I’m a Unitarian Universalist minister serving our congregation in Palo Alto, California. This blog is my place to explore matters of religion (theology, congregational politics, music, you name it), art, literature, politics, philosophy, and culture. I also post a lot of the art I make.

Elsewhere on the web, I offer advice in a weekly column Ask Isabel: Advice for the Spiritually Perplexed or Vexed. You can subscribe for free and receive it weekly in your inbox. You can do that on this blog also, by the way–just put your email into the Subscribe box on the homepage.

I blogged fairly prolifically about my child when she was an infant and toddler, less so now that she’s a teenager, but you can read that too at Mookie’s Mama.

I love comments! Disagreement is welcome, disagreeableness is not.  My guidelines in deciding which comments to approve are good manners and common sense. While I value tangents as a hallmark of creative conversation, persistently using the comments section as a grindstone for your particular axe will irritate your host. To write me off-blog:  parishmin AT uucpa DOT org.

You can learn more about Unitarian Universalism here and find a congregation near you here. Or, if you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area, come to ours!

Peace,

Amy Zucker Morgenstern

A note on permission

All entries are (c) 2009-2023 Amy Zucker Morgenstern, and all photographs and artworks are by me or members of my family, unless otherwise attributed.  I am generally very happy to be quoted, to have my sermons preached elsewhere, to have photos and drawings reused, etc., as long as you give the proper attribution.  If you want to use one of my sermons in a service, please make me very happy by letting me know.

What does the title mean?

In Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Duke Senior, who has been exiled and is wandering in the Forest of Arden, says,

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

. . . which is as good a statement of how I see life as any I’ve encountered. Go on, read the whole play.