Who You Are Called To Be
Come into this place which we make holy by our presence. Come in with all of your vulnerabilities and strengths, fears and anxieties, loves and hopes. For here you need not hide, not pretend, nor be anything other than who you are and who you are called to be.
Come into this place where we can touch and be touched, heal and be healed, forgive and be forgiven. Come into this place where the ordinary is sanctified, the human is celebrated, the compassionate is expected. Come into this place, together we make it a holy place.
-Rebecca Edmiston-Lange
I just love this quote. I fell in love with it the first time I stepped into a UU Church about five years ago. The whole congregation said it together and with such feeling. I remember having the thought that it wasn’t just something that they repeated every week, it was something that they believed in and stood by and not because the church “told them to.”
As I continued going to the church, I realized that it was more than just a belief that they stood by. They actually practiced it! After a few weeks of attendance, I had met a good portion of the membership, mostly because they took the initiative to start a conversation to welcome me. I am somewhat shy in situations where I don’t know many people, but they put me at ease.
I also noticed the abundance of different beliefs and how everyone was excepting of those differences. It wasn’t just the religious beliefs that the church members were tolerant of. They also accepted people’s lifestyle differences.
While I never became a member of the church, I have continued to go to a service or two over the years. I recently started going on a regular basis again and I am now a point in my life that I am considering joining in the fall. I love the sense of community and support that this church provides. I truly feel that is a place where I can be “who I am called to be.”
2 comments:
There are a couple of UU churches in our area and I've wanted to go for a while now. I think I'll try to go next week!
Be sure to check out each churches' summer schedules as it may be different than the rest of the year. There is one church near me that only has services once a month in the summer. Today, the church that I've been going to had the service and BBQ at a member's house.
One service that I really liked was at the beginning of the school year when regular services were starting up again. Everyone was invited to bring something from a summer activity having to do with water. (Another year I was able to attend, the theme was air.) Anybody was welcome to speak regarding what their item meant to them and then they placed the item in a container along with everyone elses.
When the theme was water, I remember people pouring their water in the container. From the stories that people told, I realized that the water that was being mixed together in the container was from all over the world. It was very symbolic of how the congration was coming back together after their travels.
Post a Comment