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

[spaceoperadiva]

Our issue with CUUPS was that since all paths have to be considered equally valid, we couldn't ever ask for a standard of behavior at circle. So if someone wanted to talk over the speaker or get up and dance around while everyone else was doing a guided meditation, or blurt out in the middle of a song or prayer that they thought it was all bullshit, we had to keep letting them come and put up with it.

I have no idea why they thought this was the way things should be or even a good idea. You can't just stand up during Sunday Service and start talking over the minister and when this same person did that, they told her to knock it off or they'd escort her out of services. But for some reason we as the CUUPS group were supposed to be more "open" and accepting of her "eccentricities".

Rituals aren't just dress up parties where you can show up and participate or not depending on your mood of the moment and it's not okay to force everyone to put up with disruptive behavior just for the sake of being inclusive.

The last straw came, however, when we were told that we should stop singing a hymn to Kore that everyone liked (including non-pagan members of the congregation) because as a CUUPS group, we couldn't worship any specific gods or follow any specific path, but had to be completely generic in every ritual.

This may all be the result of misinterpretation on the local level, but several years ago when this all happened the national CUUPS was no help at all in resolving any of these issues. We came away pretty bitter about the whole thing.

We had joined the church and participated in other activities and committees for quite some time before forming a CUUPS chapter and worked very hard to make sure that members who joined from outside the congregation joined the regular congregation as well and participated in the life of the greater congregation. We worked on the setup committee, my husband taught for several years in the R.E., I was on the regular Worship Committee and I was also the Music Director for a couple of years.

I mention this because usually when I talk about this, UU people start going on about CUUPS groups that use the UU church but don't participate and really don't understand the UU way of doing things and take more than they give to the congregation. We tried really hard to not be that kind of group and almost everyone that joined our CUUPS from outside became a regular active UU member too. :/

[shoshanna_g]

since all paths have to be considered equally valid, we couldn't ever ask for a standard of behavior at circle

...Wow. Also, ugh. Sounds like the number 1 Geek Social Fallacy in virulent action, and I'm really sorry to hear that this happened, and that the national group was no help. No wonder you came away bitter.