Same Space, Different Place - Julia Quigley Long

I suppose I should have known since childhood what it means to be a UU.  Anyone who has been a UU her whole life - who has gone through Sunday School, and who was one of the first to go through the Coming of Age program - should have been able to tell you what, exactly, a UU is... but until relatively recently, I didn’t.

I just knew how to respect the religions of others, and that it was a good idea to be well informed so I could make sound decisions, and that there is no reason NOT to be generally nice to people.  That’s the message I got, anyway, and I wanted to be nice.  I knew that gender, color, physical appearance or ability, was just an aspect of a person and not the defining factor of a person’s character.  Everyone had strength and everyone had weakness.  And people had more similarities than differences.  All of this I understood.

But once I got to college, when it came time to answer questions about what a UU believes as a religion - or even if it WAS a religion - I found myself a little stumped.  So I did some research on my own religion, and happily discovered that we DO have dogma, we DO have principles, we DO have “rules” even though they may not be termed as such.  I had a religion!

I have pot luck suppers to thank for my whole family “coming to be” a UU.  The merging of my mom - daughter of a Baptist minister, and my dad - part of a New York Irish Catholic family - led them to this part of the country. And in this part of the country, in the mid-1970’s, one of the prominent places where they organized pot luck suppers was at the UU church. That was enough for my mother. We were sold.

Dad still attended Catholic services fairly regularly, and once let me stand in line to take the Eucharist, an act that I was later told was a sin since I wasn’t confirmed... I felt guilty. I didn’t know I could sin without knowing it... which got me wondering about Catholicism.

During college I lived in Ecuador for seven months, and made friends - most of whom were Catholic.  I attended Catholic services with my friends, and found peace in the presence of people who knew how to pray.  I didn’t really understand the language, but perhaps that was something that allowed me to enjoy it more deeply - to witness the beauty and depth of a person praying - of a group of people praying together in a meaningful way... this was new to me.  It was beautiful to me.  I was impressed.

After college I bought a one-way ticket to Ireland. I had a four month work visa, and ended up staying for eleven.  I made friends, most of whom were Catholic, and attended Catholic services whenever I could.  It fascinated me, this dichotomy between being “good” (or being Catholic), and being “other.”  My questions about how good people in other religions might coexist with Catholics were not answered to my satisfaction.  But I kept searching.  I tried to learn how to pray.  I picked a spot under a wide willow near an ancient one-room church near my house in Galway, and I began to read the Bible.  I continued to sit in the back of the Catholic services, moved to tears at times because I felt un-welcomed to participate in their songs and chants and rituals since I was not confirmed.  I wondered if I wanted to be confirmed just to fit in, or if I was angry and resentful that these people could reject me without even knowing me.  I mean, did they KNOW Jesus was Jewish?

Well, I returned home and didn’t attend another Catholic service.  While living in Cambridge I met, became engaged to, and married Dave (in this church), and just after we had Carter we moved to Beverly to put down some roots, as it happened, in a place that was once my home. We attended First Parish services, but I didn’t know the congregation anymore.  I was new.  My name had been written on the wall of the bell tower for twenty-five years, but I was new.

No more Sunday School.  I was now expected to be in the position of the grown up.  It was a strange feeling for me... to return to the place I’ve known forever, while feeling unfamiliar.  It took a good year before I began to carve out a new role for myself as a grown up in the church where I was married, and where, as of one month from now, both of my children will have been dedicated.  It has been an increasingly conscious choice to build my religious experience within the UU faith as an adult, and even more specifically, in this church.  I have been lucky that my path with Dave has guided me back, as we could have easily ended up in another community – had Dave not fallen head over heels for Beverly.  I gave him plenty of leeway in where to put down our roots.

I have learned there is great power in nurturing a sense of place, and also that life is in constant motion - emotional, physical, spiritual.  I’ve learned that as time passes, the places of my yesterday can look very different today because I’VE changed.  I value my history with this church.  I cherish the many milestones I have experienced in, or near it.  And I now recognize, and embrace, the various perspectives from which I have seen this church - the various perspectives from which I have seen this religion.

What keeps me coming back?  UUism has been like an old friend.  It has laid a foundation of trust and good advice to carry me through life, while providing freedom to unapologetically ask the hard questions about my spirituality.  I am most certainly still on the journey to and through UUism. But I have to say - through my thirty-four years of life, I have met some very interesting, very dynamic people.  And the ones with the spark of something different, the ones who tend to be the most interesting, have been UUs.  We just sort of - get - each other.