This page is curated by Steven Mead, Religious Educator. We come in all "religious flavors," and regardless of your perspective, use the wide-ranging sources on this page to inspire, challenge and create a life of sacred purpose for yourself and enrich the lives of those around you. ​ [There is a lot of content on this web page​―much of which is accessed by opening up the accordion files below.]
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On Your Own Time | Adult Lifelong Learning Resources​

To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.―Alan Watts
As you start to walk out on the way, the way appears.―Rumi

Soul Food

​"No whining on the yacht."―Tim Duncan
Trust is like the air we breathe. When it’s present, nobody really notices. But when it’s absent, everybody notices.―Warren Buffett

​WISDOM CONTENT FROM THE DIGITAL WONDERLAND

This content changes monthly or so (sometimes more often). Visit often!

More Wisdom Resources | The Accordion File of Good Stuff

Open the accordion file (+) below to reveal additional content.
Wisdom Resources:  Reading | Websites | Blog Sites
Reading | Contemporary Authors
It seems presumptuous to even suggest a list from among the combined wisdom of the world; but one must start somewhere. Try Goodreads 100 Best Spiritual Books of the Century. Here's a broad, short, sampler list:
​The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.―Alvin Toffler​
​Web Sites
The following sites cover a wide range of spiritual and wisdom tradition topics. Feed your mind and soul!
Blog Sites
We spill a lot of electronic ink talking about spirituality and religion. Here are some excellent resources biased toward Unitarian Universalist voices, but including others as well: 
What, at this moment, is lacking?―Rinzai
Wisdom Resources:  Elder Spirituality | Spiritual Practice | Multimedia
 The most important thing is to find out the most important thing.―Zen master, Suzuki Roshi
Elder Spirituality
​Spiritual Practice
"And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."―Rainer Maria Rilke
  • Spiritual but not religious? But if you are curious which faith or wisdom tradition might nourish you, try the Belief-O-Matic!
  • For centuries and across religious traditions spiritual directors have helped people along the way.  If a more intense engagement with spirituality is calling you, you might wish to connect with someone from the Unitarian Universalist Spiritual Directors Network
  • Quotes about spiritual growth from Goodreads readers
Multimedia | Film | Performance Art
"...contemporary art that roams the ground between faith and mystery. . . calls us into the imaginative life and makes us aware of the rich possibilities of being human."―Image​
​Do Shag!
“The Buddhist word for attachment is “do shag” which literally translates to mean “sticky desire.” I love this translation! If you really think about how you feel when you are grasping for something that you really want, you can feel its sticky pull. And until you figure out a way to get it, you feel this longing and obsession. We have all been there with different things and at different times in our lives. In a world that entices us with constant cravings and sticky desires, we can slow ourselves down and let go of attachment to that desire for more. And surprisingly, without fail, if we let go, we will receive…”―Rev. Karon Sandberg
Wisdom Resources: UUA Common Reads | Study Issues

Unitarian Universalist Common ReadS
Unitarian Universalist Common Read 2018-2019
  • Justice on Earth: People of Faith Working at the Intersections of Race, Class, and Environment, edited by Manish Mishra-Marzetti and Jennifer Nordstrom (Skinner House Books, 2018) is the 2018-19 Common Read selection (https://www.uua.org/books/read). The book looks at the ways in which the environmental justice, racial justice, and economic justice are intertwined, calling us to recognize that our Unitarian Universalist faith calls us to long-haul work for justice for our human kin, for the Earth and for all life.
  • Purchase Justice on Earth at inSpirit: UU Book and Gift Shop (https://www.uuabookstore.org/Justice-on-Earth-P18357.aspx)
  • The 2018-2019 UUA Common Read discussion guide is now available!

Unitarian Universalist Common Read 2016-2017
  1. Centering: Navigating Race, Authenticity, and Power in Ministry, edited by Mitra Rahnema (Skinner House, 2017), centers the stories, analyses, and insights of a number of Unitarian Universalist religious professionals of color as they explore how racial identity is made both visible and invisible in Unitarian Universalist communities.
    Download the discussion guide.
  2. Daring Democracy: Igniting Power, Meaning, and Connection for the America We Want, by Frances Moore Lappé and Adam Eichen, (Beacon Press, 2017) lifts up the importance of democracy itself. It examines the anti-democracy movement that has led to the Trump presidency, then offers a vision and call to action to save our democracy and to take our civic life to a place it has never been.
    Download the discussion guide.
UUA Faith and Spirituality Resources​
​Websites YouTube Social Media
UU Church of the Larger Fellowship  | Quest for Meaning
The Church of the Larger Fellowship is our wider movement's online virtual church-without-walls. It is one of the best resources for current Unitarian Universalist thinking and spirituality.

​"Love and Loss. Awe and wonder. Journeys and home. The events of our lives and our spiritual curiosity lead us to ponder topics close to our hearts. Through 12 curated themes, you will find a wide range of spiritual resources to expand your perspective and enrich your search for meaning."
​Unitarian Universalist Perspectives
Sometimes described as "one faith and many beliefs," Unitarian Universalism draws from a wide range of wisdom traditions, both secular and sacred.
"I am now convinced that “belief,” in the way we usually use the word, is actually the enemy of faith, religion, and spirituality. Let me say that again: belief is the enemy of faith. When we dwell on beliefs we ask all the wrong questions. My faith is much more about what I love than about what I think."―Rev Peter Morales​
UU Santa Fe Current Monthly Theme
​Content to Explore
In our prayers, we are “nestling in” with reality, adopting a stance that declares we trust what is “out there” and what is “inside.” In moments of meditation we assume a certain confidence, a faith that what is, is ultimately friendly, capable of supporting our life… No matter what befalls, no matter what you become, Love awaits.―Federico Moramarco
What Does It Mean To Be A People of Trust?
In religious circles, “trust talk” most often revolves around having faith that life will look after us. For instance, our Christian friends sing hymns about God “watching over us” and keeping “an eye on the sparrow.” Our Jewish friends lift up the Exodus story to encourage faith that God will help us make our way even when things look bleak. Likewise, prayer practice for our Muslim friends is all about reminding oneself that you are in Allah’s safe hands. We UUs translate similar sentiments using the language of trusting “a Love that will not let us go.” 

This call to trust Life’s support comes to us as a gift. After all, it’s all too easy to convince ourselves that life is a foe. So we need our faith communities to restore our faith that life is ultimately a friend. We need the reassurance. We need to know that when we fall we can count of being picked up.  

So, friends, where does that leave us?
What is it?  
Trust life to pick us up?
Trust life to push and poke us?
Trust that it’s ok to put the work down for a while?

It is all of them, of course. And more.
Questions to Ponder
So, which questions below are calling to you? Which one contains “your work”?
  1. Who has taught you the most about risking trust?
  2. What have you trusted since childhood? What have you never lost faith in?
  3. How have you changed your mind about trust?
  4. Are you trusting or ignoring your gut right now?
  5. What would happen if your trusted life enough to let go?
  6. What would happen if you trusted that you are right where you are meant to be? That life is exactly what you need right now?
  7. When broken trust left you broken-hearted, what voice in your head or word from a friend helped you pick up the pieces?
  8. What would it mean to trust people to be who they are rather than what you wish they were?
  9. You’re worried about how this thing in front of you is going to work out. Might it be possible to trust that you will be fine either way?
  10. What have you learned about trusting grief, rather than trying to make it go away?
Content Attribution:  Copyrighted content 2019. Soul Matters ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Soul Matters. Soul Matters packets are for use by member congregations of the Soul Matters Sharing Circle. UU Santa Fe is a subscribing member of the Soul Matters Sharing Circle. If you are intrigued by this thematic content and want to "go deeper" into this material, then join a UU Santa Fe Soul Matters Covenant Group. For more information, contact Steven Mead, Religious Educator
UU Santa Fe Featured February Author

Diarmuid O'Murchu​

“Spirituality is not just about religion, or church attendance, or fidelity to one or other legal requirement. Spirituality is understood to be an innate wisdom of the human heart that enlivens a zest for life, a search for meaning and purpose, a love for all that is good and beautiful, a passion to create a better world, a sensitivity to the life-energy (God, if you wish) that permeates the entire cosmos.”―Diarmuid O'Murchu
About this author
Diarmuid O'Murchu, a member of the Sacred Heart Missionary Order, and a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin Ireland, is a social psychologist most of whose working life has been in social ministry, predominantly in London, UK. In that capacity he has worked as a couple's counsellor, in bereavement work, AIDS-HIV counselling, and laterally with homeless people and refugees. As a workshop leader and group facilitator he has worked in Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, The Philippines, Thailand, India, Peru and in several African countries, facilitating programs on Adult Faith Development.

His best known books include Quantum Theology (1996 - revised in 2004), Reclaiming Spirituality (1998), Evolutionary Faith (2002), Catching Up with Jesus (2005), The Transformation of Desire (2007), Ancestral Grace (2008), Jesus in the Power of Poetry (2009).―Goodreads

Try these

Celebrated Authors

Past authors highlighted here:
  • ​Aldo Leopold
  • Angeles Arrien
  • Ann LaMotte
  • Annie Dillard
  • Nisargadatta Maharaj
  • David Bohm
  • Jalaluddin Rumi
  • Mark Nepo
  • Neil deGrasse Tyson
  • Diarmuid O'Murchu
  • Parker Palmer
  • Rachel Naomi Remen 
  • The Dali Lama
  • Wendel Berry
  • Dorothy Day
​Jack Jezreel, founder of JustFaith observes, “The world cannot be changed-by-love to become just, unless we are changed by love to become whole, but we cannot be made whole without engaging in the work of making the world whole. Personal transformation and social transformation are one piece.” ​

Recommended Books
​2018

​"From the simplest lyric to the most complex novel, literature is asking us to pay attention. Pay attention to the frog. Pay attention to the west wind. Pay attention to the boy on the raft, the lady on the tower, the old man on the train. In sum, pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells therein."―Frederick Buechner
Recommended Reading―from the UU Santa Fe Adult Lifelong Learning Team
  • Daring Democracy, Frances Moore Lappe and Adam Eichen, Beacon Press
  • Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal, Aviva Chomsky, Beacon Press
  • Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, City Lights (the author has published other book with Beacon)
  • The Origin of Others, Toni Morrison, Harvard Press 
  • Blue Horses, Mary Oliver, The Penguin Press 2012
  • A Thousand Mornings, Mary Oliver
  • Existence, A Story, David Hinton
  • Hunger Mountain: A Field Guide to Mind and Landscape, David Hinton
  • ​Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari

UU Santa Fe Reading List 2018-2019

​At every turn, roots; minute threads feeding grasses;
tough, hollow straws sucking life into cattails and tules.
At every turn, roots invite the question:
by what are you held and sustained?―Excerpt from the poem "Roots" by Linda Whittenberg
​"You don’t get anything here. Not for a dollar. Not for ten thousand dollars. You don’t get Hellfire Insurance at a UU congregation or standing-room-only tickets to the Hereafter Show. If we do not become Truth and become Meaning, we will search for both in vain. We are here to give something of ourselves. Meant to be present for one another. And by being so present, receive what we are meant to―not what we want―but what we need."―Steven Mead, UU Religious Educator
“We are mortals all, human and nonhuman, bound in one fellowship of love and travail. No one escapes the fate of death. But we can, with caring, make our good-byes less tormented. If we broaden the circle of our compassion, life can be less cruel.”―Gary Kowalski, The Souls of Animals
We asked affiliated clergy and those known to possess extensive libraries of the sacred and profane to each give us a select few reading recommendations. Here are their recommendations. We challenge you to read one recommendation from each of the following adepts. Want to recommend some titles to this list? Send to Steven Mead.

Jill Cowley
  • Ecofeminism: Women Culture Nature, Edited by Karen J. Warren  1997  Indiana University Press. ISBN: 0-253-33031-9
  • "Hojoki or the Record of the Ten-Foot Square Hut" Kamo no Chomei  Pp. 3-18 in Kenko and Chomei:  Essays in Idleness and Hojoki.  Trans. Meredith McKinney.  2013.  Penguin Classics. ISBN:  978-0-141-19210-9 (This is a beautiful short essay on a Japanese ascetic's experience of retreating to a small hut in the mountains)
  • The Soul of Sex:  Cultivating Life as an Act of Love Thomas Moore 1998  New York, NY:  HarperCollins  ISBN:  0-06-018697-6
  • Early Buddhist Discourses.  Ed. and Trans. by John J. Holder.  2006  Indianapolis:  Hackett Publishing Co. ISBN: 978-0-87220-792-9
Munro Sickafoose
  • Thinking in Systems – Donella Meadows
  • The Four Shields: The Initiatory Seasons of Human Nature – Steven Foster and Meredith Little
  • The Other Within: The Genius of Deformity in Myth, Culture & Psyche – Daniel Deardorff
  • The Fruitful Darkness: Reconnecting with the Body of the Earth – Joan Halifax
  • The Path – Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh
  • A Branch from the Lightning Tree: Ecstatic Myth and Grace in the Wilderness – Martin Shaw
  • Revisioning Transpersonal Theory: A Participatory Vision of Human Spirituality – Jorge N. Ferrer
Leona Stucky ​Linda Whittenberg
  • ​Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be
  • Viktor Frankel, Man’s Search for Meaning (Unfortunately inappropriate title)
  • Marilyn Sewell, Threatened with Resurrection: A Book of Sermons II
  • Robert Bly, poetry: My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy
  • William Stafford, poetry: The Way It Is or Ask Me
Steven Mead Gary Kowalski
  • Reinhold Niebuhr's Moral Man and Immoral Society
  • Marcus Borg's Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time
  • Elaine Pagel's The Gnostic Gospels
  • William James Varieties of Religious Experience
  • Aldous Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy
  • Alan Watts On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are and Myth and Ritual in Christianity​
​Other Recommendations from UU Santa Fe'ers
  • No Is Not Enough by Naomi Klein. Recommended by Mary Neikirk

​​​Sophia Perennis 

Religion as participation is a rediscovery of the Perennial Tradition that Plotinus, Gottfried Leibniz, Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley, and so many saints and mystics have spoken of in their own ways. It constantly recognizes that we are a part of something, more than we are observing something or “believing” in something.―Richard Rohr
​The Perennial Tradition
​by Richard Rohr
​​Sophia Perennis | Perennial Wisdom Tradition
The Perennial Tradition encompasses the recurring themes in all of the world’s religions and philosophies that continue to say:
  • There is a Reality underneath and inherent in the world of things,
  • There is in the human soul a natural capacity, similarity, and longing for this Reality, and
  • The final goal of existence is union with this Reality.
Our own UU movement, beginning with the transcendentalists, contributed to this philosophy. Explore this fascinating wisdom tradition so compatible with current Unitarian Universalist faith development through a bibliography prepared by Steven Mead, Consulting Lifespan Learning Director.
021415_sophia_perennis_bibliography.docx
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Decisions
​Between two words, choose the quieter one.
Between word and silence, choose listening.
Between two books, choose the dustier one.
Between the earth and the sky, choose a bird.
Between two animals, choose the one who needs you more.
Between two children, choose both.
Between the lesser and greater evil, choose neither.
Between hope and despair choose hope:  it will be harder to bear.
 ―Boris Novak, translated by Mia Dintinjana
Picture
Kirsti L. Adkins Original work
​“Seek patience and passion in equal amounts. Patience alone will not build the temple. Passion alone will destroy its walls.”―Maya Angelou

Location

UU Santa Fe
107 West Barcelona
Santa Fe, NM 87505
​​Phone:  505.982.9674

Come! UU Santa Fe is meant for you.

Sunday services are at 8:30 am in our library and 10:30 am in our sanctuary. Nursery care is available in the Orange Room at our 10:30 am service.

​Inclusivity
We welcome all persons, regardless of race, ethnicity, national origin; gender or gender identification, affectional preference or sexual orientation; age, physical or mental challenge; or social, economic or marital status. Come, there is a place for you here.

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