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.

My new sister blog

I have started a sister blog to this one. But unlike this blog, this new one of mine it will have a more focused reason for being. And that reason for being will be to serve as the online home of my new Unitarian Universalist (UU) journey, which I am dubbing UU Quest along with the blog itself. And this new journey in brief will seek to understand the needs of raised UUs wen it comes to them being full and active members of UU communities. It will also be seeking to help strengthen the aspects and components of UU, which are authentically unique to it. And this blog will be the repository of the stuff-gathered throughout this journey.

Thinking about what my next move should be

I said to my brother that his plane to bike from Ottawa to BC’s west cost this summer with our best friend Joel Fox was another of his foolish planes. And I even tolled him that the resin it was foolish is that it is just another of those endeavours of his that won’t get completed. Ok I did tell him that he would set out but he would only get to maybe as fare as Regina Saskatchewan. All right I may have said this in another one of my moments of playing the clown. I guess I was playing the clown for the same reason students at school play the clown, to get noticed and to lesion their feelings of inadequacy and to be exspted by their peers. In this case the only one I could have possibly wanted to get some attention from was my brother because he was the only one in the room. And was I feeling inadequate well maybe I felt that I just didn’t measure up to my brother. I guess I was just feeling tired of being past up for opportunities to do more then just mottle throw life will around me my brother was always being handed crater opportunities then me. Well that is what it always seems to me, even though it may not seem that way to him. All right maybe it wasn’t the best thing for me to have said seeing as he had helped us get to Albany NY, which was the place I was wen I said this to him. Well it did get him to pay attention to me, even though not in the way I really wanted deep dawn inside of me, but rather in away that only made me realise that I only feel excepted wen I am being funny. You see I have always wanted to be seen as more then the funny mane, well I am not helping myself in that regarded. Ok the reason we were in Albany was because we were there to visit the Albany Free School and the Harriet Tubman Free School to which I may tell you all about in another post. So like I said I tolled my brother that his plane to bike from Ottawa to BC’s west cost this summer with our best friend Joel Fox was another of his foolish planes.

Well this exchange got me thinking about what my next move should be. And that exchange was way before Christmas, yes on the 11th of December to be exact and before that my brother gave me a taro cared reading. It was in my room in Ottawa before the Albany trip I think if I can remember right. And the question I asked the cards to help answer was should I leave Ottawa by the New Year. And by the New Year I meant by the beginning of the new program year, which is usually by the beginning of September. So what did the cards tell me? Well they indicated really strongly that I should leave Ottawa by the New Year. So will I leave Ottawa by the New Year?

Well I along with my brother spent Christmas in the Halifax Dartmouth aria of Nova Scotia at my mom’s place. And will I was their I was still thinking about the taro reading. So wen my brother afford to give me another taro cared reading I jumped at the chance. And after thinking long and hared as to what question to ask the cared, I eventually settled on which direction should I go in, i.e. which way should I leave Ottawa towards, north, south, east or west? So the cards tolled me that the east and south were not good directions to go in but they did indicate that if I left heeding west that relationships of all kinds were likely and if I went north that concrete endeavours were possible.  And wen I mean concrete endeavours I am referring to things that involve formal agreements. So I like the idea of having crater relationships, so I think I may be heading west, but to ware and haw fare west. As far as the west cost? Well only time will tell. And wen exactly will I leave, well not before the middle of May, I think.