I almost never just post a video, but I was inspired this moring by my friend James doing so on his blog, Monkey Mind. I have been a fan of Peter Mayer since long before his recent performance at GA, and while I love the song that James highlighted (Holy Now), and while I had [...]
Categories: General Assembly, God, theology
| 
Tags: faith, God, God is the River, Holy Now, Peter Mayer, Prophetic Voice, religion, theology
| 
1 comment
The last month has been a liminal space for me, as I have intentionally stayed in a space of not-knowing when it comes to what the next few years will bring. Perhaps there is a key to understanding our faith tradition in such liminality.
Categories: Care of the Soul, God, Reflection on Quotes, Spiritual Practice, Turnings, UU Movement, theology
| Tags: change, doubt, faith, liminal, liminality, Ministry, not-knowing, religion, Spiritual Practice, theology, transformation, transition, Unitarian, Unitarian Universalism, Unitarian Universalist, Universalism, Universalist, UU
| 3 comments
If there is anything that makes some of my fellow Unitarian Universalists more uncomfortable than my military past and probably future, it is my willingness to call myself, both in public and from the pulpit, a Christian. I remember one day in particular that a parishioner in my internship congregation came up to me after [...]
Categories: God, Inspiration, Ministry, theology
| Tags: Chrisitan theology, Christ, Christian, Christian faith, David Pyle theology, Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth, theology, Unitarian Christian, Unitarian Universalist Christian, Universalist Christian, UU Christ, UU Christian, UU's for Jesus
| 8 comments
I have spent the last five years in the occasional study of a religious system that I believe has always existed, but has never been academically defined (except perhaps in secret by some graduate engineering students). My interest in this religious system is that my wife is an adherent, and in order to better understand [...]
Categories: Defining Religious Langauge, God, Humor, theology
| Tags: anything that can go wrong, god murphy, murphy, murphy's law, Murphy's religion, murphyism, murphyist, religious pessimism, will go wrong
| 5 comments
One of the aspects that I believe defines the religious liberal is the acknowledgement that we encounter the world and everything in it through our own lenses. These lenses are shaped by years of experience… by the people we meet, what we have read, and the journeys (literal and metaphorical) that we have taken. Religious [...]
Categories: God, Ministry, Spiritual Practice
| Tags: bible interpretation, biblical post-modernism, eisegesis, exegesis, liberal bible, liberal faith, liberal religion, liberal scripture, post modern bible, post-modern, post-modernism, scripture
| 2 comments
I don’t like tofu. I’ve tried to eat it and it actually makes me gag. When I was dating, I suffered through several tofu laden meals for a particular liberal-leaning young woman I was attempting to woo… until I realized that if it worked out I would have to eat tofu for the rest of [...]
Categories: Evangelism, God, theology
| Tags: absolute truth, absolutize, Bush, certainty, conditional, conditionalism, conditionalize, idolatry, Obama, politics, post-modern, relativism, tea-party, theology, theology of substitution, tofu, truth
| 6 comments
One of the common responses to Unitarian Universalism that I found among my military chaplain colleagues is the belief that we UU’s have no morality… when in reality I have found that few people carry a heavier moral burden than the Unitarian Universalist. Even among UU’s I have heard it said that we have “Ethics, [...]
Categories: God, Principles and Purposes, Social Engagement, UU Movement, theology
| Tags: burden is light, carry the cross, cross, ethics, moral, moral burden, morality, religious responsibility, responsibility, unitairan, Unitarian Universalist, Universalist, UU
| 1 comment
In the discussion of a recent article of mine on the growth of the myth of a post-racial America, it became clear to me that the article depends upon a particular understanding of the nature of reality as we human beings have constructed it, and that I had never articulated the line of thought on [...]
Categories: God, History, Spiritual Practice, theology
| Tags: cosmology, define reality, hypocrisy, idolatry, kingdom of god, meaning making, nature of reality, nature of symbols, objective, post-modernism, postmodernism, power, pre-conception, prejudice, reality, realm of god, symbol, symbolism, what is reality
| 5 comments
When I visited the Smithsonian Museum of American History over the summer, there was one transition between exhibits that disturbed me deeply. It was not the content of either of the exhibits, but rather that one led directly into the other. As I was coming out of the exhibit on slavery in America before the [...]
Categories: Equality, God, Prophetic Voice
| Tags: atonement by grace, christian theology, civil war, classism, color-blind, colorblind, divine forgiveness, forgiveness by grace, grace, post-racial, pre-conception, prejudice, racial prejudice, racism, racist, slavery, smithsonian inauguration, smithsonian slavery exhibit, Unitarian, Unitarian Universalist, Universalist, universalist theology
| 9 comments
It is an interesting experience for me to intentionally write an article about Deism, a bit of a “return to my roots” you might say. For the last several years I have not primarily identified as a Deist, although my understanding of God has always been a Deistic one. Deism as it has been defined [...]
Categories: Deism, God, Prophetic Voice, theology
| Tags: David Pyle, Deis, Deism, Deist, Deus, Dynamic Deism, Modern Deism, Positive Deism, Unitarian, Unitarian Deism, Unitarian Universalism, United Deist Church, Universalism, World Union of Deists
| 19 comments
Comments in the Celestial Lands