Category Archives: Unitarian Universalist

When do you cease to be a “young adult”?

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At the Super Bowl, some of us were having conversations about what constitutes becoming “middle age”. It was mostly folks from my church’s Young Adult group in attendance. My husband and I were on the young end of the age distribution curve, which ranged from 23 to 36, median age was probably about 31 or so. To answer the question of middle age, people tossed potential life events around, things like houses and careers. I was mostly quiet. At 26, you hope you’re pretty far from “middle age,” as least for the sake of your longevity. One fellow, who is 36, said to me, “It’s when you have kids.” I raised my eyebrow and said, “I’m a full decade younger than you.” He replied, “Touche.”

————

The UUA’s age boundaries for “young adult” are 18-35. It never seemed like an adequate meter to me. The phase of life metric being used above makes more sense: age as a state of mind. The problem with generalizing over chronological years is that it’s a brush painted over a very uneven surface. The paint pools in some places and barely touches others.  What does the average 19 year old have in common with the average 34 year old?

I presume the goal was to catch a phase of life which roughly correlates with the ages, perhaps the “Quarter-life Crisis”, or the seeking and uncertainty that comes with transitioning into adulthood and coping with what Erik Erikson calls “Isolation versus Intimacy”. Effectively, you are trying to figure out what you want to do in an with your life, and with whom. This article describes the quarter life crisis in five stages:

“Phase 1 – A feeling of being trapped by your life choices. Feeling as though you are living your life on autopilot.

Phase 2 – A rising sense of “I’ve got to get out” and the feeling that you can change your life.

Phase 3 – Quitting the job or relationship or whatever else is making you feel trapped and embarking on a “time out” period where you try out new experiences to find out who you want to be.

Phase 4 – Rebuilding your life.

Phase 5 – Developing new commitments more attuned to your interests and aspirations.”

I read that and laughed, “Hey, I did that.” You’ll fine me somewhere in step five, with my exit from graduate school, new(ish) job at a non-profit provider of housing to the homeless and the unexpected, if pleasantly surprising, conception of my soon-to-be-born daughter. In any case, you would think that once that existential question is figured out, crisis over, right? Whip out your pen and cross it off the list, you’re done. Sell your angst on Craigslist and pack up the Uhaul: It’s time to move into that new-found certainty.

Nope!

My life is still uncertain in so many ways. I just stopped tightening my grip on everything and gave up on trying to control the outcome of every facet of my life. My thoughts are considerably less existential, and I spent much of my energy concerned about meeting the needs of my family. In that way, I resolved one of my personal searches for meaning in life and resigned myself to the fact that I will make the world better using only the imperfect methods I am capable of. Oh, and I need to raise a child whose needs her mother and father to have their act together. Which means I need to have my act together.

———–

I am now 27. Using UUA guidelines, I have eight years before I age into what the UUA would consider a full, unqualified adult. Now, the “Young Adult” designation and programming was created to stem the really high attrition rate of those who are born UU. It is often called the “bridge to nowhere”, that youth are “bridged” into the adult community but spent most of their time in the faith community isolated from it. They age from the youth programming and cons to find an alien community on the other side which poorly resembles the experience offered to children and teenagers. As far as I can tell, youth programming teaches kids to go question their faith (which is not a bad thing) and go out into the world with the mental and intellectual resources that the youth no longer require it. To boot, the isolation and frequent transition into college means the social ties that keep people in a group are severed or perhaps did not exist.

The Young Adult groups and programming are there to create social networks and a place to belong for those who age out of youth programming and experiencing transitions. It is meant as a place of welcome any other person in the age range who can relate to the members of the YA group. It is also meant as a pass through experience, or else there’d be no upper bound of age. (What do you call a YA group with no upper age boundary? Church.) You’re there, you relate, you have companionship and  then when life and time changes you move on. In my church that has sometimes meant to different phases of life, different roles at the church, different parts of the world, etc.

It occurred to me recently that if I were to start attending another church, I do not see myself getting involved in another young adult group. If the church lacked one, I would not feel inspired to start one up. This is not commentary about young adult groups. They are fine, and serve their purpose well. It is not a complaint that the YA groups would not be meeting my needs as a soon-to-be parent. It is more of a comment that I have changed, and seek different ways to be a part of a community.

I feel like I have phased out of the part of life where affinity group discussions about various figure-it-out topics are magnetic. I do not have the answers, yet I am less drawn to the conversations. I belong in the community at church, have friends in Seattle, and do not feel tied to a niche. My current involvement in the Young Adult Group at my church (which, honestly, has been pretty minimal in the last six months) has been purely out of affection for the people who are in the group. They are my friends. Heck, two gals from church threw me a wonderful baby shower, in addition to the fantastic one my mother threw me. I go to church in hopes of seeing my friends, in addition to the sermon and spiritual centering that I get from church. To be honest, often the people are the stronger draw.

If I were to attend a new church, I think I would be seeking something else, and I would be more concerned with whether a community was family-friendly and fond of small children. While I am in Seattle, I will be integrating my new phase of life into my current congregational community. If I were to go elsewhere, I would be seeking a congregational community that fits my phase of life.

Certainly this logic is not unique to me… Or is it?

At what point does one cease being a “young adult”? Relying on the 18-35 age range is as ineffective as trying to pin a number on “middle age”. Have you felt as though you were no longer a “young adult”? What inspired the change? I am really curious and would be glad if you could share.

 

Easter

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Today was absolutely gorgeous. The temperatures were in the sixties, and there was not a cloud in the sky. It was the sort of day where a late bus was tolerated with endless patience, because it meant unplanned moments outside. It was the sort of the day that I struggle with in the evening, worried that I did not adequately commemorate its pleasantness by maximizing my time outside. This is a hold-over from 24 years in Syracuse and Buffalo, where good days are infrequent enough that you must take advantage of them, or wait the weeks before another glorious day may come.

Picture of a landscape. The trees look black against a dark blue sky that has orange radiating from the horizon, which is marked by mountains. Pink wispy clouds are brushed over the right side of he picture.

From My Balcony, just after sunset.

Tomorrow is Easter. I feel very unprepared. If I were back in New York, I would likely be going to my uncle’s house to see him and my aunt, another aunt, my cousin, and my grandmother. It would be a family holiday, and it would feel appropriate. In Seattle, it snuck up on me and I forgot to make plans. Do I go to church? Do I spend time in my neglected P-Patch (plot in a community garden)? If one celebration were not enough, the prediction of gorgeous weather also pushes me to discern some plans for the day. Next year my habit of passively forgetting holidays may be challenged by having my daughter. She’ll be closing in on one year old next Easter.

I follow many people of faith on twitter, and it is lighting up with commentary about Jesus and the miracle of his resurrection. So you’ve all figured out that I am Unitarian Universalist. I suspect the resurrection is more metaphor than history. If there is a God, I suspect he’d be beyond the human need for fantastic stories. The part of Easter worth celebrating, to me, is not so much that God will return to save the world. It is that Jesus was around to spread teachings of compassion and love and that they’ve stuck.

Well, they have sort of stuck. Turns out that these ideas are as hard to institutionalize as they can be hard to live. Turns out you can do a lot of terrible things with the refrain, “God says so.” Lots of different sects of Christianity interpret the teachings of Jesus in many ways, some focusing on the very human practices of exclusion. If there is a God, wouldn’t it be sufficiently divine to be beyond our pettiness? I digress.

So tomorrow is Easter, and I am still not sure how or if to celebrate. I end up as agnostic about the holiday as I am about God.

“Are you planning to ever come back to church?”

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A friend of mine asked me this a couple weeks ago, when I dropped by her house to pick up some left over banana bread which I had made for the church’s coffee hour. It was rejected by the coffee crew because they didn’t want things with nuts in it. Drats. Anyway,  this friend and the current YA coordinator had signed the YA group up to provide the food for the coffee hour, so on Saturday some of us gathered to bake and chop and prepare food. My friend asked me if I was going to church, or if she should take the bread. I told her to take it, as I was not yet sure if I was going to attend services or not. I did not go. Will and I opted to take some time to research what sorts of things we may need for our child with those hours.

My absence made that Sunday similar to most Sundays of my pregnancy. I was actually surprised to receive a letter from the church inviting me to take part in their strategic planning process. “Huh, you all remember me?” I thought to myself. Of course. It has only been about four months. Memories are long. I called back, leaving a voicemail thanking them for the invitation, and telling them that I was thrilled to receive it. I declined the invitation because soon after starting, I would need to drop out of it to take care of a newborn child for several months. It occurred to me that that voicemail message could be the first that the church staff was hearing about my pregnancy, 22 weeks old at that point.

My Sunday truancy was a coping mechanism for fatigue. The only major symptom of pregnancy I had in my first trimester was that tiredness. I am ridiculously lucky to be spared morning sickness, but I should note that this was not mild drowsiness. It was an energy eating black hole. Everything fatigued me. Especially the commute to church.

Allow me to bore you for a minute describing the trials and tribulations getting to church. The Seattle bus schedule on Sundays is the sparsest of the week. My options tended to be show up 20-25 minutes early or 5-10 minutes late to church. Presuming I did not miss the bus, I would take one bus to about 25 blocks away from the church. There I could theoretically transfer to another bus, also running every thirty minutes. Unfortunately, it arrived generally about 22 minutes after I do. If I caught it, I’d arrive about five minutes later, but I would be at least ten minutes late. Or I could walk the 25 blocks, which would take around 15-20 minutes, and possibly be on time. I tend to chose this option. The walking route is typical Seattle: steep hills. This was nothing for the non-pregnant version of my body. It’s a bit more difficult as my steps have begun to resemble waddles and my balance is a bit off. I can now empathize with the elderly, or physically disabled. I had taken my youth and fitness for granted.

Did I mention my commute was sometimes an hour and a half to go home, including the wait time? It’s only marginally faster to take the bus rather than to walk on Sundays. The commute was sometimes longer than the services and post-service gatherings, especially for week-day groups.

Yes, there have been offers for rides here and there, and I am grateful to them. It’s not just that it is a ride, but it is often an opportunity to continue a conversation. With that said, the generosity of others is best not something to develop a sense of entitlement for or reliance upon. The timing is more of a fatigue issue. It’s not all bad. The Metro rides have also been opportunities to read, or think, or now with my fancy iPhone, write emails. I appreciate that it forces me to slow life down. At the same time, it is a lot of my day, and a lot of energy.

So, now you are sufficiently bored understanding my trip to church. If you need more boredom, may I recommend a video?

In my first trimester, I realized that my church attendance was likely to end after the baby is born. It might just be too far. It is a long time wear a baby for. Metro’s policies are fairly stroller-unfriendly. You have to collapse it and put it under a seat, unpacking and thus losing all of the utility of carrying things. Fortunately, it is a policy that is inconsistently enforced, but not so inconsistently that one could count on it. Most transit rider with kids wear their children. The other issue is that when I get to church… where would I even put the stroller? The bigger issue is that I would have a child to keep quiet, fed, and diaper reasonably clean for an hour and half each way, all of the time spent in public. Right. That’s going to happen.

In typing the initial draft, I realized that the church which is further away in the northern suburb is actually faster to get to by bus, according to Google Maps. Huh. I never considered that before. Should I try that instead? There is also a Methodist church only ten blocks from my apartment with beliefs and politics quite similar to the church I am at now, with more Jesus. I am actually OK with Jesus. I’m not sure he’s the savior, but he had a lot of really great ideas.

So I have options. My husband and I chose the church we are currently members of because it was the closest one to our old apartment. The one that was down the road closed three weeks prior to our move-in, and the other UU church within Seattle city limits was quite far away. The ones in the suburbs were *really* far from our old Capitol Hill apartment. When we went to our current church, we fell easily into a ready-made community of really wonderful people, many of whom became my closest friends, friends with whom that I have relationships outside of church.

The services provided thought and heart-provoking material that spoke to where our spirits and minds were at the time. Beyond that – I was UU from participating in the church in Amherst, NY. The faith makes sense to me. The open ways of thinking it has encouraged have become the ways I engage the world. I lost many of my prejudices of Christianity as a result of being UU, and my life has been richer for that. I am the beneficiary of many gifts from this religion, and for that I am grateful.

So while I have options, I do not feel moved to exercise them. I have devoted a great deal of energy and spirit to trying to contribute to this community. I feel attached to the place and people. Sometimes I go just hoping to run into some of my friends. Sometimes I go hoping for a dash of inspiration. Sometimes I go without hopes, and soak in the experience. I feel at home, and I am not willing to let go too easily.

To answer my friend’s question, I was at church this past Sunday. I will likely go this next Sunday too. We’ll see about my third trimester, and about my life in new-motherhood.

I think it would be wise for church leaders to consider that sometimes the factors which inspire one to go to attend Sunday services and participate in the community may have little to do with congregation. It may be as simple as the logistics of getting there, and the context of a person’s life.

Marriage Equality is a Good Thing for Many Reasons

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Banner on University Unitarian Church with a rainbow chalice logo saying "We Do Support Marriage Equality! Vote YES on Referendum 74"

Pro-marriage equality banner on University Unitarian Church in Seattle, WA

This is a banner posted outside of my church. I saw it, took a picture, and posted it to twitter and facebook. Because, you know, that is the sort of thing you do these days. I am thrilled to report that my church supports marriage equality, which Washington is voting on as Referendum 74.

My church is not the only one posting banners. Case in point:

The banner prior to hanging.

The United Methodists’ banner, prior to it being hung.

I was walking to the grocery store, and noticed two men outside the Methodist church on Greenwood. One stood on a ladder, and one waved his arms on the ground as they discussed the best way to get this banner hung. I stopped to see what it was. Oh! Very happily I stole their time of logistical planning to get a picture. I do wish my shadow looked a smidge less ominous, but the point is there. As standard procedure, I sent this picture to all relevant social media outlets, mostly as a brag. I am so excited to live in a place where so many faithful support this measure.

I see it as a good thing, for a lot of reasons. First, it is affirming love informed commitment and commitment-minded love. Second, it is broadening the scope of what constitutes legitimate love-informed commitments, by providing all couples with the same legal benefits to their commitment. This is huge, for so many people. If the law recognizes my obligations and ability to protect my much loved spouse, so should the law recognize other similarly committed people who wish to do so. Who cares about their sex? I do not.

See, marriage used to be more an economic arrangement focused around children. It is not anymore. People couple up primarily for love and companionship. Let us recall that at its most basic form, the government serves as an enforcement body to our social contract. If an institution is changing to satisfy different needs in the way it is practiced, it should change in the way it is regulated. Period. Cultural institutions that disagree (and are separate entities from the state) and do their own thing.

It is also a victory for traditional values.

What? Really.

It seems to me that the biggest threats in our culture for our personal and collective well-being are vanity, apathy, narcissism and consumerism. Listen to the political rhetoric – you would think that everyone is after what they can get for themselves. Truth be told, the thought would likely be accurate. We are an individualistic society, and to hear many people speak, you would believe that the greatest danger comes from being infringed upon by others. Gross violations of rights are never OK, but existing in society requires that one sacrifice some of their preferences to the common good. This is contrary to a consumer culture of “you are never good enough” which pollutes, encouraging a self-focus that can render one blind to broader problems, and to trust oneself greater than the collective wisdom around them. Consumerism encourages self-centeredness, to ignore the consequences on the broader, interdependent web of being. I can name these things because I feel their pressure and their tug. Sometimes I am aware of it, other times I am not.

Committed relationships require the opposite of the traits I cite above.

I have learned the most about love through committed relationships. I bask in a peace knowing that my family loves me unconditionally, and that they are committed to my well-being as much as I am to theirs. My marriage to Will has taught me so much, and lead me to grow in some incredible ways. Marriage is different than cohabiting if for no other reason than it is very hard to leave. It is not a standard practice for cohabitors to stand up in front of their loved ones and declare that they will love someone forever. We did. I will never forget looking around after saying our vows and being hit by the weight of what we had promised to do. It is one thing to feel affectionate feelings for someone, it is another thing to commit to loving and respecting them forever. Commitment is very hard.

My husband can at times be the perfect model of patience, forgiveness, and tenderness. I have learned so much from emulating his ways of being. And at other times, he is a human being. I learned, because I committed to him, how to love all of him and how hard that can be, because everyone is imperfect. I learned because I made a promise from which it was too difficult to exit when times got rough. I am certain that he can say the same things about me. Frankly, in my life, being married made me a better person because this institution encouraged me to struggle to learn to love, to learn to commit. Being a daughter/granddaughter/sister/kin initiated me to the experience of devotion. I am certain when I become a mother that I will learn more when I take that commitment and apply it to my offspring.

There are lots of people who have been engaging the same struggles that I have started, and they do not get the same social support, legal support, or general acceptance. Why? They are gay, lesbian, transgendered or somehow outside of the old-fashioned norms. If they are going to take up the project of committed love, they should have the same support. If we are going to, as a culture, make marriage about love, then marriage equality is the only right thing to do.

Love, respect and commitment are very traditional values. I think they are worthwhile traits to encourage. It is in our interests, as a society to bolster these ideals, and to support the people who chose to engage them whatever sex they chose. So many other elements of our culture encourage us to be self-focused, self-centered, and take a “me first” attitude. It should be no surprise that the institutions which support compassionate ways of being are supporting marriage equality.

I am going to go check “yes” on my ballot now.

Not My Native Land: On Being A Converted Unitarian Universalist Young Adult, Part I

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Nine of ten Unitarian Universalist youth leave the faith, according to the Rev. Dr. Terasa Cooley, cited in UU World. So when I tell you that I am the coordinator (more like church liaison) of a vibrant and active young adult group, it may not surprise you to hear which word that I would use to describe most of its members.

Transplant.

The word applies to different people in different and sometimes multiple ways. There are transplants to Seattle and transplants from different faiths. Sometimes both meanings apply. To my knowledge, almost all the people who were raised UU, and who have been active in the group the last couple years, are from some faraway land such as Nebraska or Indiana. And when I say “almost”, there is only perhaps 2 people out of around 35 I can think of who is from Seattle. I am under the impression we are not unique. As I understand it, many people who came to the church were seeking a combination of spiritual and community fulfillment. We do our best to make that happen.

I am a transplant in both ways. My native land is in upstate New York, and my native faith was Roman Catholicism. I migrated to Unitarian Universalism and have been UU about four years. I elsewhere wrote about my journey. The irony is that becoming Unitarian Universalist made me a better Catholic. It is a closer model through which to love others like Jesus loved. It is my suspicion that Jesus would see the Catholic church as another institution of the Pharisees. Finding a UU church was like a breath of fresh air, where I could finally live like I felt I was called to. I could support non-heterosexuals, lead and be female guilt free, and explore this beautiful world as I felt led to. The minister was fantastic. The people were warm. There were not too many folks my age, but it did not matter. I felt like I had come home, and the radical love really was lived out. The older folks really took me under their wing and let me lead and fail. (It also turns out that volunteering to wash dishes when you first arrive can make you quite popular.) I am so grateful to them, and for those experiences. I owe my current church for the fact I have friends in Seattle, that I have roots, and spiritual grounding. I have much to appreciate; I am grateful. Some of the richest experiences I have had were multigenerational ones: another post for another time. The congregational life has meant so much to me.

In the last couple years I have taken up a greater role in online Unitarian Universalist young adult communities, and tried to take on more leadership. The folks are usually fantastic, and I feel blessed to know them. My participation has highlighted to me that there is a divide between natives and us converts. Frankly, it can feel like we belong to different faiths as the experiences and priorities seem so divergent. I first noticed it in the discussion of the YA demographic dearth. I read UUpdates in the morning, and sometimes I find myself both furrowing eyebrows and sipping coffee as I read something which supposedly describes the needs of a Young Adult Unitarian Universalist. These pieces sometimes read as though they are describing a group I do not belong to… minus the fact that I, too, am a Young Adult Unitarian Universalist. That is OK, radical inclusion means that one is not guaranteed to fit in.

For instance, to take part in the national conversation, I needed to learn a new language. It is a vernacular of treasured experiences that us converts do not have, nor can we go back in time to live them. Cons? Huh? Cons? The vibrant discussion about them might as well be in Latin, as I cannot relate to the enthusiasm. I am still trying to figure out what each ingredient is of the UUYA acronym alphabet soup. JPD? OPUS? YRUU? Some folks have been really terse with me for my unfamiliarity, as if I clearly should have known. Heaven forbid the fact that acronyms are inherently exclusive. UU Polity? What? I struggle with the projected importance of this human institution as much as I struggled with my previous one. It is, after all, simply human. It is not like I can could afford to attend General Assembly anyway. When I say I am UU, my participation is mostly my brick-and-mortar church.

I struggle to relate to our religious education programming as a foundation of community. It is so different than the one I grew up with. It seems to emphasize individualism and self reliance. That’s is OK, but why are we then shocked at how high our attrition rate is relative to other faiths? My religious education as a child emphasized doing things “right” (good old ten commandments and the example of Jesus loving the outcasts), of course, but it also aimed for us to discipline ourselves into the tedium of being a member of the community. Yes, there is a lot of social control. We UUs hate that, and it’s fair to be suspicious. There is also a valuable imperative to learn, as a small child, to sit through the services, though they may be dull, and understand the best you can, though they are talking about adult topics. I am continuously surprised that UUs do not bring their kids to services, feeling the service inappropriate for them. Really?

The irony is that Catholic education taught me the skills and values to partake in UU congregational life. I could adopt the UU principles so easily because I already had learned them before I knew what UU was. They are not exclusively ours. Heck, even Universalism is picking up among evangelicals. The additional irony is that the UU religious education, what you may presume to be more authentic, seems to inspire most to leave the community. I often feel marginalized in these conversations, like I am somehow less UU for not having that experience and not “getting it.” This is despite the fact that I actually participate in the only unifying thing we have: our congregations.

The truth is that no, I do not get it.

Much of the conversation about the lack of young adults discusses how we do not keep our youth. To the extent that she cares, I do not think that my mother is thrilled with me for leaving Catholicism (though I never doubt that her love is unconditional). For the curious, their attrition is about 33%. I imagine UU parents may feel the same about their kids leaving something they value. The irony for me is that I am the coordinator/church liaison of a group that exists because UUism figured out it was losing its children to the world, yet the majority of people who came to populate that group are also the least qualified to figure out how to retain the youth. Our sense of what the UU youth might be missing is from observation, speculation, and hearing from them. We lack direct experiences. Though I am helping to plan a retreat, I do not go to cons. The description of sexual freeness at cons struck me as some I would be *really* *uncomfortable* with, like it was unbecoming of a married woman, or at least this one who is writing, to attend. That I feel this way is likely a reflection of my inhibitions and background. I feel like admitting that is inviting a storm of criticism for not being liberal enough, or UU enough.

Seriously. Beyond that, the YA groups that do well are probably doing a decent job of meeting the spiritual needs of those who are there. At my church, that tends to mean meeting the needs of geographic and spiritual transplants.

A convert is like a migrant – they came here because they like it better than their previous residence. I love Unitarian Universalism. I am very grateful that I could transplant my spirituality and take root. With that said, I do not think that I know how to tend the roots of my generation who were born UU and then chose to leave our communities. Catholicism did not teach me those skills.

Yeah, I often find UU World somewhat alienating too.

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There is a letter to the editor in UU World which begins,

“Why do I feel so disconnected from the UUA as represented in UU World? I read our national magazine with increasing alienation, despite my deep identification as a UU and my vital connection with my own congregation.” -Ellen Lawrence Skagerberg

The rest of the letter argues that the UUA should follow the directions of its members, rather than “herding” everyone into the directions it feels it should go. I disagree with her assertion that multiculturalism is an unworthy pursuit, due to its lack of success, (EDIT: Ellen corrects me in the comments; I misinterpreted her note.) and I think that following a majority-rules model would further cement the WASPness that I, personally, already find so alienating. I related to those opening lines, though the rest of the letter did not really speak to me. I spent some time trying to figure out what it is about UU World which contributes to the sense of alienation?

Perhaps one reason that UU World can feel alienating is that it is the affirmative voice in an otherwise critical religion. Granted, there is much of us which is noteworthy in a positive sense; we do a lot of things well. The publication thus serves a needed niche: there is no shortage of other forums through which to air discomfort, disagreement, or dislike of something Unitarian Universalist. I cannot think of a personal blog that writes about Unitarian Universalism which has abstained from critical discussion. Some sites have so many complaints and so little satisfaction expressed that I wonder why the writer even is UU. So UU World ends up being a bit contrary to the rest of the conversations.

For me, I am going to blame the white glossy pages, the clean and small Times New Roman typeface (EDIT: see comments below. It’s not Times New Roman), the unoffensive pictures, the abstract art I cannot relate to, and the demure style of writing. Yes, that is located within a certain (upper) class sense of norms and proper presentation that the UUA is deeply embedded in. What am trying to say is that it seems weird that the publication is so polished and unoffensive though the faith is so inherently messy. We do not have anything in our theology which is clean cut. We struggle to keep our members. Our publication suggests a broader cultural relevance that we are simply too small to have. Now, I am not advocating for copy-editing problems, ill-placed pictures, or a goofy font. I am saying that UU World‘s relationship to UUism is akin to the relationship of women’s magazine cover photos to real women. Obviously, it is not as severe: articles in UU World reflect real congregations, people, and stories, whereas cover photos of women’s magazines are photoshopped pieces of fiction. It is similar as both offer an idealized image. It often seem like it is the portrait of how we hope to be more so than how we are.

With that said, I do not know that I would change it.

“Alienating” is not mutually exclusive with “thought-provoking”, “interesting”, or “informative”. UU World does those things well. I do like reading about when a congregation is building a new church. Thandeka wrote an interesting article about how Obama’s encounters with UUism parallel our youth’s experiences. The write-up about the UUA and GA were worth reading too. UU World does help create a sense of what is going on in other UU’s churches and heads. In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I am very grateful for the couple of mentions that this blog has received in the paper copy (and the many mentions on the Interdependent Web) which has helped me receive traffic. Like Matt Kinsi has also said,  I felt like I had made it the first time I saw I was linked there. This is an argument about comprehensiveness, not a comment on the quality of the articles which are in it. UU World may not always feel real, instead coming off like it is leaving something out, but it is not a bad or unworthy publication.

What do you think? Is this sense of alienation exclusive to Ms. Skagerberg and me?

Millennials, Holiness, and an Evangelical Perspective

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“Innocence is overrated based on what you haven’t done.”

-Dessa, “Dutch”

I have been discerning a lot about right living and being at peace with the world. In my Catholic days, I experienced this as “holiness”. Incidentally, I received a promotional copy of Tyler Braun’s Why Holiness Matters on the condition that I would write a review. Here it is on Amazon. Braun is a 27 year old seminary student, writing about how millennials struggle with holiness. I gave it four stars for being well-written and having a few insightful points. As I note in the review, I struggled to relate to some of it, being that I draw truth from many sources, not just the Christian Bible, and that his depiction of millennial ways of being sometimes seemed to be more stereotype than something which resonated with my lived experience. With that said, his eloquence in explaining his point of view inspired me to consider where my ideas of holiness lay.

Braun argues that we, Millennials, culturally devalue innocence, instead looking up to folks who have been around the bend, so to speak. He cites the pressure to have pre-marital sex and drink in youth and a focus on redemption in the evangelical community as examples. (Incidentally, Dessa refers to virginity as “a childhood disease” in “551″, something to which I simultaneously wince and chuckle.) He describes his struggle with these sin (all of which he deeply regrets), arguing that failing to live up to the expectations of right living hurt his relationship with God. Those chapters were familiar for me. Does distancing ourselves from our sense of what is right cause the same struggles with guilt, shame, and unworthiness that Braun describes? For me, it is.

He argues that right living, and innocence, is important because the damage done by wrong-doing is greater than the experience gained. Pretty much, the foundations are stronger when they are not made up of patched cracks. (For a different perspective, read here.) If you do not believe that pre-marital sex or drinking is wrong (like, uh, me), it is easy to get caught up on the details. I gathered from his discussion that there may be a sense in the Evangelical community that because God forgives, it is OK to sin? It was fascinating.  I was trying to discern if there was a Unitarian equivalent, but we are not so inclined to legalism to struggle with a laundry lists of wrongs. What do UUs do when we screw up? How do we find redemption? (And tales of other posts in my drafts folder.)

Braun argues that Millennials are seeking to be holy, but it is misdirected. Instead of defining holiness as the markers of religiousity (church attendance, membership, etc), it should focus on spiritual foundations. He believes that this means focusing on a right relationship with God and living it out in the world. Braun argues that the evangelical community would be wise to focus more on why they have their rules instead of a “straightjacket of legalism” (page 88), a beautiful phrase that catches the problem so well. ”If holiness is first born with deep intimacy with God, and manifest in our lives through devotion to God, then we must look at engaging with our world as vital” (page 110). This probably resonates with a lot of UUs; that is, if we could say the word “God” without half of us becoming offended. The gist is the same: the UUs I know in the flesh and text seem to live their faith more in the world than in the church walls. At the same time, our membership often means church affiliation. I still drown in the acronym soup of YA organizations. Sometimes it can feel like I am with the world, but not my faith. It seems Evangelicals may struggle with this too.

In the opening quote, Dessa states that innocence is overrated based on what you haven’t done. I wish the book had taken a broader perspective on innocence. One has innocence is not just the failure to do wrong. Innocence is lost when we realize how harsh the world and other awful other people can be. Sometimes innocence is lost when bad things happen, or expectations of ease and fortune are crushed. Perhaps innocence was lost when so many found themselves under very heavy student loans. Or when jobs became hard to come by. That is not including the tragedies that life is inclined to throw at you. I think that being holy, however we understand it, can also be described as being strong in those circumstances.

The folks I have met who struck me as living holy were those who are hopeful, radiant, and caring. It is not that they necessarily do everything to save everyone, but they are drawing from a well that is full and replenishing. How do you understand holiness?

As a flame burns out…

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It has been a while since I have been present at Sunday services. The summer services switched to 9:30AM only, and coupled with a long standing East Coast phone date, long commute, and perpetual exhaustion, I have been hesitant to go. So my husband and I linger in bed together longer than we usually do, and I soak in the wonderful comfort of his warmth. It brings me great joy.

I am tired.

Over dinner yesterday, I told Will that I wondered if maybe I was burned out. He looked up at me, lovingly, and said, “You’re toasty.” My fork fell back to my dinner plate, and I thought for a moment. Between teaching and the food bank, I am working very hard. Meaning can only be found where I look, but I need to have the energy for the search. I might be helping some of the neediest people, but that is lost on my heart at the moment.

My internal spark has been taking the form of smoldering embers.

I have not been to church. To keep part of a community takes a piece of your time, energy and soul. My journey readjusted and now my candle’s a bit shorter than it was. Is it selfish to try to keep these pieces, for now, and hope to expand outward once they are back in place? Is my faith purposeless in a context where to be UU is more of a community member than a specific statement of faith? Being UU means that I walk into a place where my spirituality is accepted, but not necessarily one where it is related to.

I am drifting a bit. Perhaps that is a sign that I should go back to that community at my church. Or perhaps this is a sign which I should pay attention to of why it can be hard to maintain stable memberships in voluntary communities. Maybe it has little to do with the community itself but a reflection of the places members are.

I will be back there. In time. Maybe Sunday.

Love Does: A Tale of Taking Risk

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A book on my mind right now is Bob Goff’s Love Does. I follow Donald Miller on Twitter, which is how this book landed on my radar. Goff is a construction-defect lawyer based in Seattle, who teaches in California, and helps run Restore International which is an anti-human trafficking organization. 

He is Christian. His emphasis throughout the book is less “relationship with Jesus” and more “follow Jesus’ model of living”. Christian leaning Unitarian Universalists, or any open minded non-Christians really, would probably read this quite comfortably. It is the sort of book that, for me, highlights the best of Christianity: an orientation of love. Often Christian books can have an orientation towards rules, and I think that’s what turns off non-Christians to them.

The writing style is informal, familiar, and easily digestible. I read it via Seattle Public Library e-book on my Kindle, so I cannot tell you exactly how many pages there are per chapter. I can tell you how they felt like they were passing quickly. It is possible that the writing contributes to that perception of brevity, because Goff is a good storyteller and his anecdotes are engaging.

I enjoyed the book, though there were points in which I felt quite uncomfortable. The man is bold.  It can come off as a bit impulsive, because it seems he does a lot of big things with minimal discernment. His life is adventurous as a result. He signed up for a race to Hawaii on a ship without actually knowing how to sail one. He and his son went mountain climbing in a blizzard. Thinking he was being pranked, or so he says, he ends up becoming the representative of Uganda to the United States. That was in response to a prank where he ran up a room service bill of $400 for a friend. The discomfort came from a sense that he was braver than I am. I never like that feeling of being a relative (though maybe not absolute) coward.

He reminded me of lots of people that I have known who were also bold. I found that an “adventurous life” is a fitting description of my dauntless friends and acquaintances. I regularly receive invitations from one friend of mine to go sky-diving, playing paintball, play on a high ropes course, and so forth. That is just the stuff she’s inviting me to; she does a lot more. I have two friends who bought an airplane together. I know that they thought that one through quite carefully, it was a risk. They chose to lean in on the side of their dreams instead of the side of safety. It is precisely that tilt which Goff calls “Love does”.

It is not recklessness for the sake of having a bunch of stories to tell. There is a specific motivation behind what he does, hence “love does”. He loves his kids, he loves people, he embraces whim at every corner; he loves life. It is an orientation towards action, and it is a comfort with risk. He finished the book with his phone number, saying that, “I’ve found that the people in my life who have actually been the most influential have also been the ones who were most available”. Gulp. Bold move, man. It is true to his message. Love is a verb, not an abstract idea.

There were a lot of moments where I would read an anecdote and think, “You did WHAT?” Listen, I am not exactly super risk averse. I moved across the country instead of moving back to my hometown. I married at 23. I have a motorcycle for crying out loud. At the same time, I do not have that drop-everything-and-go orientation and it scares me a bit when I meet others who have it. It’s a respectful fear: I simultaneously worry and admire it, and sometimes I wish I had more of it myself. (My darling husband has told me that I could use some more discernment and am sometimes a bit impulsive. It is all a matter of perspective I guess.) Some of the stories seem really far out there.

One thing I wish Goff had discussed a bit more is that not all risk-taking ends up being profitable. Yes, you cannot prosper without risk. It also invites the opportunity to fall on your face in very spectacular and painful ways. This book does not always read true to life, because there is a noticeable dearth of stories that lacked happy endings. Perhaps Goff has the biggest streak of fortune of anyone on the planet. Part of why this book is so inspirational is how he does all this crazy stuff and ends up OK. At the same time, he clearly has access to resources most folks do not, so many of his capers reflect a certain degree of privilege. It inspired me to think, “Well, you can do that, because you’re a lawyer. The risk of [insert caper here] is greater for me because I am not as wealthy.”

It has been on my mind. In the last few years I have oscillated between embracing life and building walls around myself. The former way of life resonates with my spirit and the latter takes a lot of self-convincing. Love Does resonates with that. The former is also the way that gets me into the most trouble. Currently, I am trying to discern the wisdom of taking a 15-20 hour a week volunteer gig at the local food bank, presuming they even offer it to me. It is not guaranteed. The opportunity cost could be the timeline through which I find work which pays a paycheck, a non-trivial concern in my life. One of my friends said, “Please tell me they aren’t taking advantage of your gigantic heart to convince you to work for free for 6 months, even though you need and deserve a paycheck.” She then noted that she loves my gigantic heart. The comment resonated with me because it smells true. Another friend pointed out how ironic it would be if volunteering at a food bank threatened my ability to acquire food. (Lessons learned the hard way: when my loved ones unanimously think that someone or something is a bad idea, they are usually on to something.) As Goff is using the New Testament as his guide, he would probably fall on the more self-sacrificing route because that is what Jesus tended to encourage. Goff’s own willingness to do so is very admirable, and you totally get the sense his heart is in the right place. Mine is conflicted.

In conclusion, I would recommend reading Love Does because it is entertaining and it gives the reader a lot to think about. With that said, your mileage may vary in what you are thinking about.

 

Update @ 9:47 PST: Via Twitter, I received a brief (and kind!) note from Bob Goff himself saying that he read this review. Not going to lie, that was very, very cool. Thank you for your time!

Risks of a Social Justice Focus in a Religion

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“Someone called me liberal trash and it was… heartwarming.”

I found this post on the page of someone I knew as a result of similar interests in social issues and activism. (He was one of the only vegan friends I’d ever had.) A couple comments later, his girlfriend wrote, “To be fair, you called him a lot of other things first.”

I winced. First, “trash” is kind of a terrible insult. Second, starting fights is not exactly great behavior either. Third, that the whole exchange would be heartwarming struck me as both weird and normal. Why would he feel that way? I suspect it is because he felt affirmed in his identity as a liberal, even if the affirmation came through derision.

I am like Robert Parker reviewing wine, or someone living next to the railroad tracks: I am overexposed and numb to the milder forms of political identification and I need something really full bodied, extreme, and loud to catch my attention. The gist of this is so normal; even I have done it. It seems that policy-politics are becoming strikingly similar to identity-politics. It is often not “I believe in liberal/conservative ideas” but “I am a liberal/conservative”. We’re not fighting over solutions, we are fighting over who we are.

I worry about this. I care about social justice. It is inherently political, and very personal. The last Unitarian Universalist General Assembly was all about social justice, and thus all about politics. Some folks embrace this, and some folks are a bit worried.

I found Matt Kinsi’s essay on how he’s a UU not to save the world, but to change his life. He argues that many people come to churches for direction or sanctuary. He argues that our church’s strength is that we can provide a unique space for community and spiritual growth, and that, “social justice should absolutely be a part of our religion.  But it shouldn’t be our religion.” Bill Baar replies to this and notes that social justice work can nourish the spirit, but that UU’s do it in a way that affirms we are “right”. If you disagree with something Standing On The Side of Love does, well, that’s a terrible rhetorical implication. If you stand elsewhere, where are you?

It is not just that our religion risks getting too political, but that our politics have become a bit religious. Party lines are towed the ways that creeds are abided by. In my humble opinion, if anything should be an orthopraxy, it is politics and social justice. They are not though. They are akin to orthodoxies, where believing the right thing becomes more important than doing it. It’s a social signal. Facebook is insufferable right now. I cannot tell if people really support the ideas, or if political parties have become like football teams: you support them through thick, thin, and stupid decisions.  Are they like bits of identity you defend because it is too personal? To quote a friend of mine, “It’s always 4:30AM when it comes to identity politics.” Minds are clouded and it is hard to be reasonable. If one takes an outcome approach to social justice and policy-making, these trends are disastrous because the arguments become not about society but about ourselves.

In addition, political participation feels akin to picking the “right” gamepiece off someone else’s checkerboard, when the problem might not be the location of the pieces but the gameboard itself. Our political discourse utterly lacks creativity. It is stifled for a lot of reasons. One cause, relevant for UUism, for this is that you need a lot of people to actually get something done. On a national level, a group wanting to affect change needs to be part of one of the “hot” topics of the era. There may not be enough people in the right places to set the agenda otherwise. Churches that focus on “social justice” and politics risk being pebbles in the stream: contributing to minor changes in the direction of the water but unable to set it. Pebbles, of course, wear down into sand. Are we our own voices, or are we being amplifiers for someone else’s?

It’s not that pursuing social justice (which requires political participation) is a terrible thing for a UU church to do, or that it’s inherently inappropriate. Quite the opposite. I think we are obligated as human beings to operate with moral courage. I worry that our moral courage too easily lines up with pre-existing discourses. A common complaint about Unitarians is that we are the religious wing of the Democratic Party. It’s not a comment that arose from nowhere. I have seen people do the same thing that the fellow in the opening story does: identify ourselves as an adjective, a liberal, when we should be nouns doing verbs: people believing or acting. When we are people, we can grow. When we are an adjective, we conform.

In my opinion, our churches are properly contributing to social justice when they are the prophetic voices; when they create spaces that inspire discernment, creativity, boldness, and compassion. I am not saying that we should wash our hands of a movement just because someone else thought of it first. I am not saying we should ignore the issues of our day. I am saying that we need to be more than that; participating should be one piece. If our ultimate efforts in the world are just contributing to other folk’s ideas, if we are adjectives instead of agents, then we are working our way into irrelevance.

We need to be very careful not to let other parts of the interdependent web define us.

I realize, of course, that theory and practice are intertwined and often inseparable. I am not sure what exactly the implications for a faith community like ours would be. And I write this as I consider becoming part of a social justice committee. Hard tasks abound; nothing is easy.

What do you think?