Defining Your Direction

This morning I made my first venture to a church-like setting in … oh, I don’t know, maybe fifteen years or so?  I decided to visit a Unitarian Universalist church. The last time I decided to check out the church scene was back in 1996 when I was living in San Diego and desperate for some kind of intellectual discourse.  My boyfriend at the time, a surprisingly devout Catholic, chided me a little, referring to the UU church as the Church of “I Can’t Commit.”  (Which, now that I think about it, is a little ironic considering that, at the end of the day, it was he who couldn’t commit.  But I digress…)  In any event, I only went once in San Diego.  Just didn’t feel like I clicked with that particular group.

I’ve been feeling a little je ne sais quoi lately, like maybe something is missing.  Work is good.  It’s fine.  My family is lovely, my friends delightful.  And yet.  I realized both that I spend so little time reflecting.  I think at work about work stuff.  And at home, I think about home stuff.  But what about life?  Life is more than work and home. There’s a spiritual element to all this that I spend so little time considering…

And so, this week I decided to check out the church thing.  But not the Praise Jesus, I Have Been Saved kind of church.  As non-committal as the UU church may seem, it just felt like it was probably the right level of spirituality for me.

I think I made the right choice.

This morning after I fed the boys breakfast (egg in the hole – always a hit), I drove downtown to the UU church off Colfax, and snuck in just a minute after the service had started.  There were four french horns playing at the front of the room.  It was really quite beautiful.  I learned that the theme of the month was Common Ground.  There was some relatively administrative business initially — committee reports and the like — and then the minister (is that what they call themselves in the UU church?) began a ritual of calling out to the four directions.

We stood and faced east first and listened to one of french horns play a simple, slightly mournful tune.  The minister said some words, and then we turned to face south.  Some more words and then a second french horn played, joined by the first, and the depth of the music grew.  We turned west, more words, and a third horn.  Then north, more words, and a fourth horn.  The music, at that point was genuinely moving.  We finished by facing center, facing each other, and we listened to the piece played in full, one last time.

What followed was a variety of candle lighting — the chalice, some birthdays, and some other celebrations and tributes — along with a story about farm workers and the slightly baffling passing of raisins.

And then came the main event — the sermon.  The minister was a slightly graying, slender man wearing a nice suit jacket and a maroon button up shirt, no tie.  Very NPR-chic.  “Common Ground,” he started, “is a very broad topic.  It means so many different things in so many different contexts.  It’s a challenging concept.  And I can say this with some authority, having attempted for some time to write a sermon on the topic.”  The congregation laughed appreciatively.

“And I can’t be anything but honest with you.  At 11 o’clock last night I finally realized that even though I had written pages and pages, and all of it would have been an adequate academic paper, none of it was quite right for this purpose.  So I threw it away.  I’ve decided instead to share with you a few stories.”

He went on to refer back to the calling of the directions that we had done earlier in the morning.  Just as we use the four directions — north, south, east, and west — to identify our geographic location, the minister proposed that the Universal Unitarians can use four elements to define their, what?  spiritual?  emotional? location as well.  Truth.  Love.  Respect. And faith.

He told one short story that illustrated some message related to each of these concepts.  (Truth — Joseph’s chance encounter with Ish.  Love — an overheard snippet of a conversation between his mother and a friend the day he dropped out of high school and moved out of his family’s home.  Respect — a statement from the UU church about being gay-friendly.  Faith — um.  I can’t seem to remember the faith story right now.  Shoot.)

Anyway, all this got me to thinking about what elements I would identify to define my spiritual geography.  I think the ones that the minister identified come pretty close.  Truth/honesty.  Love.  Respect/Kindness.  Faith/hope.

What about you?  What would you choose?