To be published in Sun-Sentinel.
We are a very religious nation. More Americans report attending
worship on a regular basis than their counterparts in any other
industrialized nation. If the polls are right, there are more
theists per capita in America than Europe, but there are more
atheists and agnostics as well. There are also more folks who claim
no ongoing relationship to a community of faith who yet call
themselves religious.
We are a pluralistic nation. Though in many quarters religious
tolerance is still needed, we like to think of ourselves as a
people who have overcome the constraints of religious identity and
are free to experiment, to mix and match elements of faith
traditions from wherever we find them.
We "UU's" have a complex identity. Like our ethnicity, most of us
are hyphenated and proud of it. We are Methodist-pagan-Buddhist; or
Catholic-Jewish-Free-thinker. Maybe we went from synagogue to
ashram to a place like this. Or maybe our story is one of being
uninvolved, of being a UU without knowing it, only at some point to
be surprised that there is someplace we want to be on Sunday
mornings, and some folks call it church!
Although many of us are comfortable being lifelong seekers, we'd
rather not be wanderers. What we are after is a combination of
these two elements. We want a religion that holds us and deepens
us, along with a spirituality that lifts us and nourishes us. We
want a tradition, a discipline that will encourage us to sit beside
still waters where we are fed by ineffable truths, and we want to
know we are not alone, that others in their solitude have seen and
known "It" too. What makes it even more perplexing is that we sense
that what we are after will never be given to us. It can't be
handed down from a shelf, pulled off the rack -- and anyone who
promises this is probably more salesman than seer. And yet we know
it can be found. This is the place we come to discover it, or
failing that to invent it as we go.
Our openness is not about being a place for everyone and every
belief human beings can conjure. Rather it is a way to build a
place of encounter. A place where a Methodist-Buddhist-pagan heart
can face a scientific-mystical soul with respect and honor, and in
that meeting both can be made strong. When as a community we are
engaged in this encountering of each other we know ourselves as
more complex, more nuanced souls. The more hyphenated your
religious identity becomes the more UU you are likely to be!