Integrity as Spiritual Practice
Year after year, day after day, step by step, moment by moment, breath by holy breath. Welcome the new year by joining in spiritual community throughout the month of January to explore the spiritual practice of “integrity.” Integrity as spiritual practice. A good way to begin a new year. The way to live a life worth living. A life worth dying for. See you at church.
Read MoreIt’s December, a Time to Live in the Spiritual Place of Awe
“Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and awe.” — Carl Sagan Throughout December, explore together the great mysteries of the season: healing into life and death, leaning into the dark, discovering divinity within our humanity. God or the Great Mystery was once considered to be in the elements or in the forest or the cave or in some sacred object. Then the more scientific facts we discovered, the further away humanity pushed concepts of God. Now to the clouds. Now to the sky. Now into space. Now to another dimension. At Allegheny, we...
Read MoreAn Hour of Memory, Healing, and Joy
... the importance of community to healings of all kinds. Come to grow in community with those around you who have been affected by HIV/AIDS.
Read MoreMany Sources of Faith
“You can believe anything you want to here.” Well, no. But you will be encouraged to dig deep and discover what you really believe and will be inspired and challenged to live out those beliefs through your daily life and deepest commitments. “But then not everybody believes the same thing!” Yes! That’s the beauty of life among human beings. We don’t have to believe together in order to grow together and do good work together. After all, life on Earth screams multiplicity, creativity, and abundance. Rivers flow quickly… Continents flow slowly… Snowflakes…...
Read MoreCommunity of “Covenant”
You’ve found a community beyond belief! In conversations about religion, it’s common to ask, “What do you believe?” It’s a leading question. It assumes the only important or interesting thing is what a faith “believes.” We are not a church of beliefs. We are a church beyond belief. Allegheny Unitarian Universalist Church is a community of covenant. Covenant being an old churchy word for something like aspirations for how to be together. This is a community of promises and aspires to live deeply, authentically, and wholly; connected to one another, to society, and to...
Read MoreLiberation Worship
For Pittsburgh’s “Liberation Sunday” worship experience, we heard LGBT writers and lyricists including Leslie Feinberg, James Baldwin, Holly Near, Audre Lorde, and others. Of course there’s so much that could be added. But here’s the more extensive quote from James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time nugget: Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be. You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that...
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