UU Hymn #298: Wake, Now, My Senses

A lot has happened since I last posted! I was out of town last weekend, so I didn't get back to the UU church until Sunday. It was the first "ordinary" service I've attended there (no special occasion, no guest speaker), and afterward I felt certain enough that this is something I want to keep doing that I was ready to tell my mom about it, which I did yesterday. It was harder than I expected for me to find the right words, and it led to a long conversation about other things that I wasn't planning on and am still feeling pretty weird about, but she was supportive about it and I'm glad I told her. I didn't realize how much guilt and regret I have been carrying for never being able to feel at home in my parents' church, like I had betrayed them and everything they stood for. I know she doesn't feel that way, so it's up to me to work on learning not to feel that way either. It will take time, but I will get there.

Today I sent her am email with links and lyrics to some of the UU hymns and songs I've heard so far. While looking them up, I found one I hadn't seen before. It is set to the Irish folk tune Slane, best known as the melody to the Irish and English hymn "Be Thou My Vision." This song has always moved me deeply while also giving me the all-too-familiar feeling of exclusion and alienation, because while I think it is beautiful, I'm unable to connect to the words expressing a single focus on God as the speaker's only love, purpose, refuge, and source of meaning. This version, with lyrics by Thomas Mikelson, resonates all the way down to my core. If I didn't know I was a Unitarian Universalist before, this song would erase any remaining doubt.


Wake, now, my senses, and hear the earth call;
Feel the deep power of being in all;
Keep, with the web of creation your vow,
Giving, receiving as love shows us how.
 
Wake, now my reason, reach out to the new;
Join with each pilgrim who quests for the true;
Honor the beauty and wisdom of time;
Suffer thy limit, and praise the sublime.
  
Wake, now, compassion, give heed to the cry;
Voices of suffering fill the wide sky;
Take as your neighbor both stranger and friend,
Praying and striving their hardship to end.
 
Wake, now, my conscience, with justice thy guide;
Join with all people whose rights are denied;
Take not for granted a privileged place;
God’s love embraces the whole human race.
 
Wake, now, my vision of ministry clear;
Brighten my pathway with radiance here;
Mingle my calling with all who will share;
Work toward a planet transformed by our care.

UU Hymn #121: We'll Build a Land

I heard this song for the first time when we sang it as the closing hymn in church on Sunday. The text was written by Carolyn McDade based on Isaiah 61 and Amos 5:24. I've changed one phrase here, "anointed by God," because to me that idea refers to something very specific that feels exclusionist; otherwise, the text is the same as in the UU hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition.

We'll build a land where we bind up the broken.
We'll build a land where the captives go free,
Where the oil of gladness dissolves all mourning.
Oh, we'll build a promised land that can be.

(Chorus)
Come build a land where sisters and brothers,
United in love, may then create peace:
Where justice shall roll down like waters,
And peace like an ever-flowing stream.

We'll build a land where we bring the good tidings
To all the afflicted and all those who mourn,
And we'll give them garlands instead of ashes.
Oh, we'll build a land where peace is born.
(Chorus)

We'll be a land building up ancient cities,
Raising up devastations from old;
Restoring ruins of generations.
Oh, we'll build a land of people so bold.
(Chorus)

Come, build a land where the mantles of praises
Resound from spirits once faint and once weak;
Where like oaks of righteousness stand her people.
Oh, come build the land, my people, we seek.
(Chorus)

I did a reading about my spiritual journey with my new Ancestral Path Tarot the night before attending the UU church for the first time, and the card that came up in the position representing me in relation to the situation was the Queen of Swords. Here is the Queen of Swords in the Ancestral Path deck:

For me, the combination of this song and this card was like the final piece in a puzzle I've been working on for a long, long time. After sharing these words with this community of kind, openhearted people, the card image of this Queen of Swords flashed into my mind -- the warlike widow queen in traditional decks, here transformed into a creator goddess smiling with delight at the peaceful islands she has raised up out of the sea -- and what I have felt and suspected for years crystallized into commitment. I feel ready to say that, even if I never attend another service, I am (and probably long since have been) a Unitarian Universalist.

Every label I have tried before has felt like the worst card in Monopoly. Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. This one feels like a "get out of a jail free" card and a train ticket rolled into one. I don't know where the train is going yet, but I'm very excited to start the ride.

Reclaiming sacred language

Some words make us feel powerful by using them. Others make us feel powerless when we are denied, or deny ourselves, access to them. Many words associated with spirituality fall into the latter category for me. Visiting the UU church and listening to the inclusive way they use religious language has led me to reassess the meanings of some of these words. I have a tendency to assume there is some external authority that has more right than I do to define what something is "supposed" to mean, and if my preferred meaning differs, I will reject my preferred meaning.

I think my motivation for this is good: I want to avoid the kind of cultural appropriation and insensitivity that occurs when people decide what they want a thing, like a racial or ethnic slur, to mean and then dismiss any backlash by saying they didn't mean it that way. This is important. It doesn't matter how I feel about Confederate flags or Native American sports team names; if they are hurting someone, they need to be done away with, end of discussion. However, here I have to ask myself, would I be hurting someone by "appropriating" religious language in a way that is spiritually meaningful to me? If not, is there any other reason doing so should be considered unacceptable?

To my best knowledge, the answer to both of these questions is no. If this is the case, then my self-denial is causing more harm than good by hurting me while not helping anyone else, which, according to the Wiccan moral philosophy I subscribe to, is morally wrong. "An it harm none, do what ye will" means you can do what you want as long as it doesn't hurt people, but "people" includes you, so I think this indicates that self-harming behavior with no greater purpose is prohibited. This is interesting, because it implies that we have not only a right but a moral obligation to reassess non-beneficial behavior that causes pain or distress, not only to others but also to ourselves.

In my case, it definitely causes me distress to deny myself the use of personally meaningful language to describe my feelings, desires, and experience related to spirituality. So, in the interest of fulfilling my moral obligation not to harm myself, I have been thinking about what words are meaningful to me and why, and how I can use them in ways that are empowering rather than disenfranchising.

For several years when I was a teenager, I attended an annual conference with the youth group from my church. The band that played there produced two praise and worship CDs with several songs that I found deeply moving. I finally got rid of the CDs last year (another non-beneficially harmful act, as I only got rid of all my Christian albums because I felt I didn't have a "right" to have them because they weren't "meant" for me), which I kind of regret now since they're no longer available. I still remember a lot of the songs, though, particularly one called "Take My Life" that I have thought about a lot over the past few days:

Holiness, holiness is what I long for
Holiness is what I need
Holiness, holiness is what you want from me

So take my life and form it
Take my mind, transform it
Take my will, conform it
To yours, to yours, oh Lord
 
The second and third verses replace "holiness" with "righteousness" and "purity." My emotional response when this song would pop into my head occasionally over the years always felt self-betraying, because on the surface it appears to argue for surrendering one's free will to a kind of divine "thought police," which feels very Orwellian to me and not at all like the kind of relationship with the divine that I would be comfortable espousing. Even setting that aside, though, the words "holiness," "righteousness," and "purity" are loaded. These words can be, and often are, used as weapons, either unintentionally by the kind of people who toss them around lightly or quite intentionally by those who aim to kill. Being the kind of person I am, I feel like I should be repulsed by them. So why do my feelings betray me by being stirred by these words?

The simple fact is that, no matter how they are or have been used, these words, in their most sincere form, have weight and meaning that draws me in more strongly than the dark side of each one pushes me away. Yes, they can mean holier-than-thou, prudish, ignorant, imperious, and sanctimonious, because many people who aspire (either sincerely or falsely) to spiritual goodness are holier-than-thou, prudish, ignorant, imperious, or sanctimonious. But the words are bigger than those people.

To me, holiness is the quality of a person or thing that does not belong only to that person or thing but to the whole flow of life. It is the part of me and you and everything that is inviolable, consecrated, sanctified and sacrosanct, that cannot be lost or destroyed, and that is always seeking to return to its source, which is perfect love. When Kahlil Gibran says in The Prophet, "You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore," he is not talking about the physical bodies we were born in, but the holiness that we contain and that contains us, at birth, in death, and beyond. The awareness of this shared nature is found in the Sanskrit greeting "namaste" -- "the divine in me bows to the divine in you." To me, saying that "holiness is what I long for" does not mean that I am base and sinful and in need of forgiveness and redemption in order to become holy; it is a plea to be shown and reminded of holiness as my true nature and my connection through love to the holiness in all things.

To me, righteousness is the state of living in accord with one's own understanding of the good. When we are in accord with our own truth, we walk our own paths and move peacefully with the flow of life. When we are in discord with our own truth (even if this happens because we are fighting against ourselves in order to follow someone else's rules), we stumble on the wrong path and exhaust ourselves swimming against the current of life. To me, saying "righteousness is what I long for" does not mean that I want to be better than I am; it means that I want to be more true to what I know to be right for me.

To me, purity is the experience of oneself as a complete person, unpolluted by influences that muffle the voice of one's own heart. When we engage with others, ourselves, and the world in ways that make us feel clean and whole, we experience purity. When we allow love to mend our wounds and see that we are stronger and more beautiful in the places that were once broken, we embrace purity. To me, saying "purity is what I long for" does not mean that I am dirty and need to be purified; it is a call for strength to wash away the pain and fear that keeps me from seeing my pure self.

Even having clarified these definitions for myself, though, what about the troubling idea of handing over my life, mind, and will to be reshaped into some kind of spiritual automaton by a deity who supposedly knows better than I do what's right for me? Yesterday, I asked myself who or what I would feel comfortable trusting completely with my choices and actions. I certainly don't trust myself completely; I can be selfish and unkind at times, and I have no desire to justify my shortcomings by saying I was being "true to myself." When I talk about being true to myself, the definition of myself becomes very important. I am large; I contain multitudes. Which self do I want to be true to? When I think of myself as holy, righteous, and pure, I am not thinking of just any old version of myself; I am thinking of my best self. And who or what do I trust to continue to lead me toward my best self? 

This turned out to be a surprisingly easy question to answer. When I asked it yesterday, I started singing this song, and I realized as I sang that it suddenly had the right words for me, as if they had been in there all along, waiting for me to find them.

Holiness, holiness is what I long for
Holiness is what I need
Holiness, holiness is what you want for me

So take my life and form it
Take my mind, transform it
Take my will, conform it
To yours, oh heart of Love

Righteousness, righteousness is what I long for
Righteousness is what I need
Righteousness, righteousness is what you want for me

So take my life and form it
Take my mind, transform it
Take my will, conform it
To yours, oh heart of Love

Purity, purity is what I long for
Purity is what I need
Purity, purity is what you want for me

So take my life and form it
Take my mind, transform it
Take my will, conform it
To yours, oh heart of Love
To yours, oh heart of Love

Introduction

My name is Stephanie. I grew up as a pastor's daughter in an unorthodox Christian church that taught a lot of things I don't believe in. When I was still a young child, the leader of the church died, resulting in doctrinal upheaval, and the church splintered into a lot of different groups who all taught a lot of different things I also don't believe in.

The main things I don't believe in are 1) the literal existence of magical spirit beings who directly communicate with and interfere in the lives of human beings in extrascientific ways, 2) the necessity of accepting the literal sacrifice and resurrection of a historical Jesus as a requirement for salvation, and 3) the use of the patriarchal Abrahamic tradition to perpetuate the social injustices of the cultural milieu in which it was established. Across the whole spectrum of religious beliefs, these two are actually fairly localized, but unfortunately for me I grew up in a community of fundamentalist Christians, for whom they tend to be unshakeable dealbreakers. And that is how I became an atheist, because when someone else is defining "God" for you in a way you can't accept while simultaneously demanding that you define yourself by whether or not you believe in their God so defined, you aren't left with a lot of options other than agnosticism and atheism. I have never in good conscience been able to call myself an agnostic; I am not uncertain of what I believe, I don't believe anything metaphysical is fundamentally unknowable, and I most definitely am not neutral or indifferent on the subject of religious faith.

So, atheist it is. But defining myself as an atheist, as something I am not, feels cold, empty, and life-denying. There is so much that I am that has nothing to do with being an atheist and that is fundamentally different from many (or even most) other people who identify as atheists, and all of that individuality of self is erased when someone assumes they know something (or even everything) about me simply because they ask if I believe in (their) God (so defined) and I answer the only way I can in the context to which they have restricted the question. This is like meeting someone for the first time and trying to find out something important about who they are by asking if they play soccer. Nobody introduces themselves by saying, "My name is Stephanie, and I sure don't play soccer." Knowing what I am not doesn't tell you anything about who I am. It's for this reason that the night that I lost my faith and the night twelve years later that I gave in to the label of atheist were two of the worst nights of my life. Huge parts of my former identity were simply eradicated, and I had no shared language or context to communicate my new identity to the people in my life in a way they would understand.

I left the church when I was eighteen. I am now almost thirty-four. I have struggled alone for a long time. I have felt powerfully that my beliefs, my doubts, and my struggles should be as legitimate and worthy of support as those of people who align themselves with a particular religious organization, but I have very rarely seen that belief validated by others. Believers say "first subscribe to our creed, then we can talk about your doubts." Non-believers say "we don't believe in anything, so why talk about it?" I have felt very, very alone.

I first heard of Unitarian Universalism in college, when one of my psychology professors introduced himself on the first day of class as a Unitarian Universalist Buddhist. I had no idea what that was, but I was pretty sure you weren't allowed to be it. Over the following months and years, I maintained a subdued interest in this strange church that seemed so different from anything I understood a church to be. When I moved to my current city six years ago, I learned right away that there was a Unitarian Universalist church less than twenty minutes from my house. Whenever I felt especially low and isolated from other spiritual seekers who might actually understand my thirst for meaning, I thought about visiting, wondering if maybe these hippy-dippy peace-and-love people would accept me despite my lack of faith. But I never went. It was still a church, after all, and atheists don't go to church.

Two weeks ago, my very supportive boyfriend (who is also an atheist) talked me into finally taking the chance and giving this church a try. The first service I attended was the annual Water Communion, where the members bring water they have collected from various special places throughout the year and combine it in one vessel along with their stories, hopes, and blessings for the community, as well as the water reserved from the year before. The new water is then distilled and used for other rituals and ceremonies during the coming year. The choir sang two African-American spirituals and a Carly Simon song. The children seemed happy. Nobody asked me if I was married or what I did for a living. Nobody mentioned God. I returned on Labor Day weekend for a service about accepting differences. The worship leader read a "story for all ages" about a transgender child being accepted for who she is, and a guest speaker described the experience of growing up as a man in a woman's body. When the children left for their religious education classes, the church sang them out of the sanctuary with a benediction they repeat every week: "Go now in peace, may the Spirit of Love surround you everywhere you go." We sang a new hymn set to the tune of a Christmas carol with lyrics about building tables instead of walls, and we sang a UU hymn about creating a world where suffering is washed away by gladness and peace.

It's hard to describe the effect these services had on me. I had hoped to feel accepted; instead, I felt embraced. I had hoped there would be room for me; instead, I felt like I belonged there, like my seat had been sitting empty with my name on it. I thought I had rejected the possibility of a church community; now, I feel as though this one has been waiting for me all these years. I am overwhelmed, overjoyed, and utterly terrified. I have no idea where this journey will lead now that I have taken the first step.

So, this blog is about that.