As an observer from the outside, I wish you well searching for a spiritual home. I am a Pantheist and who has attended various Unitarian Universalist fellowships for over 30 years. Yes, we too have our three hymns and a sermon (although sometimes, we’ll invite an Imam or someone from the local ACLU to give a talk). Also — don’t forget the readings!
The things that bring me back every Sunday are the fellowship with the other members of my congregation, and that this is the hour in the week where I can leave the cares of the world behind and really feel and get in touch with my spiritual side. Although we UU’s kid ourselves that we are such lousy hymn-singers because we are reading ahead to see if we agree with the words, sometimes the music and poetry touch me to my core. The bowl gong marks a period of silent meditation, where my muscles loosen as I sink into the stillness. And the sermon some days can be an exciting intellectual exploration, a soul-wrenching story full of sorrows and joys, or a stirring call to action. And having coffee and talking with my fellow congregants illustrates what Frenec David once said, “We need not think alike to love alike.”
So I come away spiritually nourished. But what has happened to some churches nowadays, that they have aligned themselves too often with a heartless so-called conservatism that can’t even muster the basic honesty to speak the truth? Too often, I see and hear representatives from these denominations who angrily denounce a changing world, but in their denunciations, they reveal a hardness of heart. In them, the Fruits of the Spirit have withered and died. And although they talk a great game, they are like the Pharisees that Jesus condemned: they only clean the outside of their cups.
Luckily, they are not all. There are still many Christians to admire. The Jimmy Carters, the Desmond Tutus, or a showboat like Bono. I even admire those like Rick Warren, with whom I respectfully disagree, but who strive to make the world a better place. But I wish that there were more of them. It seems like we have lost a basic lovingkindness that needs to be rediscovered.
