Have you met you? Allow you to introduce yourself to you. Fifteen minutes a day of journaling is like spiritual Wonder Bread ("Builds strong spirits in 12 Ways"). Through this important spiritual practice, we begin to know ourselves. Self-awareness is the foundation of equanimity, peace, and joy in life.

The rap on UUs is that we are a denomination of dabblers and dilettantes, that our interests and knowledge are broad, but we suffer from the impression that we understand the taste of the food just from reading the cookbook, or that we gain strong muscles just by hearing a lecture on weightlifting. How do we actually "taste" for ourselves our own true nature? What exercises will develop the muscles for nurturing our spirits, healing ourselves, and healing our world?

What scares you? Anxiety, fear, and uncertainty touch all of us. Instead of reaching for our favorite palliative, which gives temporary relief at best -- can we feel and observe our discomforts, become more fully present in our lives, and learn how to be truly here now? Only thus can we experience the deep joy of being alive.

That's "The-A-logy," rather than "The-O-logy." Thealogy explores the female divine, and the convergence of ecological, feminist, and process spirituality and thought. The insights of thealogy are helpful as we consider and develop the centrality of eco-spirituality to Unitarian Universalism.

Unitarian Universalists think of themselves as the quintessential "liberal religion." Any large religion has its conservative as well as its liberal versions: there is Liberal Christianity, Liberal Islam, Liberal Hinduism, Liberal Judaism, Liberal Buddhism. Religious liberalism on any of these paths might or might not correspond with political liberalism. So what is it that makes a religion "liberal"?

Actually, you can't. You have to try. Forgiveness is a grace: it may be free, but it ain't cheap. To "succeed" at it takes intentional commitment to a process.

We mark a beginning of sorts, the starting up of those things that wait until after Labor Day. We do so forgiving ourselves and others for failing to be all that we might wish. We begin again--in love.

Facebook, Twitter, text messaging, email, oh my! Self is shaped and defined by the ways we present ourselves--in response to how others present themselves. How are the electronic channels for presenting ourselves reshaping us? And what uses and presentations facilitate our well-being?

It's hard for us today to imagine how, a century or two ago, people who were, in so many ways, sensible, reasonable, kind, and good, could have supported slavery. Or opposed women's right to vote. It's hard to forgive our ancestors for such blatant moral failings. There are tell-tale signs that a moral shift in a society is pending--and this gives us some clues about what our moral failings are for which our great-greatgrandchildren will have a hard time forgiving us.

Our second annual mid-summer celebration of the Beat Generation. Jack Kerouac's novel, On the Road, written in an intense burst in 1951and published in 1957, continues to offer us insights for all of us who are On the Road for freedom and spiritual deepening.