Lord

From Krista Tippett's interview with Dr. Vincent Harding in 2011 and broadcast on 11/10/16 in her On Being show on Is America Possible?

Whenever somebody jokes about “Kum Bah Ya,” my mind goes back to the Mississippi summer experience where the movement folks in Mississippi were inviting co-workers to come from all over the country, especially student types, to come and help in the process of voter registration, and Freedom School teaching, and taking great risks on behalf of the transformation of that state and of this nation. There were two weeks of orientation. The first week was the week in which Schwerner and Goodman and their beloved brother Jimmy were there. And it was during the time that they had left the campus that they were first arrested, then released, and then murdered.

The word came back to us at the orientation that the three of them had not been heard from. Bob Moses, the magnificent leader of so much of the work in Mississippi, got up and told these hundreds of predominantly white young people that, if any of them felt that at this point they needed to return home or to their schools, we would not think less of them at all, but would be grateful to them for how far they had come.

But he said let’s take a couple of hours just for people to spend time talking on the phone with parents or whoever to try to make this decision and make it now. What I found as I moved around among the small groups that began to gather together to help each other was that, in group after group, people were singing “Kum Bah Ya.” “Come by here, my Lord, somebody’s missing, Lord, come by here. We all need you, Lord, come by here.”

I could never laugh at “Kum Bah Ya” moments after that because I saw then that almost no one went home from there. They were going to continue on the path that they had committed themselves to. And a great part of the reason why they were able to do that was because of the strength and the power and the commitment that had been gained through that experience of just singing together “Kum Bah Ya.”

Question of the day

What happens to our relationships when someone dies? How can we continue a connection?

Love or doctrine?

"...what I found over the years was that love trumps doctrine every time."

Dr. Vincent Harding, "Is America Possible?", On being with Krista Tippett on 11/10/16