“UU is a Verb. So how do we UU?
The Catholic in me tells me to begin with confession. “UU is actually not a verb.” It’s a religious tradition, a noun.
Suggesting it as a verb was way to ask what is the central doing of UU?
What a task and task this topic gave me. How can I give a short answer that is also comprehensive of UU tradition. What to include? What to I leave out? How to get to the core and neatly package this awesome tradition?
If you have become enthralled and enamored with what we do together and then tried to explain it to someone unfamiliar with our tradition, you may have experienced something similar.
Many of us just know that we like it here. Those of us who came to the religion as adults found it refreshing, respectful of our integrity and intelligence. Some of us were very surprised that we would actually choose to participate in religion.
We soon approached some friends, ones whose independent and critical thinking skills we valued, and we told them they “had to come.” They asked us if we had lost our mind. We replied “No! Really! This place is different!” When we approached families of conservative religious orientation some expressed concern that UU a cult! Suddenly we wanted them to realize that UU is a respectable established religion. “I thought you would be happy I was going to church! And we tried to set them straight. “UU is the exactly the opposite of a cult! A cult demands that everyone believes the same thing. The members of my UU Church can’t seem to agree on anything!”
I’m joking! We agree on many things, but agreement on a set of theological doctrines, that is simply not something we aim for. We are bound together not by dogma but by a shared sense of purpose, by what we aim to do together and by the promises we make about how we will treat each other.
On the most basic level, maybe we go to church for the same reason anyone participates in religious groups. For that matter the same reason people attend all manner of assemblies. Congregations are formed because people like to congregate. Our anatomy, our physiology, our psyche, our emotion and our spirit all lead us to come together.
Granted some assemblies engage or promote really horrible behavior. We can’t get far enough away from these. The drive for community competes with the drive to avoid horrible stuff. A friend of mine expressed this sentiment saying: “There’s being alone, and then there’s wishing that you were!”
Neither trauma nor introversion completely overrides our eagerness for connection. It’s natural to want company. We know we need community to survive. The animal who travels with the herd is less likely to get picked off that the one wandering away on his own. On average, people who join congregations are healthier and live longer than those that don’t.
UU tradition respects nature and this natural drive for community. Our spirituality is down to Earth. It encourages us to find the holy and the awesome in the ordinary, on Earth, in our bodies. We don’t require or prohibit belief in anything supernatural or other worldly.
We celebrate the human desire for companionship or fellowship that brings us together! We experience power and beauty in our gatherings and celebrate the humanity that flourishes here. Our tradition asks us to welcome neighbors and strangers. I pray that this sanctuary remain a place of welcome, that we offer welcome to whites and people of color. I pray that we warmly welcome lesbians, gays bisexuals, asexuals, transgender and queer people. I pray that we welcome temporarily able bodied people and people with disabilities. Rich people and poor people.
The charge to be a welcoming congregation is a mighty spiritual practice and discipline! To grow in our ability to keep this tradition, we must be willing to face our prejudices, our reactions, assumptions and be willing to grow spiritually.
Jesus said “blessed are the peacemakers.” Rodney King said “Can’t we all just get along?” History’s answer has been: “apparently not yet.”
This brings us to the mother of all religious tasks, fulfillment. It turns out that the desire for connection is a desire for fulfillment. Harry Chapin, a singer songwriter that had a strong impact on me wrote “everybody’s lonely that is what its all about.” One of our readings today “We Gather in Reverence” written by Sophia Lyon Fahs speaks of the “wonder of being so close and yet so far apart.”
Turns out that “people, people who need people, (sings) are the..” only kind of people that have ever existed. So we give thanks for those who choose to “do” church. We are grateful when people check us out to see if how we roll might contribute toward fulfillment. Thank you for paying attention and reflecting on what we pray, how we play, how we meditate, how we congregate, calculate, extrapolate and infiltrate. More thanks when you participate in the ministry of this church.
Fulfillment is the realm of religion. Every religion offers a prescription for fulfillment. So what is ours?
We’re like the Beatles singing “all you need is love.” and we’re like George Harrison singing “you know that don’t come easy.”
If you have faith that blessings await us after death, of if you don’t, we welcome you to this place where we ask all of us to strive to be a blessing and to help create the beloved community here on Earth. We might discuss the many ways people have created gods in their own image, and we ask ourselves – all of us, to be willing to expand our concept of the Great Mystery.
However you conceive of the source of life, we invite you to dance with the life force as it flows through us now! We ask each other to grow awareness and reverence for the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part.
We find fulfillment in the ability to learn from each and every turn in our journey. We say that revelation is continuing. We see each soul as a sacred scroll that is still being written upon.
UU doesn’t ask for conformity to dogma. We are bound together by a shared purpose. We have come together to discover and share a love that is holding all. To find “a love that is beyond belief.” (Thandeka)
One way that UU ministry works is by loving people exactly as they are. Another way our ministry works is by asking people to be who they say they are. Our tradition leads us to fulfillment by calling us to integrity. UU means journeying toward wholeness, getting honest about the stories we’ve been telling and correcting our course again and again.
Where did we come from? Who are we? Where are we going? UU doesn’t present one final answer delivered by G*d in the long ago past. UU asks us for willingness to learn from ancient wisdom. And for willingness to hear the still small voice within, as well as the thunderous voice of Mother Earth and the cries of all our relations. UU tradition asks us to delve into to the questions: “who are we?” and why are we here? It asks us to go past common answers. Who we are is greater than a job title. It is greater than gender, assigned or chosen. You are more than your name, given or chosen. Truth can travel past these boundaries, these categories and words. UU faith tells us that as we seek we shall find. Our faith tells us that revelation will continue for us if we remain willing to learn.
We come together to seek truth in matters of ultimate concern not only for ourselves but for all of humanity and all of life.
One action tradition suggests is to be a part of a congregation. It invites us to discover what the tradition offer, remain willing to keep learning together and heed the calls of what it asks of us.
UU invitation to grow in integrity applies to the congregation as well as to us individually. It invites us to enjoy being a religious congregation and shared the sacred responsibility of maintaining this religious tradition. Everything we do here is faith development. All we teach is UUism. The congregation is the curriculum. The congregation is a place we can learn and grow in fulfillment by doing and by being UU.
Is that scary? Apprehension and distrust of religious authority may sit deep in our bones. We might not be certain we want to be a religious group.
So let’s talk about religious authority for a moment. Who is the author of our religious life? We do sometimes share literature that speaks of the author of life and death. We may take this literally. We may appreciate it as poetry.
Each of us gets to choose the aspects of tradition that we will carry forward in our life. Each of us is responsible for our own theology. When I went to seminary there was a card above the kitchen sink that read: “You are responsible for your theology and your dishes!”
Donna Schloss, raised Unitarian, said her father taught her that her right to swing her arm stops where it comes in contact with another person.
The life of this congregation is guided by covenant. Leadership rests upon democratically elected leaders and is guided by the church’s mission. Authorship for the course of the UUA, the association of congregations is governed by elected leaders and a democratic process to assert the will of its member congregations.
UU tradition demonstrates a great appreciation of dissent, protest, advocacy and organizing. We hold in high esteem the prophets in every age who have advocated and agitated for more justice, dignity and fulfillment of human needs! We are about building a new way together! Power to the people! We respect the power generated when we reach agreement and work together. It’s UU wisdom that faith and trust cannot be achieved by force. As trust is earned and achieved, we discover power that is greater than us!
Some years ago, this congregation formed a mission statement. It reads:
We journey together guided by UU values to seek, nurture and serve our loving church family, our community and our world.
SEEKING! We seek truth, peace, justice, meaning and fulfillment. Faith development, this our path together.
We journey together guided by UU values. What are UU values? We claim no possession of a document containing rules literally given by God. We get to discuss, reflect and discern what is most important to us.
I have asked many congregations to name the values or qualities that they imagined would make their community wonderful beyond belief. Everyone is invited to contribute, and we list 25 or 50 values or qualities. The compilations of every group have been very similar, practically identical.
I appreciate our living tradition. In the last 450 years, there have been tremendous changes. Our UU life in 2023 is not the same as it was 20, 40, and 60 years ago. Before 1961, there were two denominations, the Unitarians and the Universalists. Understanding, articulation, and practice were certainly different a century or four ago.
I have confidence and expect the living tradition of UU to continue as a force bringing humanity closer to the creation of beloved community, a time when justice shall roll down like waters, and peace like an ever-flowing stream. I trust that this congregation and other UU congregations will contribute to the spread of a faith that holds every person to have inherent worth and dignity, a consciousness that has reverence for the web of existence.
I don’t expect it to be perfect. Our tradition teaches me something written in an Indigo Girls song: “the less I seek my source from some definitive, the closer I am to fine.” We don’t expect any religion or human culture to have absolute truth. We do know that each culture has treasures that can be used to nurture the next generation.
A religious tradition can never be fully understood by boiling it down to a few statements of belief, or to a short list of values identified by one words. All the history, all the songs, stories, rituals, prayers, all the quirks inconsistencies and imperfections are all part of its journey, culture and way of life.
We do have a way of life! I like the way Rev. Susan Smith articulates our good news. She says that “our gospel, is that people with different belief systems and theological traditions can come together to build the beloved community.”
I would add that as a religious liberal faith we can look past literal or strict interpretations of scripture and finds in its poetry the truth of a Great Mystery known in many different ways and find love at the center of it all.
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