Exploring, pt 2: flowers

Yeah, I know this reads like a (pretty boring) story. Trust me, it's just a setup for later installments where I actually discuss this stuff.

When we got to the UU church, the first thing we both noticed was the abundance of brochures, pamphlets and posters, all about things like gay marriage, global warming, religious tolerance, feeding the homeless, protesting the war, etc. He was immediately wowed. “This is nothing like my church. It’s not political at all.” I wasn’t as shocked as he was since my church encourages social action and calls us to live and work in love, but I immediately noticed a difference. It wasn’t that they were asking their members to do these things, but that it was presented as the purpose and calling of the church. It’s missing a part, I thought – we do live and work in love and tolerance because we follow the example of Christ and because we’re driven by His love to emulate him. At the UU, it felt instead like there was an attitude of “this is simply what we do, what we’re here for.” They’d sort of skipped a step, I felt. This would become the theme of the day – him seeing it as radically different from his church, me seeing it as very similar to mine, but missing something pretty important.

We looked around at the pamphlets and bulletin boards, where a flyer for a gay men’s beach day prompted another “wow, this is NOT what I’m used to” from him. We found a big poster explaining the tenets of the UU church and I thought, again, “hey, this is exactly what I believe…except plus God.” We left the edges of the lobby for the center, where there was a used cookbook sale and a table of cookies and coffee. There was a sign by the coffee telling you that if you didn’t bring your own mug, you were to use one of the communal mugs available on the table to be eco-friendly and not use a disposable cup. It reminded me of Valley View. We stood around the cookies talking to each other and feeling a little awkward until they rang a big bell, signaling the beginning of the service. We filed in, picking up songbooks and service programs.

The church service started, like most, with announcements. The first one was a call for volunteers to teach the children’s youth group and it was sung (awkwardly and adorably) by a volunteer committee, to the tune of Dancing Queen with the words replaced. Again, he leaned over and said “our announcements are NOT like this.” The rest of the announcements were more ordinary – people at the mike talking about a game night, a feed-the-homeless campaign, etc. Then the service started with a choir song about spring followed by a song from the songbook. It’s a traditional hymn, though there was no mention of God, Jesus, Heaven, salvation, sin, etc. and it was about spring and flowers. Instead of being accompanied by an organist and a choir, though, music was provided by a bluegrass quartet. I was totally into it – it was fun and personable and entertaining, though I thought the faith aspect was kind of missing. It was mostly about being together as a congregation, not “under God” but just with each other, all singing with our fellow humans. He seemed less into it, and I remembered him talking about how much he liked the traditional hymns. I noted how interesting it was, that the person who throws herself into the Christian faith is thrilled to see it re-invented to be more approachable, while the person who doesn’t believe in it seemed disappointed to see it moving away from tradition.

The service was all over the place from there, much like the one other UU service I’ve been to with a friend from home. It was mother’s day, so three adults performed “I Love You The Purplest,” a children’s book about motherhood and siblings. The Reverend, a woman named Claire, read a poem. The bluegrass band led us through a few more songs, all worded and looking like hymns, but with the only religious reference being the phrase “God’s vision growing” as a reference to people and elements of nature. There was a responsively read prayer addressed to the “Infinite Spirit of Life.” A few people spoke (including the Reverend again) about love, motherhood, and spring. Instead of taking communion, there was something called a flower communion (which they apparently don’t do every week) where everyone had been asked to bring a flower to the service and during communion everyone went up and took one that they liked. We hadn’t brought flowers, so we weren’t going to go up, but we were encouraged to, and so we did. Mine were purple, his smelled really bizarre.

After the service we went back out into the lobby and stood by the cookies talking to an older couple (side note: they asked us how we met and so now two elderly Unitarian Universalists from Towson know about HvZ). We hung around for a few more minutes, then left. As soon as we were out the door we were racing to ask each other: “well, thoughts?”