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[Note: I was asked to contribute to a lay service at my UU Church on the topic of how my UU faith sustains me in difficult times.  It's not the final version, but it's probably pretty close]

Frankly, I’m probably the wrong person to talk about this subject.  As Norah might tell you, I’m not the most outwardly introspective person on the face of the earth.  I’m more comfortable talking about why I’m NOT comfortable talking about issues and problems than I am talking about the issues and problems themselves.  I’m pretty good at that – mid-western parents passing on the long-standing tradition of “grin-and-bear-it”, “no pain, no gain” and “children are starving in India so what are you complaining about”.  Thus, in the culture I grew up in, the phrase “difficult times” was code for “don’t ask, don’t tell” and the only thing you sustained was the façade that everything was just fine, thank you very much and how are you.

I was pretty sure that not everyone behaved this way.  I was pretty sure that the near schizophrenia wherein my mother, in the middle of her Medea impression, could answer the telephone with, “Hello, this is Carol Day!” was somehow not correct.  Pretty sure.  Although in my suburb filled with mostly White Anglo Saxon Protestant families, only my second generation Italian friend’s family ever seemed to not hide what was going on.  Let me explain the extent of it.  In our development (the suburb code for “neighborhood” for those of you who didn’t grow up there) a house got burgled.  The burglar turned out to be a kid in my high school who lived a few doors down.  His mom worked at the high school.  Normally, the kid goes to juvie and the parents get demonized.  In this case, though, since the family had a certain standing, an agreement was reach – return the stuff, leave town and we won’t prosecute.  Moral: cut out the cancer so you carry on pretending that no cancer exists.

Ours was the typical 1970’s “Ordinary People” household.  The Randy Newman song, “My Country” has his family quietly watching TV and, in the event they needed to say something, bouncing the words off of the screen.  In difficult times, our house got very quiet until the times got bored and left or exploded and all of us prayed they’d just get bored.

Well, “prayed” in quotes because, like most Americans, my parents (or at least my mom) would tell a pollster they were Christians because they went to church most Sundays.  But God’s (or Jesus’ or the Holy Ghost’s, I could never quite get it right) His influence never quite made it in the front door of our house.  The only folks that relied on Jesus and felt sustained by him lived not in our suburb, but on TV and radio.  We prayed over our food on the major religious holidays when God (or Jesus or the Holy Ghost) sent out the memo that they’d be taking attendance.  I’m not even sure that I understood that in times of trouble, Jesus was even an option.  Sure, you could ask him for stuff, but I didn’t know that He could sit by your bedside or carry you on the beach so that you only saw one set of footprints.  And He rarely granted favors.  I’m not even sure we have a family bible.

So, the thought of religious faith sustaining you in difficult times…it’s kind of a foreign concept.
I moved to Boston from suburban Rochester, NY not only to get away from that kind of closed system, but to make sure that my kids (which, when I moved, I wasn’t convinced I’d live to have) didn’t have to live in the same paradigm that I grew up in.  I wanted them to live in a neighborhood not a development.  I wanted them to walk around the corner for a candy bar, not to ride their bikes for twenty minutes to the store.  I wanted them to be a part of their surroundings, not apart FROM their surroundings.  Or, at least have the option to do so.

Until Norah and I went church shopping, I knew nothing of Unitarian Universalism.  If you’d said “UU” to me, I’d have come back with “me me”.  “Church” meant “Jesus” and Jesus did nothing for me and vice versa.  So just the fact that an Easter sermon could consist of reading “Oh, The Places You’ll Go” piqued my interest.  The lack of some pre-written prayer wherein all congregants confessed to sins regardless of whether they’d committed them or not made me happy, too.  Take out the dogma of the bible being the inerrant word of God and the deal was pretty much sealed.
Now here’s the part where I tie it back to the topic I’m supposed to be speaking about – How does the UU faith sustain me through difficult times?

It doesn’t.

It’s not the faith that sustains me.  It’s you, the people that come here week after week.  It’s the energy, love and wisdom of all of you that allow somewhat detached little me to sit with you and feel included.  It’s knowing that in difficult times, a lifeline exists in this community that I could grab onto.  That if I light a candle in joy or sorrow, people will clap me on the back or give me a hug.

We are all different.  All of probably have slightly different version of what UU means.  The beauty of it is that that there is no real dogma to argue over and thus, no splintering or sects or denominations to look down on or demonize.  There is no central figure whose words we can bicker over.  We simply come together to (and, please, don’t tell anyone I used these words) join souls.

The kindness and empathy of the people that are drawn to UU sustain me.  I’m not sure that I’d call that faith, but you might.  And it’s that exact tolerance that, in difficult times, sustains me.

Hbee Navel (Gazing At)