My First UU Service in a New City, Plus a Surprise
Dearest J,
Today was my first time actually forgoing Christian Church (and even a Unity service since I went to do that for the past 3 weeks) and go to a place where non-religious people go to Church: to a Unitarian Universalist congregation. It was interesting, though I suppose since today is September 1st, 2024, it’s the 1st day of their new Church year.
So 1x/year apparently, they do a ritual, rather than a service, and I happened to go on this day. It was a water communion, and it’s where everyone essentially poured water into a bucket, as well as a pinch of salt if they wanted to (to represent tears) or an empty cup to represent the war in Gaza and their lack of water. I opted for the empty cup.
Anyways, at the end of the sermon, I was heading to get a coffee when an older gentleman came up to me and asked me who I was, etc. I told him my partner was a militant atheist. He said he was too — so maybe my partner would find a home here. He told me he was also a non-theist as we cannot really understand God (which felt synchronous to me since 3 days have gone now since I had my “aha” moment after that RfR group meeting) of having the same realization, but I didn’t tell him that. He asked about my name, and I told him I’m Transylvanian, and he was like “well then you’re welcome here because UU comes from Transylvania!” And I was like … WHAAAA. And he went on to find someone who showed me a plaque that was in their storage, as it used to be on the wall, but someone tried to take it, so they instead put it in their storage. But the Minister in the Transylvanian sister church quite literally brought this plaque, with Hungarian symbols on the edge … and they showed it to me. I’m literally shook, honestly.
The service itself did mention “God” once. They did mention the “Dao” once. It did speak of angels, blessings, etc, though everything was really more about streams and water. There was a time where they read to the kids, and I learned some sign language along the way. So overall, I wasn’t impressed. The Minister rang a bell and it was so loud it rang in my ear for about half an hour after … because I have hearing issues. So no bueno. They had it accessibility friendly for the blind (so they would describe what they looked like before speaking) as well as saying pronouns (which annoyed me to no ends). But when I was shown that plaque and explained that UU was actually originated from where my family from is mind blowing. LOL. It makes me think to myself … as I already looked into how to become a UU minister, and it’s NOT easy!
I did go once to a UU congregation in another city, and that was interesting. Weird as they spoke about Buddhism, and afterwards I met a woman who seemed like she had no hair (cancer) but was nice. I also went into the basement to speak to the Ministers, one of whom was Trans. I mean — yeah def different!
