Saved by Doubt (CL)

This month we are talking about salvation. How are we saved, and from what?
I was saved, in the middle of college, from certainty. I was saved by my own doubts, and by a community that allowed me to embrace those doubts... and that embraced me with my doubts.

Some of you might already know my story, but here's a re-cap.
I went to church on-and-off as a kid, usually to Baptist churches with friends. I really wanted to believe in Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and savior, and sometimes I did. Sometimes, I didn't. I was told to have faith, to have trust, even through my doubts. And so I tried. I really tried.

My college years, like that time in many people's lives (ages 18-22 or so), were marked by great transition and a lot of uncertainty. A lot of doubts. Doubts about what I wanted to be when I grew up, who I wanted to spend my life with (or not), and what I believed to be true and right. I was changing majors a lot, and leaving behind a career I had planned on my whole childhood and teen years... I was engaged to be married, and then broke that off. I was in a Christian Sorority, and realized, sadly, that I wasn't really a Christian, at least not in the sense that they wanted me to be. I had a lot of doubts.

And then, one afternoon while procrastinating from writing a paper, I checked my email. A "spam" e-mail had gotten through my filters and I decided to open it up. One of the things in the email was a link to a quiz: Belief-O-Matic from Beliefnet.com. The quiz (which I linked here and hope you will take for yourself!) asked all kinds of questions about my beliefs: about God, about salvation, about the afterlife, about morality. I remember being afraid: What if God pulls out my Belief-O-Matic quiz results while I'm standing at the pearly gates, and denies me entrance to heaven because of my answers? But I decided to answer truthfully... The way I felt in my core (my soul, some might say), rather than how I thought I "should" answer. When I was finished, I hit "submit" and it tallied my results.

I was 100% Unitarian Universalist.

I had never heard of that long-named religion. Was it a cult?

So I clicked on the link provided, and it brought me to the UUA webpage, where I read all about this faith that honored doubts as well as answers, and honored people in all stages of their life and faith development. I sat at my computer in my dorm room, and I cried.

I was so grateful to have found a religion where I didn't have to pretend to be certain.
Where my doubts could be honored as a part of me, and where they could fuel my search rather than stunt my faith. I remember the way the minister, Rev. Laurel Hallman, began her prayer that first Sunday morning I attended church, and how she always began her prayers... to the "God of many names, whose mystery is beyond all our understanding." I remember feeling filled with gratitude for that address--one of humility in the face of the great Mystery--God is not God's name... It is the name we give to that which is greater than us all. I am so grateful, still, to be a part of a community that appreciates our questions, our doubts, and our full humanity, and not simply our professions of a particular belief.

I have been saved from certainty. I have been committed to a lifelong search for truth and meaning... Which by no means is an easy path. So, as the reading in our hymnal says (#650), "Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the attendant of truth.... Doubt  is the touchstone of truth; it is an acid which eats away the false... the truth stands boldly and unafraid... Therefore let us not fear doubt, but let us rejoice in its help."

Let us rejoice. For we have been saved.
Amen...     -Rev. Christina

Saved by a Different Faith (JC)

I chose Unitarian Universalism as my faith not because of our history which is rich, indeed; not because of our pioneering efforts to end slavery, or how we helped in the women's suffrage movement. I did not become a UU because of our important work during the Civil Rights Movement.  I didn't choose this faith because I am antitrinitarian or because I believe in the salvation of all souls. I chose this religion as the one I would die for because, quite simply, it accepted me for who I was and where I was.  This faith said "You are okay as you are, you are an original blessing not an original sin--a work in progress." That is the reason I am a Unitarian Universalist. 

What about you? Is UUism a gift to you? A gift is "a thing given willingly to someone without payment; a present" (thanks Wiki). This movement came to us free of charge it was a present--presenting to us new opportunities for affirmation and association. It was freely given without any thought of repayment.  I don't know?  Somehow I feel compelled to do something with this gift. I want to pay it forward by sharing our message with others. An old hymn of the church comes to mind... "What shall I render for all the blessings? What shall I render, what shall I give?” The hymn goes on to say, “All I can render is my body and my soul, that’s all that I can render that is all that I can give.” I have to be present and share this UU gift because I am held captive by the message.

If you are not a UU you might ask "Is that all the UU message says--that 'you are okay and a work in progress'?   Yes.  Pretty much, but it does say more...  Our message says to you that we support inclusivity   We believe all humans are the "Imago Dei"-- made in the image of God, made in the image of Greatness!  We believe all humans beings have worth and are worthy of love.  We believe that all religions point us right back to ourselves and the "god(s) of our understanding."  We believe in the democratic process, that each person is free to responsibly search for her/his own truths in life.

Perhaps you are a Unitarian Universalist and don't even know it?  If you want to talk about it, give me a shout out.  The ways to reach  me and to check out some of my work are below.  

Peace and blessings,

Rev. John T., (MOLE)
Minister of Outreach, Leadership and Evangelism
UU Church of Annapolis, Lead Minister AWAKE
AWAKE website
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Office 410-266-8044 x107
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When God is One

I am still reeling from Partner Church Sunday, and I believe that I am not alone. We all felt a sense of blessing and perhaps even pride in being the heirs to this special religious legacy. There was something about the service and Rev. Fred’s message that excited the imagination in a profound way. We got to consider our sense of connectedness across continents and across the stretches of time. We got to see, hear and in some cases taste and touch our relationship to all those who have undertook, and are undertaking now, this faithful journey we call Unitarian Universalism.

I found myself fixed in place like a deer in the headlights by the very simple refrain “God is One” that we heard over and over again. (And, I am willing to accept the possibility that maybe I’m the only one who heard it that way, as it bounced back and forth in my head). It had such a pure and resonant quality, both elegant and buoyant.  The phrase said so little but meant so much to me.

Egy Az Isten  “God is One.”

Maybe I was awestruck because it reminded me of my days in seminary when studying Hebrew Bible and I stumbled on the passage in the book Deuteronomy:

 שְׁמַע, יִשְׂרָאֵל:  יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ, יְהוָה אֶחָ.
 Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one.

The message occurs other time in the Christian New Testament (believe it or not Jesus says it in Mark’s Gospel, the oldest text in the Christian canon!) and we see it in the Koran as the essential article of faith:

لَا إِلَّهَ إِلَّا الله مُحَمَّدٌ رَسُولُ الله
There is no god but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God.

In Hinduism we hear intimations of it in the Upanishads in reference of Brahman as the substrate of existence. For me there is a universal quality to the refrain that says more about our yearning to apprehend the true nature of reality, than it does about any particular deity or cultural context.

But, even before I had the chance to study all of these ancient books with their similar messages, I had the innate capacity to hear and perceive what would become my deepest truth that indeed “God is one”.
So hearing the message “God is One” felt familiar to me on multiple levels.

You see growing up I was almost certainly a Christian Universalist like our partners in the Philippines, and most likely a Christian Unitarian, like our friends in Romania. Long before I knew what it took to be either one, I had an intuition that because God was one, no one could be separated from that “oneness”, it was inescapable and irresistible. As a kid I believed (and still do) that God could be encountered in holy scripture and in trees, grasses and bright sunny days. All people had access to the holy in their own way, even if I could not explain the precise mechanics of that access.

This of course was an impossible position to have growing up as a Pentecostal Christian, where we lived in a world delimited by a rigid brand of fundamentalism, and under constant threat of God’s imminent, final judgment of humanity. It was a world of winners (the saved) and losers (the eternally damned); and there was only one way to be a winner, as it were, and that was through accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Our focus as Pentecostals was the life hereafter, and actively rejecting life on Earth. I lived as someone who was constantly prepared to leave a place that was never his home in the first place.
But, one day, in the middle of a Sunday service, actually, I realized something that changed things for me--forever.

I realized that I couldn’t believe in a God who would damn anyone ever again. I couldn’t believe in a God who could exclude anyone. There had to be a way that everyone could be included in the divine plan, if were truly divine in the first place. Otherwise it was just scare tactics and politics masquerading as religion.
I couldn’t believe in a God, who wasn’t immanent in creation; who couldn’t be encountered everywhere and in various scriptures and religious traditions and even the sciences.

In essence I came to believe that when God is One, everything is one, linked in that network of mutuality that Martin Luther King spoke about that bejeweled garment that Indra once wore.

An entirely new world came into being from that moment on. And, it was a world I wanted to live on and make my home.

I hope we can all have moments of realization just like this. I hope that those moments find you here in our special community or somewhere in the world, encountering the holy wherever and whenever you can. I want all of us to have big, slippery thoughts that excite our holy imaginations and stop us in our tracks and invite us to reconnect with our deepest truths!


Be Blessed and see you in church. Daniel.

Beyond Pews

The Roman Catholic Church is experiencing a tough time.  The Church is journeying through a very rough period, similar to but unlike anything in its history.  The Vatican will soon have a newly elected Pope and a Pope Emeritus; Catholicism is immersed in several scandals that remind all of its fallibility; the faith is hemorrhaging members and advertises for priests; it refuses to hear anything that suggests of breaking the male oligarchy of apostolic succession.  So it was with great interest that I read a recent New York Times op-ed piece.  The title caught my eye immediately: “Give Up Your Pew for Lent.”  The author, Paul Elie - a Roman Catholic and a professor at Georgetown - suggests that with all the confusion-creating events and misconduct in the Catholic Church, it’s time that the faithful take a break and collect their thoughts; he’s urging the faithful to take a “time out” and vacate their pews for a weekend.  And do what with their time?  He’s very clear how the break should be spent:

We should seize this opportunity to ask what is true in our faith, what it costs us in obfuscation and moral compromise, and what its telos, or end purpose, really is.  And we should explore other religious traditions, which we understand poorly. (3/01/2013

I don’t think the writer really believes that anyone who reads his column will follow his advice by spending the weekend church-free.  I’m not really sure that this was his hope or point, but, as I said, the headline sure caught my attention!  And so does the idea.

No, I’m not urging you to take a Sunday off from UUCA.  But consider this: If Elie’s use of “pew” is simply metaphoric - “pew” meaning stability, stasis, or what's expected from the church and yourself - then yes, give up your pew for Lent and maybe more: Give up your pew, forever.  When shouldn’t we be asking what is true in our faith?  It’s always appropriate to wonder what the opaque places are in your belief.  What purpose does your faith serve?  How are we as a faithful community serving each other and those in our region?  How much do you know - first hand - about other religious traditions?

     There are religious traditions where a believer or member can fall into a rut, a routine, the predictable.  I’ve never thought about Unitarian Universalism in this way.  If anything we are just the opposite, often taking great pride in living our faith outside the expected, and contrary to perceived norms.  Yet even the unpredictable can become predictable. Have you ever heard someone at UUCA tell a newcomer after a service, “It’s not this way every Sunday.”  Put enough of those experiences together and it becomes that way every Sunday!  Even in our theology, spirituality and social justice outreach, you’ve got to wonder if there is a particular way to be a Unitarian Universalist.  In other words, taking the time to review and reflect on your faith - to give up your pew - is always a good idea.

          Take care and see you soon,

                   Fred