Religion evolved because it helped people survive. Our social world is very different now, yet continues to be determined in large part by the faith instinct that emerged over 50,000 years ago.

The divide goes by various names: reason and passion, head and heart, cognitive and affective, thinking and feeling. Yes, reason is passion's slave--yet a very useful slave it can be, if the aspects of the divided self work together.

Honoring the role of male elders in faith formation--in our families and in our denominational history.

Why do we have a hard time being the person we want to be? How can we recognize and surmount the obstacles?

The place of children is...among us. It's not that children are our future: they are our present--valuable for what they are now, not just for what they may become--teaching us even as they learn from us. It takes a village to raise children, and it also takes children to raise (even though it might sometimes feel like "raze") a village. Unitarian Universalist approaches to children and religious education have always defined a central part of who we are.

I mused long and read much on what makes us human, what separates us from the other animals. More recently, I have realized that this is not the important or the valuable question I took it to be. The much more worthwhile question for truly understanding ourselves is not how we are different from other animals, but how we are the same.

Three things: (1) responsible stewardship of the earth, (2) working for social justice, (3) healing our hearts and moving into the fullness of our humanity and our joy. Each of these is a cause that produces the other two; each is an effect caused by the other two. Breaking into these virtuous (as opposed to vicious) cycles requires resistance to some of the dominant cultural messages.

Passover, the Jewish celebration of liberation from the bondage in Egypt, begins at sundown on April 19. Celebrants of this festival eat unleavened bread because, as legend has it, when Pharaoh freed the Israelites, they left in such a hurry that they could not wait for the bread to rise. Freedom's call is the most urgent business we could have.

Often misattributed to St. Francis (he never said it): "Preach the gospel always; use words when necessary." Our lives constantly preach to the world--with and without words--but maybe your, like my, deeds and words don't always preach what is, for you, "gospel." Similarly, we render gifts of who we are always--and use money when necessary. Our choices about money both reflect who we are and shape who we are.

In the past decade there has been substantial new work in economics and politics on how such things as earnings, health, the economy, the political system, affect happiness--and how happiness affects those economic and political measures. Further, new research on wellbeing has deep implications for governments.