The difference a year can make

There is a common saying in Unitarian Universalist circles that people who discover UUism often feel like they have been UU's their whole lives without knowing it. I once felt that way, but – alas – the feeling didn't last forever. 

Facebook's memories feature reminded me yesterday about how, just about exactly two years ago, I was engaged in the frustrating exercise of trying to launch a progressive Christian group at our local UU church. I had a ton of support from my UU brethren and sisteren, in the sense that a lot of people felt very strongly that the existence of such a group at their church was a Good Thing, but no participation. Sitting in that room by myself for several weeks running was more than just a lonely experience: it shook my faith that the group of people I was looking for – people who wanted to join together in some sort of belief in God, who valued the Judeo-Christian legacy of stories and teachings, who wanted to be part of a religion that wasn't entirely DIY, but who weren't as big on "the Jesus thing" or as reticent about letting their religious values evolve as the traditional mainline, conservative, evangelical, and Pentecostal versions of Christianity that surround me here – existed anywhere at all. 

Fast forward a year – one year ago today, give or take a few weeks – and I was a religious mess. Still convinced that the religion I was looking for was located somewhere on the liberal side of Christianity, I was bouncing back and forth between a large, exceedingly formal, but liberal(ish) Episcopal church in downtown Houston, a small and more informal, but decidedly illiberal Episcopal parish in my neighborhood that my oldest son had youth group connections in, and the comfortable and liberal, but largely unspiritual UU church also in my neighborhood. Each one made me feel isolated in a different way: one Episcopal church pushed me into my shell through its social formality, the other through fear of being "outed" as a liberal. The UU church made me feel socially accepted, but there I felt isolated from my spiritual center – social acceptability required that I accept in turn the almost-anything-goes spirituality of contemporary Unitarian Universalism. Forced to choose between my people and my God, I felt a need to abandon both and start over.

It took some time for the paradigm shift to take, however. I needed to make a startling leap of realization: that just because I had been raised as a liberal Christian didn't mean that my deeply held values and beliefs were necessarily or exclusively Christian ones. Indeed, very little of what I had valued in Christianity was the exclusive property, or even the original contribution, of that religion. Jesus was Jewish, after all, and it turns out that most of the "teachings of Jesus" that liberal Christians desperately cling to as defining their Christianity are in fact, more generally, teachings of Judaism as well. Jews love their neighbor as themselves, forgive others, bless the peacemakers, and work to repair the broken world just as much as Christians do. The few teachings of Christianity that don't go over well in Judaism – things like the Incarnation of Christ, the Trinity, Jesus' atonement for our sins, the ideas of original sin and of human fallen-ness – were ones I had in fact never liked much or even struggled against. Looking at my liberal Christian faith from such an angle, I had to ask: what is keeping me here?

And so, in time, I left Christianity for Judaism: a road less traveled by, to be sure, and one that for me has made all the difference. 

Fast forward another year – to today – and I am no longer religiously adrift. Judaism anchors me in a deep and rich tradition, while at the same time giving me room to explore, to question, to argue, to give my own ideas a try, to make it my own, and - most important - to play. Judaism even encourages me to laugh at myself and with my new people. While moments come on occasion that make me feel like a bewildered newbie or an alien from a foreign world, on most days I already feel as if I had been Jewish my whole life. Indeed, in some sense, maybe I have. 

Here's to belonging, and here's hoping it lasts!