UU Voices
Tom Downey, Noreen Kimball, Carol Siemering
September 17, 2006

How Can I Keep From Singing
Carol Siemering

Let me begin with a psalm I wrote which sums up in just a few words the entirety of my spirituality . That being the case, I will still, however say some more after I have read it. It is called

Psalm of the Unsure Believer.

O Infinite Everything
I think
maybe

O Mighty One
or shepherd
or Queen of Heaven
or Mother of Sorrows
or Mercy

Creator
of the day
of the night
of heartache
that is physically felt
of starstuff
and forget-me-not blue

You who were named
now unnamed

Whoever
Whatever
knits together
all the major and minor
bits and pieces of this universe

I sing you
something like praise

And because somewhere
in my bones
I find myself
Child

I give myself over
to Marvelous You

When you came in, the prelude music which was playing was from a cd I made11 years ago in an old barn converted into an Oratory, with a number of other women who had lived and sung at one time or another, at Grailville, a Catholic Community of lay women in Loveland Ohio. I went there at 18 to take classes, work on the farm and in the art department, to keep silence, pray the Mass and office each day and sing in the schola (the name for the choir). It was Catholic life at its very fullest with the world’s most radical theologians coming to give conferences, with the liturgical life wedded to its agricultural pagan roots, with the arts—music, visual, dance woven thru all. I went there because I was going to give my life over to God, I was going to become a Bride of Christ.

Just as bewilderingly as I have lost my voice—I can no longer sing or can hardly sing and therefore have lost a connectedness to so much of what was an intrinsic part of how I defined myself, so it was when I left the church. I was no longer able to understand the church’s concept of sin, the disregard of the possibility of women as minister, as priest and then, even why there needed to be priest. I lost a part of myself and I would weep when visiting that beautiful converted barn as my Grail sisters took Communion and I stood in back because, eventually, I stopped believing in anything.

Then little by little the possibility of God or the “Infinite Everything” came back into my life. And I found this Society—to sing in at first (and where I sang for 22 years) and later to become a member, knowing that wherever I was in my search, it would be OK. For the past five years I have been participating in what I experience as the best reflection of that sense of OK-ness and also, my personal favorite thing about this Society—my Small Group Ministry—where we, with trust and love, reach down into our deepest selves and share what we experience as the “sacred” although each might have a different word for it. Recently a small number of us have begun another kind of Small Group Ministry which we call by a number of names but I call Former Catholics at FUSN. Here too we share deeply and call back what was good and beautiful about being Catholic, while acknowledging what was hurtful or crippling. Here we meet as UU’s with a particular spiritual past as we carve out for ourselves what paths we follow now. And I don’t know where my path will go and it may not be the same as anyone else’s but I know there are fellow travelers I can call to even as they follow theirs.

I might never get my voice back.
I might never get back that fullness of “being held” by a loving God but I will be glad for having had both.
I will sing my grandsons to sleep with my broken voice.
I will be open to the possibility of the “Infinite Everything” as I say in the poem

“And because in my bones, I find myself Child
I give myself over to Marvelous You!”

From Deist to Unitarian Universalist
Tom Downey

There was a man whose town was hit by a flood, and the man stood at the front doorstep of his house as a neighbor came by in an SUV and said, "Come on, let's get out of here before we're stranded." The man answered, "No, go ahead. I'm waiting for God to rescue me."

The flood waters continued to rise, and the man retreated to an upstairs window of his house as a police officer came by in a patrol boat and said, "You need to evacuate your house. The flood is dangerous and still rising; come with me now." The man answered, "No, go ahead. I'm waiting for God to rescue me."

The flood waters continued to rise, and the man retreated to the roof of his house as a military pilot came by in a helicopter and said, "I'm here to rescue you. Come with me now; this might be your last chance." The man answered, "No, go ahead. I'm waiting for God to rescue me."

The flood waters continued to rise, and the man perished. When he got to heaven he asked God, "Why didn't you try to save me?" God answered, "I did try. Didn't you see the neighbor, the police officer, and the helicopter pilot?"

Growing up, I never believed in a God that watches over every little thing that happens. I attended a Methodist church and Sunday school, but I have few memories of that church. I vaguely recall playing clarinet in a Sunday school ensemble with an accordion and several other instruments. Later in life I realized that we had the makings of a good Klezmer band, but no one there told us about Klezmer music. I was a Boy Scout and I do remember marveling at all the Boy Scout religion merit badges. I particularly liked the one with the flaming chalice, but I had never heard of Unitarianism. Religion just was not an important part of my life. If you asked me whether or not I believed in God, I would probably say that I didn’t know.

My first real encounter with personal religious reflection came in freshman philosophy class. Voltaire, a French philosopher, said: “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” This started me thinking seriously about religion, God, and the meaning of life. In the class we encountered Deism, a religious philosophy that has much in common with Unitarianism. Founded in England in the late 17th century, Deism emphasizes a belief in one God, the use of reason, and a rejection of religious revelation and church dogma as a source for moral guidance. It quickly spread to France, Germany and America, with many prominent early Americans, such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, employing Deistic principles in their thinking.

Most Deists believe that God created the universe, "wound it up" and then disassociated himself from his creation. This appealed to my scientific mind; I had never believed in the image of God as an elderly white man with a long white beard and flowing robes, listening to everyone’s prayers. Rousseau, another French philosopher, took Deism in a slightly different direction, adding to it a greater emphasis on sentiment and emotions. Given my rational and scientific views of the world, I was surprised that I found this more appealing than the more rational English version.

For many years thereafter I called myself a Deist if someone asked what religion I followed. Atheism seemed too extreme to me, and agnosticism too wishy-washy. One joke goes: If people think you are attacking God when talking to Christians, but defending God when talking to Atheists, then you might be a Deist. However, I was never really sure how to answer the religion question.

When we moved to Newton in 1991 we began looking for a Sunday school to provide some moral education for our children. Our next-door neighbor, Ruth Daniels, invited us to FUSN. After hearing just one sermon and meeting a few FUSNites, I realized I had been a UU all along and never knew it. The more I learned about Unitarian Universalism (and I learned a lot teaching a religious education class), the more it felt right for me.

Gerry Krick, the minister at FUSN at the time we joined, once said in a sermon, “The meaning of life is to give life meaning.” I had never heard this phrase before, but I left FUSN that day thinking about it. It made more sense to me that we should each give meaning to our own lives, rather than searching for an external, God-given meaning. When I later decided to leave the high-tech world and become a high school teacher, this phrase helped me make that decision. On many days I give meaning to my life by supporting Laurel and our children, or by teaching math to bored teenagers. But on other days I give meaning to my life by curling up in a chair with a good book and a cup of hot chocolate, or by whacking tennis balls with my racquet.

So, what do you think of God? Do you believe in God? Are you waiting for God to rescue you? I see God not as the source of meaning in my life nor as the solution to my problems, but rather as what scientists and mathematicians call an “emergent phenomenon.” To me, the hand of God is made manifest in the majesty of the universe, in our love for one another, in our collective strivings to give our lives meaning, and in our glorious successes in doing so.

One Path to Humanism
Noreen Kimball

I was raised in a great many places, in a number of settings—including a Roman Catholic convent boarding school. When I was 11 years old, I finally began to live with my mother and sisters in a neighborhood of Boston where Catholicism was close to a state religion. I loved being a Catholic. I loved the certainty, the drama, the incredible music. I knew I would go to a Catholic college where, along with the humanities, I would study the great Catholic thinkers—Aquinas and Neumann, Augustine, and Teresa of Avila. I saw no logical contradictions in the faith I learned at home and at school; after all, it was faith. I knew the place of mystery in faith.

In my senior year in high school I applied for entry to the convent of the School Sisters of Notre Dame and was accepted by the Mother General. My trunk was purchased, my family started to gather lots of items in black cotton. My mother, however, was skeptical. She spoke of the vow of obedience and shook her head. Shamefully, it was simply that I had a date for the prom, a new gown, and my longing to dance that led me to write Mother General and offer my apologies.

As I look back now to the time I finally became aware that all that faith was gone, I realize that it had happened slowly, though I was unaware of it until the process was nearly complete. When searching for an explanation, I pointed to the hypocritical behavior of fellow religionists, as if there were not examples of hypocrisy everywhere a heartbroken 17-year-old could look. The truth is, I simply lost my faith. And none of the beauty or ritual or even the love of my family and its firm faith, could save it.

I recall that of all the doctrines—the bodily resurrection of Christ, the transubstantiation, original sin—it was the notion that thoughts could be sinful that made my religion impossible to me. The idea that thoughts, which could enter the mind unbidden, could constitute sinful action seemed, not nonsense to me, but actually dangerous. I found it an almost unbearable notion—something that clashed with everything I believed about intellectual or any other kind of freedom.

I moved directly into atheism—no church for me, no religion at all. It was fortunate that I was busy raising my children because in some ways, I was cold in those years. And quite defensively smug. Years later, I came to this Unitarian Universalist community so my children would have some education in ethical behavior. I came to the services because it seemed surly to just drop my children off and go home. What happened to me here is described very well by BU English professor Charles Rzepka in his UUA pamphlet, The Many Paths to Unitarian Universalism: “... as I became more familiar with its [Unitarian Universalism’s] basic respect for freedom of individual belief, its faith in the deeply human origins of all sacred emotions, and its conviction that improving this world is a more religious endeavor than getting saved in the next, I came to see that I had been a Unitarian Universalist all along. As I learned the inspiring history of Unitarian and Universalist men and women of conscience—activists and peacemakers, holy scientists and heretical saints—I became convinced that the religious tradition to which they belong spoke to me as well.”

I now believe that the true substance of religion is the role it plays in the lives of individuals and the life of the community. While doctrines differ from denomination to denomination, what religion does for people doesn’t change. As a Religious Humanist, I believe doctrine should never subvert the higher purpose of meeting human needs. It is true that this is defining religion by its function, but for me, that function is the most lasting and universal part of religion.

And one of the beauties for me of Unitarian Universalism is, that here, where we celebrate all kinds of belief and unbelief; our child welcoming ceremonies are geared to the community; our wedding services are tailored to the wedding couple; and our memorial services focus, not on the fate of the soul of the dear deceased one, but on serving the survivors by giving them a memorable experience related to how that loved one lived life and loved them. For me Unitarian Universalism, and religious humanism, are defined by how they are lived.