ok, folks, I am making an appeal here...which may be off-line, and considered spam..but bear with me....

For years, folks who were gay were excluded from marraige.

For years, proms were a no-no

For years, the company Christmas party was a miss

and, yes, for years, competitions about my wonderful love, or our marriage, or our family, were only for a select group -- those of us who are married to those of the opposite sex.

Hello everyone! ...overjoyed here and I just need to share!

3rd visit to this lovely little old church and I am falling in love with it!

This is the minister I was led to call about 2 years ago in an attempt to help out another girl like me that had been rejected by her church and told not to come back.   I blame it on being a nosey redhead LOL but I couldn't leave that alone.   That is why I cold called this minister knowing nothing about the UCC or this church.

I finished reading a book today called "He Loves You"

It was not a bad read.   It was about grace yet it debunked the atonement theory.  I will discuss this in another thread.

Many people feel called to love their neighbour, or to have compassion for them.

Love of the other and love for the world is a one of the things that the UCC taught me growing up. Jesus is for everyone, not in the sense that everyone should be a Christian, but that Christians should love without discrimination, like Jesus taught.

I was at a workshop last night for "Appreciative Inquiry".

It was pretty good, but as part of it the dialogue on forgiveness came up.

One statement was that forgiveness does not equal  reconciliation.

How do you define forgiveness?

If you forgive someone, is it necessary to let the person you forgive know, or is forgiveness something that is totally inward.

I recently heard a high school teacher tell his class that these high school years would be he happiest of t heir lives. I smiled. The class was less polite.

They aren't necessarily happy at all. but, it occured me they are perhaps the most intense years of our lives.