Monthly Archives: December 2010

Living with the Texts: The Heart Sutra

Here’s the latest in my lectio divina series. Merry Christmas and happy Bodhi Day to all!

Peace,

Rev. Laura

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Living with the Texts: The Heart Sutra

The Rev. Laura Horton-Ludwig, Minister
First Unitarian Universalist Church of Stockton
December 12, 2010

Today we come back to our series of close readings of sacred texts.
And you may well be wondering,
why talk about a Buddhist scripture so close to Christmas?

Let me tell you two reasons
why I love that we are looking at a Buddhist text today.
The first is theological; it’s about how different religious ideas
connect together.
At the heart of Christianity
is a story about the divine embodied in human form,
the Word made flesh, in the life of one man,
a human being named Jesus.
Over the years most Christians have believed Jesus was unique,
filled with the divine in a way that you and I could never be.
But our Unitarian Universalist tradition
draws on another strand of Christianity that says,
of course Jesus was special, but what he was, others can become also. Continue reading

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Filed under Heart Sutra, Mahayana Buddhism, Unitarian Universalism

Gifts of the Spirit

Happy holidays, everyone!

Peace,

Rev. Laura

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Gifts of the Spirit

The Rev. Laura Horton-Ludwig, Minister
First Unitarian Universalist Church of Stockton
December 5, 2010

Once upon a time, in a faraway country,
there was a people who lived as herders, ranchers of cattle.
Their whole world revolved around caring for the cattle,
raising the young calves,
milking the milk-cows,
pasturing the herds in the lush green grass.
The cattle gave them food, wealth, status, everything.
They told stories of their god coming down
from his home above the mountains
to promise them the right to farm the cattle for always and forever.
This was their way of life, their destiny,
their past and their future…
until the drought came.
The rain that had fallen so freely began to disappear,
not for a year or two but for an entire generation.
The grass dried up.
And the cattle began to die. Continue reading

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Filed under gifts, giving, Maasai, Unitarian Universalism