For the past year, our youth have been learning about the power of story. Let me say this again: Our youth have been learning about the Power of Story. They learned, many for the first time in their lives, of the occurrence of one of the worst race riots in the United States. It’s been called the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot. An event of this magnitude surely deserves attention. Yet, our youth learned that the surviving fellow human beings and their stories of suffering were effectively denied and repressed. Our youth know that in Unitarian Universalism we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every human being. This affirmation resounds with calls for justice and then freedom. Our youth are learning how to authentically live within this call. They have been working with the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC,) local community leaders, religious leaders, and other area youth. Such work takes courage, supported by a growing understanding of faith, tradition, and culture. On Sunday, we will celebrate this commitment to be courageous.

According to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation the number of domestic violence incidents reported by law enforcement has increased by 31.8% over the last 10 years. A 24-hour snap shot of domestic violence related services in Oklahoma shows 238 adults and children found refuge in emergency domestic violence shelters, 54 adults and children were living in transitional house programs designed specifically for domestic violence survivors, 324 adults and children sought non-residential advocacy and services and 314 Domestic violence hotline calls were answered (that is 13 calls every hour for 24 hours!)

Domestic violence occurs when there is an imbalance of power in a relationship. Power does not exist in a vacuum. In examining domestic violence, we must consider the role of the culture, ethnicity, social class, immigration status, gender, religion, history, sexual orientation, level of education, etc. as it affects our worldview. Churches have played an influential role in creating the gender based assumptions of power that permeates our culture.

As Naomi R. Goldenberg writes, "Images of God dictate who will feel worthy in society and who will feel inferior, who will be respected and who will be despised, who will get easy access to the literal material goods of culture and who will have to fight for those same goods."

Special music this Sunday will include an arrangement by Sweet Honey and The Rock and an original song written by me that tells some of my own story. Join me as I explore the theological context of interpersonal violence as exhibited in domestic abuse.

There has been a lot of talk and a lot of politics regarding immigrants and aliens recently. Some people don’t think religion has anything to say about a topic as political as immigration. However, the Christian and Jewish scriptures have a lot to say about "resident aliens," foreigners in your midst; sojourners and strangers among you. In Exodus 22:21 it proclaims, "You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt." Leviticus 19:34 says, "The alien who resides among you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt." Even the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews tells us, "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some have entertained angels unawares." Does the fact that the Bible has a major preoccupation with the fair treatment of aliens and strangers have any bearing on the current immigration debate in our country? The rationale in the Bible that the Jews were once foreigners in a strange land, could remind the majority of Americans that most of us are the descendants of immigrants. Any debate that fuels so much passion requires a religious response.

Doug Inhofe is a long-time All Souls member, and Harvard Divinity School-trained Unitarian Universalist minister. He currently practices law here in Tulsa and frequently preaches at UU churches and fellowships in our area.

It’s Summertime, and the livin’ is easy. It’s been put that way since the 1930’s, but the idea is older yet. One of these mornings we really might rise up singing, spread our wings and take to the sky, but, hush, there’s no need to hurry. Summertime lets us lay down the burdens of modernity—a chronic dissatisfaction with what we have, an ever-present panning into the future—and gives us our lives back.

We are set free “to front only the essential facts of life�—as Thoreau suggests, to find what we seek inside ourselves, to learn what life has to teach, to gaze at God’s windows. Approached slowly, life is not boring but instructive. The need to fill it up with activity is vanquished, and the sense of living on stage, in others’ eyes, is set aside. Slowness allows this, as a way of sensing the moment, as a way of living a spiritual life, as a way of letting go of tomorrow for the sake of today.