To conclude this year?s practice with the UU principles, notice what principle is calling for your attention. What is it showing you or asking of  you? Let’s call these UU Principle Breakthrough Moments.

I had a UU Principle Breakthrough Moment at a meditation group. We were doing Loving Kindness (Metta). One phrase says, “May I live from the joy of my own true nature.” After the meditation, a participant said, “I don’t know my true nature. I seem to be different in different situations.”

In Buddhism, when we’re not living from cultural-emotional scripts, or in perpetual stress, the body/heart/mind/spirit opens us to a fundamental joy in living, that’s always there in the background.

What is that joy? It’s the bedrock of the first UU principle, inherent worth and dignity, and of the 7th principle, the interdependent web, manifesting as everything and everyone.

This is not an innocent rejection of bullying, abuse, or evil. It’s a reminder that we all have a choice, in every moment, to open to the joy by not trapping ourselves in reactivity/blame/drama mind.It holds us gently accountable to cultivate habits that support us in choosing to live from inherent worth and dignity, leading us to experience the joy of our own true nature: Loving Kindness.

May your UU Principle Breakthrough Moments go well this month.

Please share them with me.

May we support one another in living from the joy of our own true nature, our inherent worth and dignity!

Rev Mary