On Church and Forgiveness

I've been struggling with an issue for some time, which is whether to join a church, and what church, and in what capacity.

After my departure from the fundamentalist, very controlling church of my early adulthood, I spent the next few years not really knowing what to do with that experience, and for the most part just trying not to think about it too much. Sometime in the mid 90's I read the transcript from an interview with the (now recently deceased) Forrest Church in Bill Moyer's World of Ideas. I'd known about the Unitarians because I had some in my family, but as a Christian I had mostly written them off as hopeless heretics. But this interview made me reconsider what I'd thought. He talked about how none of us really knew the whole truth; that the truth was like a light that we could only glimpse through a window, and the constitution of the window to a large degree determined what we thought we saw. He said that we shouldn't shirk the search for truth, but that we should always have some humility—that we should not believe that we had the Truth. Having experienced a group that very much believed it was privy to the truth and that people had to accept their version of the Truth or else, I thought this was a very appealing idea.

So I started attending a Unitarian church. I found the minister a little over-intellectual, but at least I was pretty safe there from hearing about Jesus, whose name at that time would cause my heart rate to soar and my breathing to accelerate. For some reason I could hear the word "God" without much of a reaction, but Jesus—that was a loaded word, a word I just couldn't deal with at the time.

After a number of years, a different church, various experiences, and much reflection, I was able to get to a place where I could hear that word without reacting, and I realized that I really didn't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, as they say. There was a lot that I appreciated about Jesus, and I didn't want to lose that.

I became more involved in a local UU church, and for the most part I was happy there. But then a series of events started to unfold which caused me to question whether it was the right place for me to be. My mind started to open to possibilities that I'd never really considered. I started to feel like the Unitarians, for all they said about being open minded, were only open to a certain range of ideas. Namely, things that could be definitively proven in a laboratory, things like that. I began to feel like that was too narrow a range for me.

So I went off in search of something else. Try as I might, I couldn't bring myself to go back to a Christian church, no matter how liberal their theology. For a while I went to a Science of Mind church. I liked many things about them. Their music was great. The minister was entertaining and smart. But in the end, I found the perspective there too narrow and too focused on manipulating the universe, à la "The Secret." Somehow my religious ideal fell more along the lines of a Gandhi or even a Mother Theresa than someone who was going to teach me how to manifest some car or something.

Still, I kind of missed being part of a church. When I found myself in a new community this summer, I started to think more about it. And as it happened, a number of people I work with are UUs. So I decided to give it another go, but not without some trepidation. Would they accept me? Would they think that I am a nut case? Would I have to conceal who I am and where my spiritual path has taken me?

So, to make a short story long, this is the background for my story.

Today's lesson was Lesson 83. My only function is the one God gave me.

As I was contemplating these questions and this lesson on the way to church this morning, I had an insight, that went something like this:

It does not matter if they accept you. It does not matter whether you agree with them, or they with you. It does not matter. If they trigger emotions for you by their failure to perfectly match up with what you wish they were, then it will show you the work you need to do in your own heart. If they trigger thoughts about how they are not measuring up to their own priciples, it is a forgiveness opportunity, and an opportunity for you to be the light of the world. Not in a holier than thou way, but in a way that says "You are not who you think you are, and I share the peace of God with you," without ever saying a word out loud.

So this is what I was thinking as I walked into church, and I felt a great feeling of peace. We sang "All God's Critters," and it undid me. Big tears, all over my cheeks. And then we sang "Bring Many Names," and it continued to cause all these wild tears to overflow. My neighbor took pity on me and gave me a napkin.

Now, I didn't manage to make it through the sermon without a number of thoughts about how I wished that it had been different here and there, and how it fell short of what I felt it could have been (it was about reclaiming words that have hurt us, like "God"—something that I feel like the Course has helped me to do in ways that I really feel are nothing short of miraculous). But when I had those thoughts I was able to recognize them for what they were and laugh a little to myself.

I have only one function, and that is forgiveness, and that function is my happiness. That was the lesson for today.

I don't think I've learned it perfectly yet. But I felt like this was a big step for me. I've had thoughts about how I "should" be able to regard the Unitarians since I started studying the Course. But today I was able to practice something that up to now has only been a thought of what might be good, if I could manage it. Today I felt like I took a little step closer to being able to do that in reality. And for that I feel very grateful.