Witnessing

[zvi]

I … rather envisioned people saying something here? I guess I'll go ahead and goose the discussion a bit, but I'd like people to can do intro posts or talk about practice, beliefs, intuitions, congregational life, anything that relates to your life as a religious person.

Okay, so, one of the things about me is that I'm a (non-UU) preacher's kid and some of the time I use Christian language to describe congregational practice that makes sense to me, but I'm an agnostic more-humanist-than-anything-else, and I'm not talking about Jesus or any god.

Are you publicly a Unitarian Universalist?

When people discuss religion in daily life, do you clarify the religious tradition to which you belong, rather than sticking to a single vocabulary of Christian sounding words like church or pagan sounding words like magic or Buddhist sounding words like meditation?

Do you proactively witness the tradition? Do your internet profiles include UU identifications*? Do you wear chalice jewelry or t-shirts? Do you have spare Principles & Sources cards to whip out of your business card wallet?

Does your family know what kind of religious community you belong to? Do they know that you don't only celebrate the holidays you grew up with, but now incorporate rites and practices from other traditions, or have given up rites and practices all together?

How do we tow the line between being open about our religious life and being proselytizers? Is being open on this issue part of your religious belief system? If you believe strongly in a specific faith tradition, like Islam or Judaism or atheism, alongside with your UU identification, do you prefer to identify that way? Is UU too complicated to talk about?

*Speaking of, can anyone recommend a more attractive icon than this one? It displeases me.

P.S. If anyone wants to reframe the questions, feel free? I know I stacked the deck with the implication that coming out is better, but if your coming at these questions from a whole other angle, feel free to lay that groundwork with your own questions and then answer those.

Comments

[edenfalling]

I wasn't quite born-and-raised UU -- my parents joined my childhood congregation when I was two -- but close enough. I am and always have been publicly UU, and have been fortunate that the place I moved to for college (and then stayed in) has a local congregation, though I confess I held off on joining for several years until the congregation resolved a protracted fight over the then-minister, who was the unfortunate successor to a wildly popular long-term minister. There was a sort of small ministry group on the college campus at that time (which has since gone defunct) that was one of my primary supports while I was struggling with depression and other issues; I have always been grateful for that.

I teach RE (religious education), but I tend to call it Sunday school for ease of communication, which then results in me explaining that no, I'm not Christian. Possibly I should get a Principles & Sources card for such occasions... Anyway, I have taught RE since I was in high school, and actually started teaching at my current congregation before I officially joined it. *wry*

I think every internet profile I have that has space for the information says that I am UU. I have a "Famous Unitarian Universalists" t-shirt someone got me years ago, which I wear sometimes on days off work. (I confess the shirt annoys me, because it claims as UUs some people who were neither Unitarians nor Universalists, though they might have been in sympathy with the general principles of the movement.) I also have a chalice necklace, but I don't wear it because the closure is awkward and the length doesn't work with the neckline of most of my shirts. :-(

In terms of my beliefs, I am an agnostic secular humanist with a vague leaning toward pantheism (which I define as a feeling that the whole universe is sacred) and a thing for communal music and the ritual lighting of candles. Mostly I think the existence or non-existence of any deity/spirit/whatever is unprovable, undisprovable, and completely irrelevant to leading a good and moral life. If faith works for some people, that's cool. If it gives some people hives, that's cool too. What I wish is that the effort to be a good home for people who came to UUism from restrictive traditions didn't tend to make UUs twitchy about establishing any kind of rituals. I mean, as a denomination, we have been gradually creating rituals like chalice lighting, Joys & Sorrows, Water Communion, Flower Communion, and so on, but it's slow going. And I grew up through the YRUU program (Young Religious Unitarian Universalists) and YRUU cons involved a lot of emotionally powerful ritual-based worship services (generally held with candles and singing and hand-holding and movement, right around the dead of midnight), which does leave me feeling kind of unfulfilled by lecture-style sermons. On the other hand, Sunday morning services include communal hymn singing, which I find powerfully moving, so there's that. :-)

Here is a post I made a while ago about what UUism means to me. You can find more stuff under my Unitarian Universalist tag, though a bunch of that is rather dry mentions of church process; posts about RE lessons and lesson plans; or random posts about other things where I think my perspective is influenced by being UU, though there is often no obvious connection to UUism.

[zvi]

I confess to some jealousy of a church with a good music program. We don't have the money to pay our music minister enough money to have even a ghost of a chance at having a decent choir. There are some members who are fairly talented pianists, but our singing trends toward the awful.

I know exactly what you mean about rituals! I am trying to get a weekly Adult Religious Education program restarted at our church, and one of the ones I'm considering is Spirit in Practice. (Also looking at Spirit of Life and BYOT.)

Thanks for joining the comm. One of the things I'm hoping for is that people with more experience in the denomination may be able to share about congregational practice. I mean, I know every congregation is its own polity, but sometimes people tell me things about how we interact with the UUA and I want to give them squinty eyes of skepticism. And, also, since every congregation is a law unto itself, it's sort of cool to compare. At least, I think it is.

[edenfalling]

Thanks for the link -- that course looks really interesting. I should mention it to the Adult RE committee at my church.

Tangentially, I would like to confirm that Building Your Own Theology is an awesome course! I had the luck to take it with Rev. Gilbert, who wrote the course book, when he was serving as an interim at my current church several years ago. It helped me mop up the lingering dregs of the spiritual crisis I wandered into in high school, and it was really neat listening to everyone else slowly articulate what they believed about the world, humanity, religion, and so on.

Ithaca is kind of spoiled when it comes to local musical talent. The fine arts students at Ithaca College are always interested in performance venues and are therefore willing to be guest musicians at a Sunday service in return for using the sanctuary as concert space in the evenings.

[zvi]

Oh, that's nice! We do have a concert series with local musicians, but we do not often have musical guests for services.

I'm a little wary about jumping into BYOT because I will be leading ARE and I've never done it before, so it seems kind of heavy for the first time out for all of us. I mean, I guess everyone has a first time, so that's not a real reason not to do it, but it does make the whole thing a little scary.