Seeking Sanctuary

In my experience, when people are asked why they became Unitarian Universalists, or why they remain Unitarian Universalists, one of the reasons most often cited is community.  We seek groups of people who are like-minded, or who have similar values, with whom we can connect and to which we might belong. It’s a perfectly human desire, and Unitarian Universalist congregations provide that home that many of us need, especially when we feel that we would not be comfortable or would not be wholly accepted in any other of the spheres we inhabit in our lives.

When I first became a UU, now half my life ago, I, too, sought community. I sought a place where I could be me – a black, gay, young man, raised a Christian but seeking…something. I sought a place where I could pose questions about God, where I could ask “why?” without fear of reprisal, where I could confidently assert “I don’t believe that!” without fear of rejection. And I believe I found that place.

But community is noisy. Community is different people coming together with all their joys and all their hurts, their assuredness and their confusion. Community of the people by the people and for the people is an exercise in controlled chaos at times. Community means serving on committees, task forces, councils and boards in the interest of perpetuating said community. Community is busy, and loud, and satisfying, and depleting, and beautiful, and replenishing, and rough. Community is competing wants and needs seeking resolution. Community is strength and community is effacement. Community is multivalent – as many different things as the people within it, and much more.

And although community is very important to me, it has never been my primary reason for joining or remaining a member of a church. My answers to that question about becoming a UU usually sound like “exploring my spirituality” or “cultivating my theology”. My answers about remaining a UU usually sound similar, with the added component of a deep love for this faith I found all those years ago. Having benefitted from community for so long, I have come to a place in my life where what I need more even than the community I found is sanctuary.

Seder table set on the chancel in the sanctuary of the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore (Universalist & Unitarian), April 2010

Sanctuary is stillness. Sanctuary is safe vulnerability; sanctuary is comfort. Sanctuary is holiness, set apart from the mundane. Sanctuary is oneness of breath, oneness of purpose, oneness of intention. Sanctuary is showing up, sitting in a pew, and being nourished. Sanctuary is allowing others to do the hard raucous work of community, for a time. Sanctuary is self-care. Sanctuary is Sabbath rest - the opportunity just to be and not to do. Sanctuary is the quiet harmony of everything which is nothing which is within everything and nothing. Sanctuary is wholeness. Sanctuary is peace.

Community and sanctuary are not of necessity at odds with one another; they can both exist in the same space and at the same time. Somehow. One of the things I’ve discovered while exploring my spirituality and cultivating my theology, all within the framework of my UU community, is that God more often than not resides in the mystery of paradox. Sanctuary means being able to find an answer to “why?” and being able to say “I do believe this” without fear of reprisal or rejection.

Sanctuary is quiet silence. Today I seek the quiet.


#UULent reflection for Day 3: Quiet 

Sunshine in my Soul: My reaction to "Ain't No Homos Gonna Make It To Heaven"

When I was a kid, I can remember going to church and doing lots of things that made the adults in the congregation ooh and aah with delight. My siblings and I played in a hand-bell choir, we sang or played instruments, we ushered, put on plays, served food on Mothers' Day, and did tons of other things, participating fully in the life of The Church. Many years before all that, in a different congregation, I can remember participating in a "Tom Thumb" wedding where my younger brother "got married" - it was the first time I heard the word "cummerbund", or actually wore one - and I remember him, on separate occasion, singing a song during a Sunday service that had everyone shouting for joy. It was great, and is a lovely memory my family members and I share with one another to this day.

The song that my brother sang in church was "Sunshine in My Soul". I'm not sure whether that was the actual title, and I can't find any decent reference to the song, but here are the lyrics I remember:

Sunshine in my soul!
Sunshine in my soul!
Sunshine in my soul, today!
Each and every day, I can truly say,
There is sunshine in my soul today!

Peace and love abide!
Peace and love abide!
Peace and love abide, today!
Each and every day, I can truly say,
There is sunshine in my soul today!

Isn't that sweet?!? Now, I don't wish to paint too rosy a picture about my experiences in the churches I grew up in; but overall, they were filled with good people with good intentions, and despite any failings I was raised to be a good, kind person. All of this came to mind this morning when someone tweeted a link to this video:

Really? Some parents taught their young son to stand in front of his congregation and sing "Ain't no homos gonna make it to Heaven", and the church was excited. I mean, Holy Ghost excited. They cheered. It seems lately there is an abundance of videos making it around the interwebs showcasing the embarrassing underbelly of some of our nation's churches. Recently, one pastor in North Carolina made a call from his pulpit to put gay and lesbian Americans into electrified concentration camps until we "die out".

Is it any wonder that people are more and more disaffected by hostile toward organized religion?

This video really saddens me. Not just for the fact that a room full of adults collectively rejoiced in hateful rhetoric. Not just because this rhetoric is coming from a child, who has been trained and is only doing what he thinks will please all the "grown-ups". But also because it's just plain heartrending to witness what types of spiritual and psychic damage adults wreak on children.

"Sunshine in my soul" teaches kids about their inherent worth and dignity as children of God. "Ain't no homos gonna make it to Heaven" teaches kids to denigrate people who are different from themselves; to strip others of any worth or dignity they might have held on to; to be judgmental and discriminating rather than loving and compassionate.

Of course, it's a privilege of parenting to determine the sort of spiritual foundation one's children will have, and I support families raising children with particular religious beliefs. What I don't support are beliefs based in fear, hatred, and ignorance, and the scarring abuse of conditioning a child to despise other human beings because of an essential quality of their existence.

It is my prayer that this child grow up in love, rather than in hate.

Proverbs 22:6 (KJV) reads, "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it."

I know this verse verbatim because this is one that my mother and other adults in my life loved to quote when I was a kid. I took it to mean that the foundation you lay for your children will become the essence of their being as adults, so take care what you teach them when they're young.

Other translations of scripture hint that the original meaning of this verse might have been more along the lines of "encourage children in their own natures, and when they are adults they will be their authentic selves". Could just be my imagination, but it's interesting to see how differing translations of the Bible bear out expansive understandings of the text.

In either case, please be mindful of how you treat children and of the things you teach them. View them as full human beings, despite their being very young. Who knows what this young boy will think of this video when he is older? Will he maintain the bias du jour of his family's church? Will he be ashamed and embarrassed by his blatant homophobic indoctrination? I guess we'll have to wait and see...but I certainly do hope he has some other, more positive influences and experiences in his life.

I hope that he learns that there is sunshine in his soul, as well as in the souls of people who are unlike him, and that it is up to each and every one of us to ensure that peace and love abide.

Ubi caritas et amor, deus ibi est.
Where there is kindly consideration and love, God is there.