"Why I am a Unitarian Universalist"

What led me initially to Unitarian Universalism is a pretty obvious thing—Eamon and I wanted to get married in our back yard—no frills, or only the frills we chose, like bagpipers, and his only requirement was not to hear those deadly words “god” or “state” anywhere in the ceremony.  I wanted to write the ceremony anyway, and I wanted to hear it intact, so we went about finding someone who would be willing to perform this ceremony.  I am not even sure what led us to Fr. Armando Cuellar—an Argentinean Episcopalian minister who was a friend of the Bellport UU’s, living in a trailer in Riverhead and working as a social worker, but as in some secular miracle, we found him, he loved every word of the ceremony and he agreed to dress in anything from tennis shorts to a robe and miter.  Ok.  We could please my catholic mother-in-law, my Episcopalian parents and my Jewish friends.  I had done my homework, so the ceremony had the cadence and rhythm of a religious one.  It had a lot of good words too, and if you were there you wouldn’t be sure what you had heard, but you wouldn’t be offended.  Good start at being a UU.  I was one of those UU’s we talk about all the time—I was a UU who didn’t know I was one.

Ok.  I remember my atheistic epiphany at the age of 19.  I remember the light in the room, the deep contrast of the slanting shadows cast by a low north-country setting sun across the stark furniture of my dormitory room.  I think of this “epiphany” as being equal to any religious one.  It changed my life.  It changed my world view, and I have never looked back.  I’ve sometimes wished I had someone to pray to in hard times.  I admit that some of the prayers I learned in my confirmation classes come back to me easily if I hear a few words, or in moments of intense stress, but ever since then I’ve found them empty.  I’ve stood by it—this knowledge that really there was nobody up there looking out for me.  Even so, I have sometimes missed the easy comfort of religious trappings and the idea that a prayer could be heard and answered.  That sin, or an affront, could be forgiven by confessing.  I’ve tried on occasion to parse it out.  Am I a humanist?  An existentialist?  An atheist?  Does the name really matter?

So why Unitarian Universalism?  Why anything?  I wonder about that.  I wonder why I am up here talking about this—why anybody cares what I think.  But that is a huge part of what this is to me.  When something terrible happens—the September 11 tragedy, a tsunami, the death of Rosa Parks, my country’s involvement in a senseless war, my husband’s heart attack, my daughter’s surgery—I want be able to find a room where I can quietly come to accept these terrible things.  Where I know the people, and have an idea what they’re thinking.  I find coherence here and meaning and a kind of peace that helps me think and even challenges me to think deeper.  Does a religion need a god?  Do we need to call it a religion?  I don’t need to resolve these questions because they truly don’t matter to me. 

People supposedly find religion on their deathbed.  I don’t know anyone who has, but that is the rumor.  If I think about my own death, and I don’t spend much time doing that, I don’t want words said over me that I would find offensive.  I want my ashes to be laid to rest, or sprinkled on the water, or scattered in my garden—wherever I go—by someone who respects my place in the world, understands it and recognizes that I have left it.  That’s all.  And I think I could trust most anyone here to do that.