Unitarian Universalist - And We Above Ground

Unitarian Universalist. Universal God, Universal Truth. Everybody Welcome. Leave your religious manifesto at the door.

That's a pretty easy, politically correct bunch of words* But you try and put it into practice. Seriously. Have a dinner party. Invite vegetarians, Muslims, Jews, Catholics (try to have it on Friday during Lent) people with bad dentures, someone who has just had gastric bypass surgery and a toddler with life threatening peanut allergy. And your mother in law. Now you face what a UU minister faces every week, or so I imagine. The dinner might require divine intervention. The service definitely did. How else could a service designed to accommodate every single person on earth regardless of race, creed, color or socio-economic status, still come in a package so authentic that all three of us in the 52 churches capacity (Myself, Carrie and Laura) sniffled and blinked away our tears for the whole hour? And then, of course, there's the fact that it was Easter. Yet, like the sash she wears around her neck that bears the emblems so many different religions, Reverend Hepler managed to weave in the different aspects of spirituality without watering down the magic at all.

*( except for the word manifesto which implies communism, but I don't care because I like it. Everything is a manifesto for me these days. I've latched onto that word like a baby cow to an udder. School project plans are now academic manifestos. The grocery list is a domestic manifesto. What to do with our tax return is our own personal economic manifesto. )

This is the picture that belongs with last weeks entry. See those tokens? Those are what the homeless can put into the coffers if they have no pennies. Remember what I told you? They put the tokens in, giving away what they had - dignity, peace, wisdom - and then they dug a little deeper and gave their pennies as well. I'm not good with my Bible stories. I can't rifle through the pages of my memory, find an appropriate Scripture and prattle it off like some people can. But I do remember this - in paraphrasing of course. There was a woman in the bible who had nothing to share but a few pennies. She waited until all the rich men with their bags of gold had gone and put the fraction of their wealth into the pot. Then, during the time for silent prayer she crept up and put in her paltry donation. She was embarrassed. She didn't want anyone to see that was all that she had to give. And then He said that she had given more than all the rich men combined because what she gave came from her heart, freely and generously. Those tokens reminded me to give what I have wholly, to my children, my parents, my friends, my family. What I have to offer is irrelevant but the giving, in the right spirit, becomes sacred.