REFLECTIONS

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. When we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly.
--- Thomas Paine

"Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot;
Or he can, but does not want to;
Or he cannot and does not want to.
If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent.
If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked.
But, if God both can and wants to abolish evil,
Then how come there is evil in the world?"
-Epicurus, 350-?270 BC

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

- unknown

"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the
world,
and do not find in ours (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are
all
alike, founded upon fables and mythologies."
--Thomas Jefferson

"A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort."

- Herm Albright (1876 - 1944)

Thoughts from Rev. Jack Donovan, Minister of the UU Fellowship in Gainesville, FL



Unitarian Universalists celebrate human life. We embrace the good Earth and the awesome Universe. We believe in the potential goodness of each human being, and the evolving worth of human culture. We have reverence for a spiritual higher power which we believe is reflected in reality and is characterized by love and justice. We respect Jesus as a human teacher who personified the relationship we all have with the divine and who modeled the life of individual self-respect and responsibility and the practice of love and justice with other people which are the practical bases for worthy religion and ethics.



We believe that all people can find satisfaction, and fulfillment in life and will find peace in death. We do not believe in hell or the devil, and we do not accept the perversions of original sin, inherited guilt, a single social norm, the desirability of perfection, or an equating of feelings or thoughts with deeds. We believe that each religion or ideology has part of the truth, and that no system of ideas and practice has all the truth.

We are humanists, affirming human beings and human civilization, and we embrace good science as a great ally of worthy religion. We are children of the Earth, and we learn from and wish to be respectful and sustaining of Mother Nature. The truth we discover, the justice we do, the love we share, the responsibility we take are the real tests of our faith.



In a word, Unitarian Universalist is a religion based on love.



Excerpt from the UUFMC Newsletter, December 2000.

Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.
~ Bill Moyers

The seven blunders of the world that lead to violence:
politics without principle;
pleasure without conscience;
wealth without work;
knowledge without character;
business without morality;
science without humanity;
and worship without sacrifice.
-- Mahatma Gandhi

"Who is the better for the philosopher who conceals his
accomplishments, and hides his thoughts from the waiting world? Hides
his thoughts! Hide the sun and moon. Thought is all light, and
publishes itself to the universe....."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

I think now that the great thing is not so much the formulation of an answer for myself, for the theater, or the play-but rather the most accurate possible statement of the problem.
Arthur Miller

I understand Willy Loman's longing for immortality Willy's writing his name in a cake of ice on a hot day, but he wishes he were writing in stone.
Arthur Miller

Success and failure are both greatly overrated. But failure gives you a whole lot more to talk about.
--- Hildegard Knef

Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views
beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing
God's service when it is violating all his laws.
--President John Adams

"However small our piety, if we ever encountered a god who always cured
us of a cold in the head at just the right time, or got us into our
carriage at the very instant heavy rain began to fall, he would seem so
absurd a god that he'd have to be abolished even if he existed. God as a
domestic servant, as a letter carrier, as an almanac--man--at bottom,
he is a mere name for the stupidest sort of chance. . . ."

Nietzsche's passages from the
Antichrist (section 52):

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
--- Bill Cosby

Political language...is designed to make lies sound
truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance
of solidity to pure wind.
--George Orwell

Of all the animals, man is the only one that blushes . . . or needs to.
--- Mark Twain