About Us

First Sunday Speakers

February 2007

I resisted doing a spiritual journey talk because I don’t think of myself as a religious person. But I’ve enjoyed the introspection required to speak today and have immensely enjoyed the conversations with friends about their belief systems which I might have missed if I weren’t speaking today. So do say “yes” when Joanna calls!

My story is a simple one. I was raised a Roman Catholic in Memphis, Tennessee. Catholics were a tiny minority in Memphis, and we protected ourselves from Protestants by attending Catholic school and vigorously practicing our faith. We were not cafeteria Catholics.

As a child, religion provided me joyous emotional experiences. For example, during Lent, every day for 40 days I biked to morning mass-the only kind there was then except at Christmas. Then I would also attend hours and hours of other services during the week before Easter. I felt like I was seeing old friends as I watched the covers coming off the statutes on Easter Saturday. By Easter morning, I was exuberant. The church year was packed with such happiness.

That enthusiasm diminished in junior high school because of some unChristain nuns and priests whose behavior made it difficult for me to respect their authority. Then courses in theology at my Presbyterian college raised questions about many assumptions I had always accepted. I came to believe that praying as I knew it was superstitious. I felt strongly that we were responsible for ourselves and our world.

My last tie to the Catholic Church was lost when the magic of the Mass was lost in the conversion from Latin to English.

So with great fear in my heart and with much pain to my parents, I left the Catholic Church and became an Episcopalian. I thought the Episcopal church would be sort of Catholic without being Catholic. But I eventually found the services boring and the sermons irrelevant because I had stopped believing in a personal God. Once our kids were old enough to drive themselves, I stopped going to church.

When we moved to MN, there was this cute little stone UU church quite near to our home. I visited looking for community in my new town. I had understood from UU’s I’d known that they weren’t dogmatic which I thought would work for me.

I found caring people, thoughtful people, interesting people, listening people, funny people who became my friends. I found a community very involved in the world and in becoming better contributors to that world. I discovered a community practicing empathy and tolerance where people of traditional faith as well as questioners were respected. Services were stimulating, and there was no talk of gods. The Wayzata UU church was a Midwestern UU utopia.

When we moved to NH 9 years ago, proximity to a UU community was a major criteria for selecting a new home. So here I am--an unbeliever in the supernatural but still able to appreciate beauty, love people, experience joy, do good works, and seek truth.