This I Believe

I believe we are each powerful beyond our imaginings.

I believe in using our power for benevolence in collaboration with this Spirit of Life and Love that breaths into the Universe.

And while I don’t believe in an anthropomorphized or anthropopathized God or a triune God, I’m totally okay with and grateful that that concept and relationship with God works for others. I believe in translating religious terms within a spirit of “best possible motivation” and for “best possible understanding” in authentic religious and theological dialogue. I am careful to try to not misappropriate or mislead. For me personally I believe and trust in a Universe that sustains me. And I believe I am most powerful when I free-fall back in full surrender, to its universal oneness.

I believe we are born from and into original goodness. And because of that there is a just imperative for religious communities and individuals to eradicate social and spiritual barriers and oppressors of our emerging wholeness. I believe that by doing so brings us closer to God. Closer to more fully knowing God reflected in each others’ eyes, in our outstretched hands, in our life stories. I believe we are walking, dancing holographic mirrors of God for each other and that is our salvation. It becomes a spiritual practice, perhaps even a sacrament, to be radically open and responsive to the transformative opportunities that we offer each other through our theological diversity and experience of the divine and holy.

I believe sin is anything which takes away from or breaks our relationship from God and our wholeness. This includes the self-righteous notion that we have The One True Answer. This includes the self-deprecating thoughts and media messages that we aren’t good enough or worthy of love and connection. Evil is choosing deadness, pain, inflicting misery and power-over. I believe that some sin and evil is humanly irreparable and/ or unforgivable. And sometimes people need to be removed from beloved community/ religious community or even society. But I do believe in unconditional love and I do believe in grace. I’m not sure I fully understand them, but what I do grasp drops me to my knees in utter amazement. Sin, evil, love, grace are all complicated and intertwined. God is in our response.

I believe we are bodily made from star dust and physically return through the earth like nurse logs to nourish generations to come. I believe that as we socially we come from community and are woven into community we achieve a humane immortality as our lessons and love continue in the living community. I believe our soul comes out of the Spirit of Life, remains connected to the Spirit of Life and returns. Every single one of us. Regardless of how we lived our lives. I believe our human brains and current science do not at this point in time and evolution have the capacity or tools to begin to know and understand this phenomena we name God.

I believe that my most holy mission and purpose is to be a mother. I believe God gave me my husband Alex as a helpmate, a co-parent and a teacher of love and trust.

As a Unitarian Universalist minister all these things I believe while they hold my center strong, do not play center stage. My role is to coach, witness, mid-wife, cheerlead, plant, tend, unattached, and then if I am very lucky gasp in awe, “look at them go!”

I regularly play hide and seek with God and find Spirit in folk art, wonder, uncontrollable laughter, singing in a choir, meditating in a group, gratitude, crying in the struggle, church potlucks, trying again and the welcoming of my dog.

I believe God is not the answer. I believe God is in the questions, the searching, the stretching.

Amen.