11 September 2009
I awoke before dawn this morning, still feeling unsettled by the emotional turmoil of yesterday. In the distance I could hear the thrum of a train locomotive. It stayed in one place for several minutes. Thanks to John McPhee, I know that it could have been waiting for a fresh crew. Or it could have been waiting for the green light. I wondered what it was like for the people who live closer to the tracks. My experience with those kinds of noises are buried deep in my memory; they are now the sensations that remind me of a two story stucco house on U.S. 51 with its windows wide open in July, hoping to catch a breeze off the prairie. Train locomotives conjur pleasant memories of walking along the tracks with Grandma, Aunt Rose and Mike, or of catching the Rock Island Rocket and sliding into LaSalle Street Station.
But this morning, with an unsettled heart and the comfort of a couple of purring felines, I gripped my minimug of Lavazza and pondered the arc my life seems to have taken, the journeys I have made and those yet to come. At some point each of us has to come to terms with what’s deep inside, be they memories evoked by the sound of a diesel locomotive, or the strength of our convictions. It is to that well we must go to draw whatever wisdom we can, and it is something we must often do with more courage than we normally can muster.
I have found myself in the position of having to draw the line in order to have my religious convictions respected. We hear a lot of ranting by the religious right on this topic. They feel they don’t get enough respect for being Christian. I have news for them. They ought to try being a Unitarian Universalist in a sea of holier than thou Christians and non-practicing Christians who have never really examined their own beliefs.
You see, it isn’t that we Unitarian Universalists don’t believe in anything, or that we can believe whatever we want. No, indeed, it is the work we must put into our search for religious truth that goes unnoticed. Most of us take a rather insouciant attitude when discussing these things with non UUs, and that’s because it’s so doggone hard to describe our religion. Among ourselves, we breathe a sigh of relief and settle into the lively discussions that characterize us as a group. What the outside world doesn’t see is the responsibility we take on when we sign the membership book, or when we simply identify ourselves as Unitarian Universalist.
My own religious path has been circuitous. My family was nominally United Church of Christ, or Unitarians Considering Christ as the wags would have it. My mother insisted I be confirmed, even though she never made me go to Sunday school. And I do mean never. So I endured a year’s worth of Saturday mornings with an elderly former Evangelical and Reformed minister who never quite made the leap to the new identity of his church. While my counterparts up the street at the Congregational church were getting catechism from Reverend Jones with the UCC materials, our guy stuck to the ancient little blue E&R catechism books. My guess is that he had cases of the things stashed and wasn’t about to buy new ones.
I rebelled in a very passive aggressive way. I just wouldn’t do the homework. I read through the whole book and concluded there was nothing in there that I could buy into. So I went because my mother made me, didn’t memorize the pieces and pretty much caused Reverend Klefmann a lot of grief by very obviously not going along with the drill. (We weren’t supposed to ask questions and he sure as hell didn’t offer any explanations.) When it was time to be confirmed, I had my little things I was supposed to spout off during the church service, and in the interest of keeping my business to myself, I memorized those. I did my bit and the following Sunday was allowed to take communion. Big deal, I thought. Mogen David wine in little glass cups.
Thanks to a Unitarian Universalist minister I met in grad school at University of Chicago, I would occasionally go to church. I loosely timed it around the time of my mother’s death, and honestly, for no particular reason. We visited other churches, but he never took me to a UU church. It went on like that - maybe close to twenty years worth of sporadic church attendance, and always walking away wondering why I had bothered.
A stint as a secretary for a huge Presbyterian church in Evanston was the turning point for me in terms of organized religion. You have only to work for a church to decide religion is a scourge. During a board meeting, the all male board asked the senior minister if I was a Christian - in front of me like I wasn’t even there. He replied that no, I wasn’t. Y’know, I took issue with that. I declared to that bunch of morons that I had indeed been confirmed in the United Church of Christ, and if that wasn’t Christian than that was a new one on me.
But, in truth, the man was right. I just didn’t know it.
When you move to the South from places like the Midwest, where religion and politics are considered impolite dinner topics unless one is dining with intimates, and the first thing they ask is A) who are your people, and B) which church do you attend, it gives pause. Big Kitty rolls his eyes when I say that’s like asking a woman her bra size, but it’s true. What I discovered is that because the word Christ is in the name, I could sorta get by with UCC. The trouble was, there wasn’t a UCC church, so they embarked on a plan to convert me to the Baptist faith. Lord have mercy, as they say around these parts.
About that time I was indulging my inner history geek and plowing through the multi-volume set of Dumas Malone’s biography of Thomas Jefferson. There was a lot in there on Jefferson’s religious explorations, which I found fascinating. The almanacs all list him as a Deist, but the truth is, he identified himself as a Unitarian. Being a fanatic about the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, I knew that his family were devoutly Unitarian - one grandfather was a Unitarian preacher in Wales, and his uncle, Jenkin Lloyd Jones, was a Unitarian minister in Chicago. When he lived in Oak Park, Illinois with his mother and sisters, it was with a stern and imposing woman who was the Universalist minister.
It wouldn’t take much to figure out where this is going…my friend in Chicago mailed me a copy of the Rev. Jack Mendelsohn’s Why I Am a Unitarian Universalist. It goes by another title now, but that’s the copy I still own. In it, Jack (we UUs are all on a first name basis) explained his own experiences in, gasp!, the United Church of Christ, although his had been a Congregational church. I devoured that book. For the first time in my life, religion and the reasons people seek it, made sense to me.
The Rev. Dr. Timothy Ashton is the one responsible for my conversion, if you can call it that. Neil had let him know I would be sneaking into the back pew and he kept a look out for me. His sermons expanded my realm of thought and my rational little ole mind had plenty to chew on throughout the week. When he left, I was on my own. I liked the new minister, and would happily break bread with him, but his sermons never had a beginning, a middle and an end. He didn’t keep to that rule of tell ‘em what you’re going to say, say it, tell them what you said, so I never got the point. I quit going to church because I figured I was the only one. I wasn’t, which was a comfort to learn, but when you are used to being told you are clueless, it’s easy to assign the same blame to yourself.
Ultimately, it was the experience with other UUs during a week long summer conference that cemented my belief I was in the right place. My present church no longer offers the spiritual zest I need, but my religious nature is fed each summer, so it’s okay. Without the connections at that conference, SUUSI, I never in a million years would have read the Bible cover to cover in order to come to some conclusions about where I stood. I also would never have been able to articulate my beliefs to my late neighbor, a Reformed Jew. We had a rather lively conversation in which he questioned me rather rigorously, and when it was over he said, “You, my dear, are a very good Jew.” I was honored.
And that brings me to the thing that is so damned hard for many Unitarian Universalists. We are unable to articulate our beliefs. Our denomination charges us with the responsibility to seek religious truth, and people do that, religiously. But explaining it, or more importantly, looking like we are practicing a religion, is difficult. It is a huge weakness. The outside world sees our denomination for all its work in social justice, but they don’t necessarily see us as religious people, and that’s because we are non-creedal. We’re a rather non-denominational denomination. Our people have beliefs that range from honestly Christian all the way to devoutly pagan. I’m talking, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, you name it… We draw from all the great world religions in order to arrive at what makes sense to us.
What is confusing to the outside world is that they won’t get the same answer to their question from even a married couple. What do you guys believe? Big Kitty will say one thing and I’ll say another. This causes a great deal of confusion. However we also are painfully aware of the fact that we aren’t respected for our religious beliefs, either. People wouldn’t dream of considering someone of a primitive Baptist faith as having no religion, but they have no compunction about dismissing us as not having a religion.
Because we don’t go out there and talk it up like the Baptists do, and because the Baptists tend to take their brand of Christianity so seriously, we often find ourselves in situations where our religion could get us fired. Oh, yeah, there are laws, but in a right to work state, “he didn’t fit in” has a lot of different meanings. He was gay, he was a Jew, he was___ fill in the blank. More often than not it was what he wasn’t. He wasn’t the right flavor of Christian.
In my family, we stuck out because the rest of them were Catholic, and indeed most people I meet assume that because my mother was Italian that I was raised a Catholic. For the record, I liked going to mass with my friend Julie Anne more than I did my own church. This annoyed the hell out of my mother. My dearest Aunt Mary would mutter under her breath, “Damn Catholics” every time I reported another slight from the little girls in her neighborhood. We used to get this, “Sister says you’re going to hell because you aren’t a Catholic,” and Aunt Mary would go over the edge. Aunt Mary excelled at righteous indignation and I loved her for it. You always knew she was in your corner.
Watching the funeral mass for Senator Kennedy, I had a sense of things being right with the world. I have plenty of experience with the Catholic funeral mass, so I know what to expect, I know the liturgy and I understand what’s going on. It is this sameness that Catholics can rely on. Sure it’s rote, but it’s also comforting to them. And strangely enough, I never, in all those times I went to church with Julie Anne, felt I was being beat over the head with Jesus. Contrast that with a Baptist funeral where all they talk about it gloom and doom - it’s like they are having a funeral service for Jesus himself instead of the dearly departed. It’s scary.
My immediate family is rather dismissive of me in general, so it’s no surprise that they don’t get that I am deeply religious. Again, Unitarian Universalists don’t look like they are religious. They don’t meet around the flagpole to pray. They don’t worry about sin and going to hell. Some of us are atheists. It’s hard for civilians to understand how an atheist can be religious. But they can be and many are. It’s called being open to religious truth wherever you find it.
Jerry had it on the money with his pronouncement that I am a good Jew. And Ernie was right when he told that board I wasn’t a Christian. No, I don’t believe the messiah has come, nor do I believe there will be a messiah. I think humans need to accept responsibility for the state of the world and not go around expecting the second coming to fix everything. They need to fix it themselves. Now. Not some time in the future.
The mythology of Jesus’ birth can be found in many other world religions - most notably paganism. Historically, we know that the prophet Jesus of Nazareth was interested in Jews being better Jews, and that he roamed the countryside trying to improve the lot of people with needs. When it looked like he was making some headway, the Romans got pressured into dealing with him. It’s not so different with what happens to any politician who starts making headway with social change.
My convictions are important to me. All the business about the trinity happened because it was a political move, not something guided by a religious belief. So, no, I’m still in the same spot I was when I told Reverend Klefmann I didn’t believe in ghosts. I do believe we humans hold the key. I believe it is the spirit within us that will save us all from doom and destruction. That spirit, I’ve come to believe, had to come from somewhere, and unlike my atheist brethren, I’m content to let that spark be something a higher power has ignited in each of us. When I light my chalice in worship, I am lighting that which is within me, only in a tangible way.
When I participate in ritual, my spiritual energy comes across to others, I have been told. It’s the kind of energy that is healing and grounding. It is also the kind of energy that disrupts people who do not hold deep spiritual beliefs. In their discomfort, they react in ways that protect themselves, rather than open themselves. UUs experience this a lot. We let it go, normally, but every now and then, you just have to screech to a halt and make them pay attention. You have to make them respect the fact that you do, in fact, have religious convictions. You have to educate them about Unitarian Universalism as it pertains to your own truth.
Mine is simple. You wouldn’t ask a Jew to read from the New Testament, would you? Well, then you need to extend the same religious respect to me. You can’t expect me to drop my beliefs at the door and just blow it off. The respect you accord to others of different faiths is exactly what I expect and especially, what I deserve. I’d do the same for you.