Skip to main content

Testimony to the Woman in Starbucks Who Asked About My Church

You noted my clerical collar and rainbow pin and had some questions. I told you I'm a Unitarian Universalist minister, and you wanted to know more.

 I screwed up, I think, with you. Because I began giving you information, little explanations that you could have just as easily found on Wikipedia. I got busy explaining "what" instead of "why." 

 I am a Unitarian Universalist because this religion gives me a history and a theology that I can have faith in, and part of that includes the fact that it has faith in me. Unitarian Universalism says that I -- even on my bad days -- am worthy to be treated with respect and dignity. And it teaches me that I have both the capability and the responsibility to determine and define my own creed by which I will live.

 To do that, I need tools, I need encouragement, and I need relationship. And that's why I am a Unitarian Universalist in faith and in practice. That's why I go to a Unitarian Universalist church, and would whether I was a minister or a member. 

 My church gives me tools, and this is one of the great, beautiful things about this religion -- it opens up a library, a research lab, the size of the universe, and says, "Go. Look. See. Test everything. Hold fast to what is good." Writings on the world's religions, philosophy ancient and modern, science, culture, art, the thoughts of others, my own experience ... all of these are tools as I struggle with forming a creed that is a bit beyond where I am now, a creed that I can live by, with effort. And when I walked into this place, I walked in to a religion with a history, a people, a systematic theology and point of view. I study, I wrestle with them all, to see how they inform what I hold to be true. The core teachings on hope in humanity, and hope in the forces that guide and sustain us, lift me up. This is a hope-full religion. 

 It takes encouragement, to keep going. Some days, I just want to pick the easy way out. Or I want to have a creed brimming with fancy flourishes that I can frame and look at, without actually having to live. My church encourages me to delve deeper, try harder, be the authentic person I aspire to be. They hold me accountable.

 And they hold me. We are in relationship, in church. We take care of each other. We love one another. When I am broken down, my spirit crumbling, church echoes our Universalist theological belief that there is still love, and I am still worthy. We learn how to be in relationship even through the hard times. We disagree ... but we do the work to stay in the relationship. We get angry with each other ... and we stay in relationship. And as we stay in relationship with each other, so we are learning how to stay in relationship with the whole rest of the world, even those whose politics and creeds are so different from ours. We stay connected. We re-engage. We love. We find joy in each other. 

I am a Unitarian Universalist. In faith. In practice. In aspiration. 


http://iamuu.net/being-uu/uu-saturday-writing-challenge/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Me and My Collar

You may run into me on a Friday, in my neighborhood, so it's time I let you know what you might see. When I was doing my required unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), my supervisor suggested that any of us who came from traditions where a clerical collar was an option, take one "collar week," to see how we were treated, as opposed to wearing regular professional clothes. After a couple of days, I joked to the Catholic priest, "How do you manage the power?" In regular clothes, I would walk into a patient's room, and it would take about 5 or so minutes of introductions and pleasantries before we could really get down to talking about their feelings, their fears, the deep stuff. With most people, as soon as that clerical collar walked in the room, with me attached, they began pouring out all the heavy stuff they were carrying. I was riding the bus back and forth every day, and though not quite so dramatic, the collar effect was alive there, to...
10 comments
Read more

Beloved Community: The Now and Not Yet

Rev. Christine Robinson has a great little post up about the phrase "beloved community" and why it's problematic to use that to describe a church. Like her mom, I can get cranky about the whole thing, but my crankiness lies in the misuse of what is, to me, such a breathtaking and profound concept. Martin Luther King, Jr., someone whose words I study in great detail, is the one we often think of as originating the term, but he learned about it through the writings of Josiah Royce. Josiah Royce (right) with close friend William James.  Royce was a philosopher, studying Kant, Hegel. I imagine he would have enjoyed Koestler's theory of the holon , because he saw humanity as being both individuals and part of a greater "organism" that was community. As King's belief about Beloved Community would be rooted in agape , Royce's philosophy stemmed from what he called loyalty, and by that he meant, "the practically devoted love of an individual f...
6 comments
Read more

To Love the Hell Out of the World

To love the hell out of the world means to love it extravagantly, wastefully, with an overpouring abandon and fervor that sometimes surprises even yourself. That love flows out of you, sometimes slow and steady, sometimes in a torrent, sometimes filled with joy, sometimes with fierceness, or anger, or a heartbreaking pain that makes you say, "No, no, I can't take this anymore. I can't do anymore. It's too much ... too much." But it's too late. You've opened up your own heart, your own mind, body, and strength, and yes, it is too much. But there's also so much love that comes crashing down on you, gifts from the Heavens in the form of the smiles and cares from others, a giggle burbling up from a toddler's fat little belly, the soft, sweet smell of star jasmine catching you unaware, not knowing where it came from ... but it's here. And you're here. And just to live, just to exist, swells your heart with enough gratitude and love that you mu...
2 comments
Read more