I did something very odd for me recently.  I organized an affinity group at the Unitarian Universalist church I’ve been going to for about the last year or so.  “Wait,” you’re saying, “aren’t you a witch and a Buddhist?”  Well, yes, but since the common element between those two things is universal unification, it makes sense I would wind up here.  Any faith or philosophy that has a universal unifying principal as part of it can fit under the umbrella of Unitarian Universalism.  

I came to UU after moving long distance following several traumatizing years due to various reasons.  I was resistant at first and slow to warm up.  I was anxious in the social setting due to my mental health as well as past church experiences.  I didn’t grow up in a spiritual or religious setting.  We didn’t go to church, pray, talk about God or Jesus (or anything at all spiritual), or celebrate any Christian holidays other than Christmas, and it wasn’t Jesus’ birthday to me. My first church experiences were with Southern Baptists and Pentecostals, where I learned “spare the rod, spoil the child” and how to speak in tongues.  Later my mother toned things down and joined a Methodist church, which I didn’t mind so much.  The singing was lovely.

Then I parted ways from my family and discovered paganism in my late teens and early 20s, partly spurred by my mother’s fondness for Tarot cards when she wasn’t ensnared by Christianity.  I also discovered Buddhism, which I was introduced to by a coworker when I asked him how he managed to stay so nice to people in a work environment where they were so rude much of the time.  I stayed away from “church folk” for the most part but noticed over time that some of my favorite and the nicest people were UUs.

My husband and I were once part of a strong occult-oriented community which had dissolved somewhat over time.  In its absence, my husband sought out community at the local UU church.  He was used to a church setting, having grown up Episcopalian, yet another fairly friendly denomination.  He was therefore much more comfortable in that setting, whereas I still remembered my early church experiences and generally wasn’t interested.

Then we moved and were almost completely without a community or support system save for a friend and a family member, both of whom were very busy with lives of their own.  Before we even rented the moving truck, my husband looked up the nearest UU church to where we would be living and established contact.  We moved in on a Friday, and he went to service the very next Sunday.

It would be a few months before I felt comfortable attending, and even then it was a bumpy transition.  My CPTSD symptoms had worsened in the months leading up to moving and I was deeply triggered by certain situations, such as strangers, noise, and crowds.  Sunday church service had all three.  I found myself having to leave the building on two separate occasions when I became overwhelmed with anxiety.  I was also triggered by the smell of the building, which wasn’t offensive, but had an institutional scent to it, which made sense: it’s a church.

Then they did something that truly touched me: they made the chapel a low sensory stimulation area so that I and others like me would be able to attend service on Sundays without being exposed to the noise and the crowd.  There’s a television that Zooms the service in, and it’s very peaceful and quiet.  There’s a door that exits a different way so if one wants to, they can avoid the rush of people by the main doors (or simply dash to the bathroom tucked in that corner of the hallway).  I thought that was a seriously thoughtful gesture on the church’s part, spurred simply because one person was overwhelmed by Sunday service, and not even someone who was an official member.

Even though part of me was still railing against this whole “church” thing because of my past experiences, I tried to get involved.  My husband started the wheels turning on getting a pagan group going at the church, which there had apparently been in the past before COVID.  We also joined a newly formed spiritual book club at which we discussed a different spiritually oriented book each month.  That was also a bit of a rough transition for me as my social skills are…not great.  At first I thought some of the members were rude and stuffy.  I kept going, though, realizing the problem might be me.  Over time I came to see these ‘rude’ people as some of my favorite contributors and the folks I most looked forward to seeing each month.

At one point my husband informed me that the church had a monthly art showing and that I should consider submitting my work to the person in charge.  He had gotten his business card so I could get in contact with him.  It took a couple of months, but I finally did so, and he liked my paintings well enough to invite me to give a showing in early summer.

This gave me an excellent opportunity to truly evaluate all of my art that I had produced over the previous years and decide which ones were worth showing off.  Looking over my collection also enabled me to see themes of paintings that went  together, such as a group I dubbed the “underwater sunlight” collection.  This evaluation process helped me mature as an artist and see my work with more objective eyes.

I was nervous about showing off my art, which I felt was like showing myself off in a way, something I’m not used to or comfortable with, yet I had enough confidence in my creations to go ahead with the showing.  It had the mark of a rookie art showing, with the paintings arranged in single boring rows, one next to the other.  I also had no frames, so the entire thing looked amateurish to my eyes.

I had the option to have an artist’s reception at some point during the month of my art showing, but due to my nervousness in general regarding the art showing in addition to my anxiety in noisy groups and in dealing with strangers, I decided that would be too much stress for me.  Instead, I relied on the hearsay of my husband, who went to church every Sunday and got to hear from people how much they liked my paintings once they heard I was his wife.  It was very validating to get this kind of approval from total strangers.  I felt my discomfort with things churchy crack and slip even more.

Later in the year, after a summer of rekindling an old gardening habit, I decided to start a gardening group after noticing the church didn’t already have one.  I knew there were tons of gardeners so I figured there would be decent interest.  In the back of my mind I wondered what I was doing, spearheading a gathering of strangers, but I ignored the querying whisper and forged ahead with my idea.  Before I could have my first meeting, though, I decided to have a table at the church Involvement Fair, an annual event where all of the church’s affinity groups gathered to provide information on their activities to the congregation.

Again, a whispering voice in the back of my head asked me what I thought I was doing, because this was out of character for me.  It was a big deal for me to go to a busy and noisy place and talk to strangers for over an hour, then take a leadership role at a meeting where I would talk to more strangers for an hour or more.

Who was this person?  More correctly, who IS this person I’m turning into?  I don’t mind particularly, it’s certainly a refreshing change from my Old Self, who was definitely more of a follower than a leader.  It’s also in keeping with the process of individuation I’ve been going through for the last five years since awakening.  I’m supposed to be discovering my True Self as I discard the layers of conditioning that have built up over the previous 50 years of my life, so it’s natural that I would reveal and discover things about Myself that I didn’t previously know.

It’s just very different from what I’m used to, and because of that, it requires a bit of courage, which is something that itself requires confidence, and I’m also not used to exhibiting either one of those things.  It makes me happy to see, though, because the opposite of confidence is doubt, and I’ve been filled with doubt for a long time.  If I’m feeling more confidence, that means some of the doubt is abating and allowing more courage to show.

And whether I understand it or like it or not, the church has been a part of that.  Perhaps it’s as simple as having discovered a congregation that feels safe enough and filled with enough like-minded individuals that it adequately fulfills the human need for community, something I’ve been missing since capitalist forces destroyed my community in my former hometown in the early ‘00s.  I’m also sure that my husband’s involvement in the church lends an air of safety: if he likes it and gets fulfillment out of it, then perhaps it’s not so bad.

If I have any remaining stumbling blocks to get over, they’re merely psychological and linguistic in nature.  That is, I have to strip the word “church” of the negative conditioning that’s been placed upon it by my society, culture, and experiences.  That may be difficult given the etymological roots of the word, which stem from Ancient Greek for “the ruler’s [lord’s] house”.  I am no one’s lord, no one is lord over me, and I object to any and all philosophies that put forth “lordship” over other human beings.  I know this is not the way of UU, which is why I find kinship there, but that is why part of me will probably always cringe a little at the word “church”.

I prefer to think of the building where the congregation gathers as “a sanctuary of unity” and everything that implies.  And of course, the building itself is fairly irrelevant, it’s the people that gather beneath its roof that make the church.  However, the pride they show in themselves and in each other is reflected in the care that is shown for the building and the grounds, which provide a welcoming refuge to all who venture there.  Even people like me, who despite the presence of the low-stimulation room, still choose to either not go on Sunday morning, or if I do, I sit beneath the trees in the parking lot.  If there is a Divine presence to be felt in the world, in the Natural world is where I feel it the most.

As far as my churchy activities go, the monthly book discussion club has been a great source of illumination and education, getting me to read more books in a year than I have in a long time.  The pagan group has seen me spearhead the creation of monthly New Moon rituals devoted to the local trees, and I now have almost a year’s worth of rituals and information put together which I am considering turning into a book.  And my gardening group has had only one meeting, but it was a great start, with about ten of us gathered to talk about something that makes us all happy and that can benefit others in many different ways.  It’s been very good for my mental health to be involved in these ways.  I’m looking forward to deepening my relationship with the community as we continue to establish ourselves in our new Home.