Starting something new...

Sacred Community

It's been a very long time since I posted on this blog. I think it's time to pick up and start again...

Yesterday's homework assignment was to write a discussion on the college blackboard about our sacred community/space/place. This is what I wrote:

Let me first start by apologizing for starting this discussion from the end and working backward. It just makes better sense that way.

As a child and throughout my teen years, I felt like a huge part of me had been torn apart and stomped on each time I left a church service. Never did I feel happy or like I was being held in the loving arms of a lord and savior like my parents tried to make me believe. After many years of living in a Pentecostal home, being raised by a hard-core, fire and brimstone preaching father and loving, yet abused mother, I chose to leave the world of exaggerated Bible stories about a God who instructed “his people” to go to war and kill those who did not agree with him.

For years, I tried to “find” myself in different religions. I visited the Catholic Church a few times but was turned off when I received a box of envelopes in the mail along with a letter stating the amount of “tithes and offerings” they required of me each week.

I was somewhat comfortable with Jehovah’s Witnesses. However, after studying, going door-to-door, and witnessing to others for two years, I came to a realization that this was not the place for me, either.

All along, in my heart, I knew what I believed. I just couldn’t find anyone else who believed the same thing. I learned to just keep my thoughts to myself so as not to upset anyone or chance being called crazy. Maybe I was the only person in the world who thought what I thought, believed what I believed. Then, in 2003, a very brave man wrote a book and in 2006 it was made into a movie. I then knew I wasn’t the only person in the world who believed as I did. The book/movie was The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown. Finally, someone pin-pointed what I had always believed to be true: the marriage of Jesus the Christ and Mary Magdalene, a sacred union.

Upon researching Dan Brown further, I found a quote on his website that completely fit my thoughts to a T, “Interestingly, if you ask three people what it means to be Christian, you will get three different answers. Some feel being baptized is sufficient. Others feel you must accept the Bible as absolute historical fact. Still others require a belief that all those who do not accept Christ as their personal savior are doomed to hell. Faith is a continuum, and we each fall on that line where we may. By attempting to rigidly classify ethereal concepts like faith, we end up debating semantics to the point where we entirely miss the obvious--that is, that we are all trying to decipher life's big mysteries, and we're each following our own paths of enlightenment. I consider myself a student of many religions. The more I learn, the more questions I have. For me, the spiritual quest will be a life-long work in progress.”

Since then, I’ve found a wonderful community of people who accept me and my beliefs whether they agree with them or not. These people are the members of the Buckman Bridge Unitarian Universalist Church. We live by our seven principles: The inherent worth and dignity of every person; Justice, equity and compassion in human relations; Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations; A free and responsible search for truth and meaning; The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large; The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all; and, Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

So, now you see why I chose to write my discussion backward. My beginning was the place of my upbringing, the space I was uncomfortable being in. The end is the sacred community where I feel at home. I feel like I’ve finally found my true family and where I truly belong.