My Spiritual Journey
Converted to UUism
As a young professional starting a new job and a new career, I applied my knowledge and skills to a variety of long range projects. At first I analyzed competitor's tires so that my employer could copy their technical advances. Then I analyzed environmental samples and chemical process streams so that complex mixtures could be quantified. Later I got involved in process analytical chemistry and multivariate statistics. I became so adept at applying mathematics to extract useful information from masses of data, that I worked full time on the data produced by my colleagues. I was good at finding solutions to problems, at answering questions, at making discoveries and creating new ideas. And I was good because I knew the power of the scientific method.
As young adult starting a new life in a new city, I continued attending Catholic masses for a while, but specifically made a point of learning about other religions and attending other services as well. It was only after being exposed to, and carefully considering, different ideas of spirituality that I finally developed some clarity about my own. I found out that it wasn't a bad thing, that I didn't have faith, and that I didn't believe. It was okay, to expect religious ideas to make sense, and to expect religious ideas to explain the world around me. If a religious idea conflicts with reason and logic, then the idea should be discarded and another idea should be sought to take its place. The consequence of this kind of thinking, for me, was that many of the religious ideas that I was taught since birth were discarded, particularly the ideas that establish the authority of the Roman Catholic Church to define spiritual truth.
Sometime around the middle of the 1980's, my future wife and I were invited by a friend to visit a Unitarian Universalist church. Although we initially tried to figure out what Unitarian Universalists believed and were confused about what the Sunday services were really about, we kept returning. My wife was going through her own spiritual journey, leaving her religion of birth the same way I was leaving mine, and we thought this might be the church where we could worship together. We became active in the congregation, were married in the church several years later, and have been committed Unitarian Universalists ever since.
A New Direction
Like all potential new members of that Unitarian Universalist church, I participated in a series of classes called "Building Your Own Theology". I don't remember what theology I built, but that wasn't really the point, as far as I was concerned. My mind was being opened. I gradually realized that Unitarian Universalism isn't about having beliefs, but instead is about living according to principles. I understood that I had been struggling with other people's theologies all my life, and the Unitarian Universalists were telling me that I could build my own! My spiritual journey was taking a new direction. I could begin in earnest to seek spiritual truth, without being bogged down by the religious dogma of Catholicism.
A Sensible Religion
The Reverend Hilary Krivchenia, Unitarian Universalist minister at the UU Church of Lafayette, published the following thoughts in her congregation's newsletter.
"We do not share one creed about the nature of the divine, except that we know that it resides within all life on earth. We require no rejection of past faith except that you bring only that which is life-affirming to your religious path and that you apply your own keen mind and your reason to exploring your faith both past and present. We do not make ourselves exclusive or above other people and other faiths. Instead we ask that each person practice fresh, true, and deep understanding both of the faith path and life journeys of others, checking our assumptions at the door."
"We do not have one book of great teaching but many - and we find wisdom along many paths and throughout the world. We do not wait for one savior but expect that many hands, ours and many others, must do the work of peace, justice, love, and mercy. We are a unique gathering of kindred and diverse spirits, unique and yet much like the many Unitarian Universalist congregations around the country and in other nations. Each person is welcome here as he or she comes with an open mind and a desire to live a life of character, meaning, love, and good ethics. We each come with histories, suffering, frailties, mistakes, needs, strengths, visions, healing, and gifts. In this place we endeavor to build our strengths, make real our visions, help one another find healing, and share our gifts, not only with one another but especially with our larger, deeply needful world."
Sources of Wisdom:
The living tradition we share draws from many sources:
... direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life;
... words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love;
... teachings from the world's religions which inspire us in our ethical and spiritual life;
... Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves;
... humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn against the idolatries of the mind and spirit;
... and spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.