Belonging

It's been quite awhile since I've blogged.  But if you were to look around my apartment you would find scraps of paper and random notebooks full of blogs and blog ideas that never got posted.  So, for what it's worth, there ARE other blogs, they just never made it online.  The perfectionist in me wants to say I'll go back and enter my backlog of blogs (HA!), but I will be realistic and say most of those ya'll will probably never see.  


So, what prompted me to blog again after so much time?  


A few months ago, Janan and I began attending the local Unitarian Universalist congregation.  We've both really enjoyed it and decided to join.  (Interestingly, most of the blogs I never posted are about the sermons I've heard over the last few months.  Maybe I'll just do one blog to fill you in on some of the things I've gotten from the services.)  Never have I found a 'church' that speaks so much to what I feel and believe.  This congregation truly upholds the value of honoring ALL paths and the people are warm, friendly and inviting!  (Novel concept, huh?)


Tonight I attended the UU Orientation meeting. It was a chance to meet others who have either recently joined the congregation or who are considering joining.  We talked about what brought each of us to the UU congregation and then got a bit of the UU history.  No dogma.  No 'thou shalt nots'.  No pinky swearing.  No naked dancing around a fire.  Just an amazing group of people talking and openly sharing without judgement or shame.  Freely using words like Pagan, Atheist, Christian, Humanist, Unitarian and 'Exploring' to describe our personal paths and what they mean to us.


As I sat and listened to the stories, I began to hear common threads.  

• Everyone had either been raised in a particular religion/faith and/or had explored many religions/faiths 
• Each of us had had the audacity to question that religion/faith somewhere along the way
• That questioning had led us to leave that religion/faith, because - as many of us learned - FAITH MEANS YOU DON'T QUESTION!

At times the stories made me laugh and at other times I felt like crying.  But what I realized as the evening went on was that I felt safe to laugh and cry, to share my story and hear other's, to admit (and have honored) that my path may not have a specific label, but that makes it no less worthy than one that does. (If you want a bit more insight on what I believe, check out my previous blog entitled "Inquisitive or Blasphemous")


That, for me, is belonging (something I've blogged about before).  And THAT'S what it's supposed to be about.