What does it mean to reflect spiritually? The questions in UU Wellspring ask you to reflect on your own inner wisdom and apply it to the readings, videos, and your life as you experience each of the themes.
In the first-year program, Sources, you will reflect on our six UU Sources.
These are the six sources our congregations affirm and promote:
- Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life;
- Words and deeds of prophetic people which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love;
- Wisdom from the world’s religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;
- Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God’s love by loving our neighbors as ourselves;
- Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit;
- Spiritual teachings of Earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.
Rev. Kathleen Rolenz said, “Throughout history, we have moved to the rhythms of mystery and wonder, prophecy, wisdom, teachings from ancient and modern sources, and nature herself.”
In our advanced program, Deep Questions, we reflect on our seven UU Principles. As Rev. Barbara Wells ten Hove explains, “The Principles are not dogma or doctrine, but rather a guide for those of us who choose to join and participate in Unitarian Universalist religious communities.”
- The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
- Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
- Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
- A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
- The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
- The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
- Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
In our advanced program, Spiritual Practices, we reflect on how we can cultivate aspects of ourselves, such as compassion and kindness to help us achieve states of consciousness, such as awe or stillness. Through spiritual practice, we begin to experience our interconnectedness and by going deeper, we touch a sense of deep peace, yearning and a call to be of service in the world.
We reflect on how spiritual practice is not just as a means of waking up ourselves, but as our foundation for being in the world and being of service to others in times of pain and joy. These deep roots of truth connect us with others and with the earth. Members of the small group support one another in making and keeping a commitment of spiritual practice.
In our advanced program, Faithful Actions, we reflect on the necessity to align our actions with our values, the importance of living true to our beliefs in the world. We aspire to offer service, and in this program, we expand the meaning of service to include all faithful actions, all the ways in which we live out our faith. The term “faithful actions” includes a multitude of ways of offering service: relational service — the compassionate action of helping family and friends with whom we are in relationship; social service — meeting the needs of others through a more organized structure, such as working at a soup kitchen or food cupboard; and social justice work — working to make changes in society to alleviate suffering, such as lobbying or serving in groups committed to societal change.
As people who have made the commitment to explore and deepen our spiritual lives in the company of others, Faithful Actions attempts to create a space in which to examine the “so what” more deeply, to consider how each of us puts our own faith into action, without guilt, without obligation, with love, and with the spiritual grounding that gives meaning to our lives and energy to the work we do in the world.
In our advanced program, Sacred Arts, we reflect on how art matters, how the act of creating matters, and as our examination of process theology shows us—that just as God is both creator and creating, we too are both a part of creation and are creators—and the moments of creation are the true reality. As writer Arthur Graham notes, “Each of us is an artist whose task it is to shape life into some semblance of the pattern we dream about. The molding is not of self alone, but of shared tomorrows and times we shall never see.”
Sacred Arts is meant to deepen our own sense of creation and creativity, to start the tiny revolutions of connection and resistance in our personal lives, our Unitarian Universalist communities, and the world. In creating Sacred Arts, attention has been paid to not only the readings but also the process of our work together. We are engaging in different ways to decenter white supremacy culture in our programs. For example, we do not throw away the deep listening practices we have learned from Parker Palmer’s A Hidden Wholeness, but we do engage listening in some different ways besides silence, since silence is more common to white spaces than non-white spaces. We will also engage a different sort of covenanting process that addresses issues of power that often go unspoken in predominantly white spaces. Throughout the program, you will also note more activity and less sitting still. And yes, artists, theologians, and thinkers—we will engage are from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds. We are under no delusion that we have a perfectly decentered