Watch your language!

In last weekend's general assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association, fittingly held in Boston and reported in the Globe, some startling language was heard.

I don't mean the common words that punctuate rap records -- no, these words really got the attention of the audience:

[Rev. Victoria Weinstein:] "I'm talking about the hot-button words, like `God' and `spirit' and `spiritual' and `soul' and `sacred'...."

...there was some audible gasping during [UUA president William] Sinkford's opening speech yesterday, when he remarked that 'souls are saved one at a time.'...

Prodded by a new president, a onetime atheist who had a conversion experience in a hospital room, the Unitarian Universalist Association is embarking on a freewheeling debate over whether to reverse its decades-long drift away from what...[the Rev. Mr. Sinkford] calls the ''language of reverence'' and instead begin to ''name the holy.''

As the saying goes, the wellsprings of grace are infinitely deep.