I’M A UU RU?
Preached by Rev. Eva Shaw Hochgraf
November 17, 2002 in Ann Arbor, Michigan



Lately I’ve been thinking about how to talk about being a Unitarian 
Universalist with other people.  You know them, the ones who don’t know 
who we are. We talk about it in my Roots class. I talk about it with 
church leaders who are thinking about growth. My colleagues and I talk 
about the importance of helping UU’s figure out how to explain this 
religion to others. I’ve even seen a few bumper stickers around town that 
proclaim: I’M UU -RU! The problem with this message is that its an inside 
joke. Unless someone asks, they won’t know what it means, and then if they 
do, what will you say?

Generally when I work with people about how to explain our faith, I begin 
telling them that we have to understand where people are coming from. That 
most people here, in this Western culture, think that religion means a 
group of people that all have the same beliefs. And this is because they 
have been raised in the creedal culture which grew up out of the Christian 
tradition. The way that Christian churches understand who belongs to which 
group has to do with what a person believes. 

You might think that this would always be true--the whole world over--but 
its not. Really, many places in the world define religions more as 
something you do, than some beliefs you ascribe to. So, if you go to the 
temple and pray there, then you are that religion. Its also true, that if 
you go to another temple simultaneously, of another religion, then you are 
that religion to. And in Japan, it is quite common for people to be both 
Shinto and Buddhist, and maybe Christian on occasion when the mood suits 
them.  So sometimes we have to remember that religion isn’t always about 
belief, but that is something to do our culture. Now it is also true also, 
that some places in the world religion is a birthright--you are born into 
a religion, and usually the only way you would leave was if you married 
outside the religion. When our partner church minister, Maria Papp came 
her from Transylvania to visit, she talked about how hard it was for the 
Unitarians to be loosing members to the Catholics at the time they got 
marriage.

So, my point is that we, in this culture, tend to listen to explanations 
about a religion with understanding that we will be hearing about beliefs 
that are in common to the group. And that makes it really hard to begin to 
talk about Unitarian Universalism to people who don’t know us. Because we 
don’t really share beliefs, do we.

So when I begin to talk about our faith, this has been where I have 
started usually--explaining that we Unitarian Universalists aren’t part of 
that belief-based approach to religion. And  then I  try to explain that 
we gather around expectations of how we are going to be together, we have 
a covenant together. It is our covenant, our expectation of human of 
relationship that holds us together.  And our mutual desire to be 
religious holds us to our own paths. We can see that there are advantages 
for each of us to being together, as well as working as a large group. 
That’s our covenant. We say it every Sunday.  You might look in the Order 
of Service if you can’t remember it.  . . . “The spirit of this church is 
love . . . “ If you look at those words,  you’ll see they aren’t about 
beliefs, but about how we are going to be together as a people.

So lately I’ve been thinking that although it is okay to be able to 
explain our religion this way, with words that try as best they can to fit 
our religion into this little niche of  other people here in this 
culture’s understandings of the way it ought to be thought of.  I’ve also 
been thinking, there ought to be something better.  So how about this way 
to tell people about our faith:
    "GooooooooooodMORNING, First UU! It's the good
    Reverend Eva here, comin' atcha with fifty THOUSAND watts
    of raw Liberal power -- transmitting *straight* from
    the all-new Unity Tower(tm), high atop the Pearly Gates.
    Now, in just a FEW minutes, we're going to throw the lines
    open to callers for a free ticket to next week's church
    picnic -- but FIRST, let's hear from our choir, belting out
    that hot new tune, 'Drop-Kick Me, Jesus, Through the Goal
    Posts of Life....'"


Okay, so let’s try that again. Lately I’ve been thinking that although it 
is okay to be able to explain our religion, with words that try as best 
they can to fit our religion into others expectations and understandings 
of the way it ought to be thought of. There ought to be something better, 
something deeper to talk about who we are to other people.

And I have been thinking about how much we like to bring our religion into 
the world, and have it be a religion which actively works to make the 
world, and people’s lives better. How can we use this language of action 
to teach others our faith? And are there other ways we can expand on this 
idea.

And so one day I was reading this story about the Rissho Kosei Kai 
Buddhist woman, and suddenly it came to me. One of the things that we 
rarely do, as Unitarian Universalists, is teach and help each other to use 
our religious understandings to help others who are having troubles.  I 
keep thinking about the Rissho Kosei Kai members who rose to the occasion 
of this woman sharing that she was feeling troubled. And how they not only 
knew how to talk about their religious path, but they also knew how to 
apply it to everyday average life and how to share those thoughts with 
another person in trouble.

I know that many of you are compassionate people, and are probably the 
first to listen to a coworker who is struggling, the first to offer a hug, 
to collect money to send flowers, to lend a few dollars in need, to be 
there for people. UU’s are very compassionate people. But here at the 
church, we don’t learn and practice bringing our own spiritual paths to 
those moments of crisis. We are often afraid to offer up a religious idea 
to someone who is struggling; for fear that we may be proscribing religion 
to them. We don’t want them to feel like we are telling them what they 
need to believe--and so we commonly leave talking about beliefs out of our 
compassionate acts.

Now,  last year, when I was having so many troubles. I was in e-mail 
contact and letter contact with lots of different friends from all around 
the world. And I was surprised how different it felt to be comforted by my 
Unitarian friends from the Khasi Hills. And at first my explanation in my 
mind, was that I had just been there, and so the connection was close--but 
then I realized that there was more too it than that. The full depth of my 
being really was being spoken too. They, the Unitarians in the Khasi H
ills, were able to say to me, “Please feel God’s love holding you.” “If 
God is love, and God is everywhere, then surely you can feel that love all 
about you. “   And things of this sort.  These religious messages came 
with every letter, and seemed just a natural as breathing to hear them 
from those people. It fit with who they were religiously. And I had this 
experience not just from the Khasi Hills either. But also from my Rissho 
Kosei Kai friends in Japan , talking with me about their religious 
understandings of my difficulties.  And it is not something that I felt  
like they were telling me what to believe. They were reminding me that I 
had spiritual resources to bring to my problems.  And they were telling me 
how they would handle such problems as mine using the full depth and 
breadth of their resources--including their spiritual ones. 

I have been thinking about how very different this response is to someone 
who tells you they are troubled, than the usual, “Oh, I’m so sorry.”  Or 
even the, “You know I once had an uncle who went through the same thing.” 
Now, I don’ t mean to complain about the support I received from here, 
people were wonderfully supporting in sending lots of love and cards, and 
meals, and house cleaning, and even making Easter baskets up for the kids. 
And of course, even if you want to use God-language, you could say that 
these Unitarian Universalists were showing me God’s love by coming to my 
help.  Or, if you wanted to use Humanist language, you could say that they 
were reminding me of the rich value and depth of connection of being in 
human community. 

But when I reflect back on my experiences of last year, I find that there 
were very few Unitarian Universalists in this country who even attempted 
to apply their religious understandings to my situation, and share them 
with me. And that’s not just this congregation--I know a lot of ministers 
too!  And the same can be said for them. So I don’t just think its the way 
we do things here, I think it is basically a phenomenon of our faith the 
way we are currently practicing it.

We want so desperately to be open and tolerant, to not step on anyone’s 
toes, to not judge another’s path.  That leads us to live often very 
quietly on our own spiritual journey. We study new things; we come to 
understandings about how to cope with some of life’s most powerful 
tragedies. Its true, people in this congregation have had to wrestle with 
some strongly painful and hard times. I know that.  Some among us have 
buried their children, not yet to adulthood. Some among us have suffered 
their own bodies attacking them with cancer. Some among us have had to 
watch our own parents gradually fade into a being who doesn’t remember 
even who they are. Some among us have quietly suffered as our own bodies 
no longer allow us to do what we want them to do, and mostly way before we 
were wanting to give up that freedom. Some among us have had crippling 
mental illness. Some among us have had a deeply beloved spouse who in many 
ways didn’t meet our needs, or became otherwise interested--and we had to 
restart our lives after divorce. Some among us tried and tried to have 
children, and never could. These are all very painful things.  Things that 
really make you question your faith--and wrestle with how you can make 
sense of all this pain. And that is by no means an exhaustive list.  There 
are so many things that cause us pain, alienation, mental suffering, 
frustration, fear, separation from our sense of the way that we imagined 
life was supposed to work.

And many of us of course, did wrestle with the great issues that confront 
us at times like this--why is this happening to me, what does this mean, 
how can I imagine life after this, how can I have faith in humanity after 
this, and on and on.  We wrestled with the ideas quietly. Quietly went out 
and found a good book that helped us understand how to think about this 
trouble. We found that there were things we could do that made us feel 
more grounded, more centered, closer to god maybe, or somehow just more able 
to cope. We learned about contemplative prayer, about meditation, 
about sacred texts, and so much more. We learned about the sacredness of 
self, and we learned to not expend ourselves in the meeting of this 
crisis. And so, when we stop and think about how many troubles people have 
had over the years, and how many creative and wonderful and resourceful 
things that they have learned in dealing with those troubles--then 
suddenly, the congregation seems like the deepest of resources, a deep 
well.  A deep well that we should drink from.

So, now this fall, after the cancer scare of my life is settling a bit 
into the background, and I am learning how to be a single mom and a single 
person--so that I am not so much in my own crisis--I am reflecting on how 
we can as members of this congregation can drink from that well. And not 
only that, but how we can learn to be like those women who reached out in 
times of someone else’s troubles. Those women in that Buddhist story I 
read to you.  Someone who can talk about their own faith, and their own 
ways of creating meaning and value and purpose out of life, in times of pain 
and trouble. Because, when I think of the valuable resource that we 
represent, with all our learning and spiritual growing that we have done 
collectively, I think of us as a very deep well:  a well we ought to share 
the waters with, to all those who are in need.

So then the next thing I’ve been thinking about, is about how we can 
practice this, and learn how to do it--so that we can learn to talk about 
apply our faith to life without coming off as intolerant or pushy.  Things 
that I know UU’s don’t really want to come off as.  We need to learn to 
help ourselves, and talk about these things among ourselves as a good 
practice. And it is only then that I imagine that we would start to become 
strong enough, smart enough, and wise enough to feel that we could start to 
share with other people. But it may be that we just need to practice this 
new way of talking in every way we can. 

So I’d love to have us all work on this together. A kind of giant 
experiment to see where we can go with it. See if you can try it were ever 
you seem to encounter someone in pain or in trouble. Here are a few 
examples of what I mean.  If, when you hear their story, you know that if 
it were you--you’d pray every night, not to a god above, but to the great 
goddess within--then you might try saying that to that person. If you know 
that if it were you, you’d get down the Gita and reread a section that was 
just so meaningful for you when you had similar feelings, then share that 
passage with them. If you know that if it was you, you’d invite friends 
over ever week for a dinner, because that was the only way you figured out 
from going crazy from loneliness--it somehow helped restore your faith in 
the goodness of human beings that way. Then share with them that wonderful 
technique that worked for you. These are all just examples, just ways of 
talking about applying your spiritual path to another’s situation.  If you 
feel brave enough, try it out for me, and let me know what happens. I’m 
curious. And I want to work on this with you, and hear back from you how 
it is going.

But also let’s go back to the idea that we should start by learning how to 
drink from this well in our own faith community first--this is what I have 
been thinking. We have been slowing working with the idea that as this 
church grows, it is so important for people to be in a some kind of a 
small group to make friends and deep connections.  I think that those 
small groups are the best place to practice learning how to think about 
this concept.  Because in the setting of a small group of people that you 
trust, if someone is having a problem or something is causing them pain, 
then they don’t just get one idea from the one person they tell in coffee 
hour, but a handful of resources from the group members to connect with.

Now you know, I’m not imagining that every trip to the well will bring up 
a delicious drink for a person. Something that brings comfort to one may 
not bring comfort to another--but I think that’s okay. Because I think 
that the real point is to try and comfort people on the deepest levels. To 
try and tell them that we hear that their pain extends down into these 
earth-shattering, mind-blowing depths. To let them know that we have 
plunged deep down in life too, and we’ve come up--maybe not the same 
person, but here we are, living, breathing, alive and perhaps even full of 
joy. But let’s not just point to the joy in our lives, but also that we 
have wrestled in the depths ourselves. 

So, I’m  wondering,  how many of you already belong to a small group? Some 
kind of spiritual small group in the church? How many of you would want to 
belong to a small group that makes this kind of spiritual exploration , 
development and connection as a regular part of its business?  A group 
that works that about being deep in their spiritual exploration and 
nourishment.  

I think that this might be a good way for us to experiment with this 
together. I think that Unitarian Universalism has a lot to offer the 
world--we already give so much in so many ways.  We are such a smart 
people, and we have such deep understanding about the world’s religious 
practices. Our love for respecting differences leaves us in a very good 
place to be someone to talk to about religion and about spiritual 
practices with, without fear of being judged.

I hope in what I am saying today, that you are not feeling judged and 
found wanting. We are a religion with deep historic roots, but in my mind 
we are still a baby religion. We only merged in 1961, and we are still 
finding our strength, and full stature as time passes.  As a religion I 
think we have much potential, and that’s why I put my life’s energy here. 
Its not just to suit you, to please you and offer you good comfort and 
wisdom--but also to grow this faith which I think has so much to offer the 
world. And I think that we are all players in that. We who are UU--who 
smile when we see that I’M UU RU? bumper sticker--we are learning about 
how to do this religion together: what works and what doesn’t work, what 
feeds people and what doesn’t, how can we be a meaningful and useful 
presence in society. Each generation, each decade, we set out to try to do 
as best we can.  And because ours is a growing faith, as time passes, and 
our understandings grow, so should our faith.

I hope you want to try this with me. Try it with deliberateness, and also 
with a sense of fun. If you are in a small group already, like a Cakes 
group or a men’s circle, maybe you can working into the way you do 
check-in (a response to check-in perhaps). If you are in the Bridge group, 
or some other church group, you might want to see if there is a way to do 
this even as you meet socially.  And if you aren’t yet in a group, I hope 
that you will join us in the small groups, which are forming this winter. 
Sally Hattig, Bruce Gibb and I are working to create small groups for 
anyone, as a place to be spiritually deep, and together in a covenantal 
relationship.  My vision of our church community, is that eventually 
everyone will have a group to call their own. So please, seek out a group 
for yourself in our community.
I want to finish up today’s sermon with a little story to explain the last 
point I want to make.
There was this courier who was traveling across country on a horse. He was 
in a hurry, and rode the horse too hard, so it foundered. Needing to
continue on his journey, he went up to a nearby farm and asked the
farmer if he could buy a horse. "The only horse I have is this one," the 
farmer said. "Fine, I'll take it," the courier replied and jumped on the 
horse's back.

The rather religious farmer said, “Wait a minute! I need to tell you how 
to control the horse. Its a rather religious horse. You need to say 
'Praise the Lord' to get the horse to go, and 'Amen' to get it to stop."

So with a quick "Praise the Lord" the courier was on his way. He
made good time, and his mind wandered as the countryside flew by. Looking 
up after a while, the courier realized that a cliff was
coming up, but the horse was showing no indication of slowing down.
He began to panic as the cliff loomed closer, and he found he could
not remember the command to stop the horse. In a real fright, the
courier prayed earnestly for a reminder, and finished his prayer
with "Amen." The horse came to a screeching halt right at the edge
of the cliff. Looking down over the edge, the relieved courier exclaimed, 
"Praise the Lord!"

So I want to emphasize that I am not just advocating that we start using 
religious language for just anything. As good reasonable people, we want 
to continue to exercise our thoughts and our reason to determine what type 
of things we want to say to others. These would be things, which have 
meaning to us. Naturally, we don’t want to become like that horse, hearing 
religious language but not knowing what it real means.   Or like the poor 
courier,  who undoubtedly had a rather difficult time of it, when he did 
finally utter an actual religious statement.  We do want to struggle to 
use language that communicates what we mean. And what I’m advocating for, 
is not that we don’t try because we might make a mistake . . . but rather 
that we practice, practice, practice, until we are really, really good at 
it.

And then, besides being proud enough to be UU that you put a bumper 
sticker on your car (which, by the way I think is really cute!) --you can 
also be proud enough to use your Unitarian Universalism as a kind of 
bucket.  A bucket to reach down into that deep, delightful well of 
nourishing spiritual thoughts and practices, and offer a thirsty soul a 
drink.												
											
	Copyright, November, 2002, Eva Hochgraf




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