A personal journey to loving God – God loving UUs and a need for acceptance in the UU fold

As I’m a strong Unitarian Universalist (UU) identifying person who grew up and is still active in the UU religion, it might come as quit a shock to those of you who know anything about UUism that, over the past at least seven years or so I’ve come more and more to believe in God. As you might know it’s ok for all those involved in UU community, be it official member UUs or just mere friends of UU to openly give praise and show support for the gays and lesbians within the UU fold and their right to live as who they are within UU community. But do the majority of UUs show the same courtesy for anther of the minorities within UU, the God loving UUs (of which I’m now one myself)? I would say not. To borrow a phrase often expressed by the gay and lesbians in our society at large, I would say sometimes I feel I have to hide in the closet, well my belief in God and my need to honour and praise him from my fellow UUs that is. I say this ought not to be so seeing as my fellow UUs like to loudly proclaim that they respect and even welcome those who have different beliefs from them into the UU fold (so long as they don’t impinge on their right to express what they individually believe, or intentionally heart anyone, which I think is only fair).

So how did I come to this belief in God? One only has to look at the forth
principle of the UU list of seven principles which is as fallows “a free and
responsible search for truth and meaning”. Yes it was through a search for
truth and meaning, well more accurately, a need to find truth and meaning,
that has led me to this belief. But I have always kept in mind the other parts
of this principle as well. For one my responsibility to have a responsible
search. By responsible I interpret it in great UU fashion as my responsibility
to not assume that what I find to be truths that work for me (that include
my belief in God) to be truths that will work for others or even things to
which I should impose on them. But then there’s the last part, the free part.
This part of the principle is the part that I fell some UUs don’t fully grasp.
To me it doesn’t just mean allowing someone the space to search and seek
for their truths, but also the space needed to tryout what is being
discovered or may have been discovered as a result of this search and
seeking.

So why would they have a problem with us, the God loving UUs trying out we have discovered and are discovering? Well one reason for this is likely the fact that many UUs came to UUism fleeing Christian denominations, like Roman Catholic and Anglican, and as a result have negative associations linked to the concept of God, to which many who come from a different back ground, take me for example, who was raised UU may not have. Well one of the things they may have observed is people in authority using the concept of God to justify harsh or restrictive rules or actions, those leaving their faith in God shaken. I for one never have observed this. In fact it wasn’t until I was having a sever crises of faith that I really started giving the concept of God any real consideration.

My belief in God came from a crises of faith. Well actually to be more accurate I have always been on the brink of taking the God belief plunge and it was only this crises that pushed my to certainty in Him (God). So why did it take me 20 years and a crises to start to believe in God. The reason for this I would say was the fact that as a child I had mostly secular humanist and atheist for Sunday school teachers, who in my children’s religious exploration classes told me more about human sexuality and things about science then what they believed about religion (all worthy thinks to teach to children). Sure they did encourage me to search for my religious beliefs, but it was only through brief and as I now know insufficient glimpses of what others delved in, and rarely what UUs believe and never what they believed abut religion. I guess even if the concept of God was something that I needed, it was always going to take a crises for me to believe in Him. Well ‘cause I knew no UUs that believed or at least expressed openly a belief in God as a child. But I could never fully go join them in their rejection of God. And with this crises of faith I began to come to my belief in God over the past seven years or so.

The crises of faith of mine was precipitated by the fact that I had bad thing don to me as well as hearing of bad thing having been don to others. Things like bullying and the divorce of parents. All things that I could not and still can not accept as having happened for no reason. I felt and still feel they most have happened for some divine reason, either to teach use some lesion or to move our lives in a better direction. Also the fact that I could not accept the fact that evolution to which I did and still do believe in, just some how spontaneously started to happen and evolve over time. I still believe this about evolution.

So why do I believe in God? Because I believe that creation was not something that just spontaneously started to happen one day and the fact that bad things to which we experience must be brought to be for some useful reason. And ‘cause I believe in God I fell the need to honour Him and yes even praise Him. Yes all things to which leave many of the former Christians within the UU fold uneasy.

Announcing the beginnings of Unitarian Universalist Young Adult Gazette

This is the announcement I posted on the Unitarian Universalist (UU) youth and young adult web site, FUUSE and a few other places, including on all the UU young adult Faceboox groups I am a member of. And it’s in regards to the new independent online newspaper written for and by Unitarian Universalist young adults in North America to which I am launching. Hopefully some time this spring if all goes well.

The Unitarian Universalist Young Adult Gazette will be a new independent online newspaper written for and by Unitarian Universalist young adults (UUYA). It will dish up a mix of intelligent journalism, artful story telling, intriguing opinion and weighty commentary. Hopefully all with great sprinklings of ridicules and whimsical humour spun throughout. It will with any luck deal with such subjects as the political and cultural underpinnings and goings one within the varying North American UUYA communities. And it will be published online twice to quarterly each year at http://uuyag.wordpress.com/. But before any of this can happen, editors, writers and journalist need to be sought. So this is where you come in. Have you ever thought, wouldn’t it be nice if I could tell the wider UUYA community about what goes on young adult wise locally ware I am. Or maybe you just want to know more about what the UUA or the CUC’s planes are wen it comes to support for UUYA community and have always wanted to track it dawn but haven’t do to a lake of an appropriate venue to share your findings in. Or maybe you have a relay funny UUYA themed fiction story or poem you just what to share with a wider UUYA audience. Well the Unitarian Universalist Young Adult Gazette is just the place to do it in. So come onboard and be an editor, writer or journalist for this crate new UUYA online newspaper, by sending a message describing your area of interest to nived_90@yahoo.ca with UUYAG in the subject line. And to stay up to date with this new endeavour plus to get an e-mail notification of the release of the first edition just go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/uuyag-announce/ and join the official Unitarian Universalist Young Adult Gazette e-mail announcement list.

I have never met any of the whiny UU youth you all seem to be speaking about…

What fallow is a response to the Rev. Scott Wells post entitled The youth resolution and the Obama generation as well as all those who commented on it.

I just wont to say I have never met any of the whiny UU youth you all seem to be speaking about. And my best and most healthy experiences, I had them at my district’s youth cons. Whether that was at ones put on by the varying youth groups of the UU congregations throughout southern and northern New York State or at ones I was helping to put on with my youth group at my home church in Ottawa, Ontario Canada, it was marvels. Yes it dos come dawn to the adults how are working with the youth. ‘Cause if the adults go around acting like they always know what is best for the youth only handing out the vary rare opportunity for the youth to manage their own destines then yes, I suppose you would have whiny youth. And I would say they would have good reason to be upset. But, if on the other hand, the adults involved with the teens share their many years of wisdom. Not to mention help the youth to billed up safe spaces like cons and Sunday morning youth groups all filled with opportunities to learn and practise how to be leaders able to billed, run and maintain community with the help of their fellow youth of cores. Then and only then do you have healthy youth programming. But if after the youth graduate from their wonderful UU youth programs, and I hope they are wonderful, you just tell all the youth to now wash their hands of all the good stuff they learned and discovered as youth. I mean to be come proper upstanding adults “gag” able to now do things in the adult way of doing things. And in the UU world that would be the way of the UU immigrants. Then yes you will have whiny young adult. And yes they would have good reason to be upset. And yes I am a young adult, and I have felt the push to become more like the other more, older UU adults who unlike me were not razed UU. And this push it’s always subtle, some of the people who do it are I’m sure not even aware they are doing it and would change if they knew what they should be doing instead. So this whole push for youth and young adult empowerment can be summed up in this definition from the vary resolution you all seem to choose to knock so heartily. And it’s as fallow: “WHEREAS Youth and Young Adult empowerment is an attitudinal, structural and cultural process whereby young people gain the ability, authority and agency to make decisions and implement change in their own lives and the lives of other people to create intergenerational equity”. And yes this is all about equity and equality and just like the women of the women’s movement we, the UU young adults and youth feel it’s hi time we got ours.

“Consultation on Ministry To and With Youth Summary Report”, my thoughts…

What follows I also originally posted to one of the threads in the same Faceboox group as, not my last post but the two before it.

This is what I concluded from reading the “Consultation on Ministry To and With Youth Summary Report”, the UUA is trying to move the focus of youth programming from an “adult facilitated but youth led and organized program” to an “adult administrated ministry for youth”. It should be noted that I am getting the impression that the UUA’s goal is to do more things for youth. Instead of what has been the practise amongst Canadian and US UU communities for years, which was manly to help youth billed and maintain healthy communities of their own which would serve their needs. I don’t like this change but maybe it is just because the old way of doing things really served my needs rather vary well for the most part.

Also I fund these passages from the report rather interesting.

Some groups, such as the UUA Board, asserted that lack of ministerial involvement with youth in their congregation, which is sometimes explained by the philosophy of youth empowerment, is actually abandonment. The Board was also concerned that many adults and congregations lack a deep understanding of how to nurture, protect, and empower youth in healthy ways. Ministry & Professional Leadership staff at the UUA noted a lack of pastoral care and attention to youth’s pain. Similarly, others mentioned the need for UUs to be more sensitive and to listen to the lived experiences and emotional and spiritual suffering of marginalized people, including youth.

Some youth seek pastoral care in community with one another; for example, 72 percent of survey respondents of high school age indicated that their youth group helps them explore options and offers suggestions on how to deal with life situations. Congregations discussed the strong bonds formed among youth and the way they form a peer ministry.

And…

Unitarian Universalist youth are like all Unitarian Universalists – they embrace a wide variety of spiritualities and worship styles. Participants at the Central Midwest District gathering reminded us that “youth are members of a community and communities work with the different needs of its members.” Other groups pointed out to us that UU youth communities do not always welcome this diversity; for example, youth at the Metro New York District and Joseph Priestley District gatherings talked about the strong reactions they receive when they talk about God or Christian beliefs. YRUU leaders envisioned a community where youth feel comfortable naming their higher power. Many groups (youth and adults) identified a gap between lifelong, raised-Unitarian Universalists and those who have found Unitarian Universalism. These groups also discussed the perception in congregations that becoming UU is an adult process, rather than something we should raise our children to be.

Then this…

Some youth communities (particularly at the district and continental level) experience tension with the Continental Unitarian Universalist Young Adult Network (C*UUYAN) or young adult community. According to C*UUYAN leaders, this is due in part to inappropriate boundaries of some young adults, generalizations based on age, and no intentional welcoming relationship between the two. The UUA Board called youths’ departure from youth programs a “bridge to nowhere” and called for more welcoming of youth into young adult and camps ministry.

P.S.
So if you are a Unitarian Universalist (UU) and care about UU youth and or the future of UUism in North America I do urge you to go and read the “Consultation on Ministry To and With Youth Summary Report”. And then do give me your thoughts on what you think of it as well as your thoughts on my impressions of it.

Coming of Age is not a Youth Empowerment program…

This is some more thoughts of mine one the same subject as my last post. And I also posted it to one of the thread in the same Faceboox group.

Coming of Age (COA) is not a Youth Empowerment program. As a COA teacher in my congregation in Ottawa, ON, Canada I should know it’s a Youth Preparatory course. And it is for junior youth (i.e.12 or 13-year-olds) not youth (i.e. 14 to 19-year-olds). It helps the junior youth to begin to look at all the different beliefs to which we as humans have with regards to religious/spiritual things like hell, heaven, the belief or not in God and so on. And it helps the junior youth to start to articulate which of these feels right for them. Also it is a course which helps the young people to be ready to move on to youthhood. It’s kind of like the UU version of the Christian confirmation or the UU version of the Jewish Bar and Bat mitsfa. So I would say this it’s good to have these kinds of things for UU’s, but in my opinion it is better don wen they are still kids and not yet youth. And that is because I feel youthhood should be a time for trying out and testing all the things learnt as a kid in a healthy and safe environment of course, with the express propose of preparing the youth to become leaders and active members in their society. In this case the UU world. But what I have noticed is we as UU’s let are young people go throw this as youth or at least we did. Then wen they become adults we tell them with our body language, ton of voice and so one to forget about trying to incorporate the conclusions or weighs of doing thing which mite work for you in to the wider adult UU world. In essence, we say, we encourage you to continuo to explore what you believe and think but now you most only do it in the more proper and refined adult way. And I would strongly oppose something like COA being the mane focus of UU youth programming mostly because it is adult lead not youth led with mentor like help from sportive adults.

Some Unitarian Universalist young adult questions and concerns

I feel there is a saver lack of institutional memory wen it comes to Unitarian Universalist young adult (UUYA) community, weather that’s on the local level, regional/district level or even on the continental level. Let me elaborate for a moment. What I men is we have little if not any knowledge as to why the various UUYA communities and their activities have come to be as they are including what has driven, hindered and heart them throw out their lives, whether that has been long or short. We also have no knowledge of why the founders of these communities set them up the way they did if we even know who their founders were in the first place. As well we have no memory of what has possibly come before in the wide world of UUYA community but may not be here today.

Also I think lots of us would agree that it is often unclear as to why the current batch of UUYAs attend the UUYA activates and events that they do and what they think their proposes are. Let me use Opus as an example. Opus had been the annul continental (i.e. US and Canada) gathering for UUYAs held at varying camps throughout the US and Canada once a year in late summer until it was put on holed at least for this year (2008). Ok Opus for some is a young adult spiritual retreat (i.e. a place for communal rejuvenation of the soul). And for others it’s a young adult spiritual conference (i.e. a place to do the hard work, which will allow us UUYAs to go out into the wider world and attempted to demonstrate who to live in more accepting was for ourselves, and those we interact with). And still for others it’s a place to help grow UUYA community. See by this example you can see that people’s vow of a single UUYA event can vary so greatly. And why should this madder to us as UUYAs well, maybe if we want coherent focuses for our events, then we need to have a collective understanding of the purposes of these events. Also if we wont to attract young adults with a common focus to our events then we need to know what the common theme and or mandate of these events are.

And another point how do UUYA groups and they’re varying communities fit into the wider cacophony of UU community and groups, let alone who do raised UU and newbie UU YAs fit in to UUYA communities themselves. Also what do the varying UUYAs bring to UUYA Community and is it appropriate or even desirable for alumnus of YRUU (Young religious Unitarian Universalists) the UU youth program run on a continental, regional/district and local level to bring things from their over to the UUYA world.

And what I have raised here are all pretty deep questions and concerns. So what to do about it all? Well we as UUYAs can’t just go back in time and gather the missing knowledge about our varying communities and their events and use it to help us go forward. No but we can get-together and attempt to not lose the institutional knowledge that we have gathered from our time in these varying crazily connected communities and use this. Also about finding out why we are involved in the varying UUYA groups events to which we are, well starting a discourse on this is a good start. And by doing these thing maybe we will start to have better focused and more vibrant UUYA communities and events not to mention possibly having some new ones to fill the missing gapes in this our patchwork of communities and events.