Generosity is not just about charity. It is not just about giving money. Generosity is a quality of spirit that allows us to give and share ourselves with others. It is a way of living that helps us move beyond our own preoccupations to giving and sharing more fully who we are with others.

One of the most difficult challenges with intention is staying true to it. Life happens, we let ourselves down, others let us down - there are many ways that we fall off a path of intention. How do we get back on, once we have fallen off?

Most of us hold on to many intentions. They may be big or small, individual or communal, ambitious or not, lofty or not. This morning we will explore how we might name our intentions, reduce the tensions among them and use them to move from vision to action.

Unitarian Universalist congregations are bound by covenant and values, not by a single creed or theology. We gather together with many theologies (and atheologies; can we make that a word?) In this sermon, Rev. Karla Brockie helps us find a pattern and stitch together our varied beliefs.

Rev. Karla Brockie is the Assistant Minister at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Raleigh, North Carolina. She has been minister of the Sky Island UU Church in Sierra Vista, Arizona, and a hospice chaplain.

Being clear about where you want to go is an important step to getting there. More than eight years ago, UUCP identified building a beloved community as a central goal. What is the beloved community and does this vision still fit our intentions? (Hint: I say, YES!)

How far have we come since the victories of the civil rights movements? Some say a long way; others today are naming powerfully the ways that racism and discrimination persist even if the language has changed. On this Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday, what are the conversations and what are the movements we need today?

Sometimes courage seems reserved for leaders and heroes of the past. But courage is something we also see in lives that never become famous, in choices that no one sees. Let's look at the courage that shows up in everyday people's lives.

Maya Angelou said that courage is a foundation for all other virtues because to live our values fully takes

courage. Living compassion indeed takes courage and takes us into places where we need courage.

There is a famous line about where exactly good intentions lead. How does this relate to our theme of intention? How do we need to complicate our thinking about good intent?

Compassion seems simple on the surface perhaps. Love, caring, kindness-all good things. They seem simple enough. But living them when life gets difficult is not easy. The wisdom of compassion challenges our tendencies to self-righteousness, our ego, and it challenges us to live in ways that take practiced discipline. Turns out, it is not so easy.