White Baby Girl Jesus.

This was me 36 years ago, at a Christmas Eve pageant for the Presbyterian Church we attended, primarily because my father was the organist there. It was the closest I ever got to Jesus.

I vaguely remember Sunday school, when I was some years older, sitting in a circle, wearing an itchy dress, listening to stories not quite as entertaining as the ones Dad told at bedtime. I remember trying not to fidget.

Then, one day, Dad got a new gig. He became organist at a Unitarian Universalist Church in a neighboring town. After his first Sunday, he convinced Mom to check it out. I don’t think it’s just coincidence that when we eventually moved, we ended up in a house across the street from the church.

It was a small, but growing community. About 24 regulars, a mishmash of Catholic, Jewish, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Episcopalian, with some agnostics and athiests thrown in for good measure. As it grew, so did the variety of directions the congregation could go. Some wanted more Jesus, some less, some more nature, or more humanism. Throughout all the bickering, the church flourished, and the membership grew well over 200. When I go back now, it is filled with unfamiliar faces, but the same good will. Dona Nobis Pacem and all that.

It was a wonderful community to grow up in. There were Ham and bean suppers, outdoor services in the summer, silent auctions to raise money, plays and camping trips and Indian summer fairs. We had a children’s choir (yes we sing hymns) and went into Boston to sing at Trinity Church with droves of other children from churches of all denominations. All those good things one associates with being a part of a church, we did. And we learned about all different kinds of beliefs and religions.

So where am I going with this?

Four years ago, I received a letter from my Dad. The new minister was going to build a service out of recollections and thoughts of those of us who had grown up in the church. So I wrote this:


October 2002

"It’s been, have to think here, about 15 years since I’ve been an active part of
a Unitarian Universalist Church. Part of this, I must admit, is that I loved
Holly and her ideas so much, and her way of expressing herself, that I have a
very high standard for ministers. She had a love of Thoreau and Emerson that
nurtured my own love of those great thinkers. An honesty and down-to-earth way
of being that was very attractive to me. I still have a folder of some of her
writing. I see and understand more of what she saw as I grow and see more of
life. I loved the community of the church, the coziness of the small
congregation (as it was when I was there) the wonder and thrill of it gradually
growing and flourishing into what it is today.

During my years at Unity Church, I recognized that I was (and am) agnostic.
After leaving Easton and traveling physically through Europe and emotionally
through the University of the Arts in Philly, I embraced my agnosticism. I've
stopped searching for some answers. I can't know what lies after death so I
thrill in the mystery. I find comfort in NOT knowing. I appreciate what is
here and now, all the more. The more I learn, the more I wonder. There is no
lack of good teachers, living or imagined. Jorge Luis Borges, Mark Twain, Doris
Lessing; Rembrandt, Hals, and Klimt; Thoreau, and Gandhi first come to mind as
some of my favorite teachers.

Through learning of the myriad of different beliefs and religions throughout
the world, I have realized that all religions are built on some basic
foundations. Community is one of them. Each religion is built around the needs
and experiences of millions of groups of people in innumerable houses of
worship throughout the world. They gather in hope, in rage and frustration, in
love, some in a need to find control in themselves and others. It is a comfort
to many, a tool for politicians, a bane to some who refuse to believe.

Here in Philadelphia, my life has gravitated towards painting. I have a strong
interest in capturing moments that seem to hold universal themes: children’s
toy cars on the overgrown brick path of a cemetery; city trees that have grown
around their iron fences, lifting them from the ground and swallowing them in
wood; people waiting in line at Pat’s King of Steaks; my husband, contemplating
a loaf of bread; a couple waiting companionably in the cold. I am entranced by
humanity, infuriated by it, despair at times for it, and revel in it always. When we
have children of our own, we will return to the Unitarian church, to continue as
part of a solid community of people with varying beliefs, to educate our children
to be tolerant, sympathetic, and honorable to themselves and others."


Years later, I can’t say I’ve changed all that much in my views. If anything, I’ve become more aware of how powerful community is. And how adept organized religion is at selling communities.

The only thing we can know for certain is that we don’t know. Yet there are countless religions all offering up their own prepackaged beliefs systems based on the concept that they DO know. It’s everyone else that is wrong. A great selling technique. If you don’t buy into our community, you’ll go to hell. Terrify people into submission.

But here’s the thing. It was the concept of heaven and God, not hell, that terrified me as a child. Because all I could think after learning of it all was: That’s it? That’s all? Where in the vastness of the universe was this fluffy place called heaven? Why was it contained? Why were there walls? I couldn’t understand why people want to put God (and a pretty petty and vengeful one at that) in a box. It didn’t address my wonder of the universe, of the earth, of eternity. Would I go up there into space when I died? Forever? Would I be conscious of forever passing? I hoped not. I wanted (and still want) things to be beyond my understanding. Beyond everyone’s understanding. There had to be something out there that no one on earth had ever conceived of, otherwise, it was too small for me to invest in. So at the tender are of 10, before I really knew what the word meant, I was an agnostic.

So where, you may ask, is faith in all of this. My answer is that faith doesn’t belong in a box anymore than our concepts of existence do. You don’t have to sacrifice faith to reason, because, for all we know, there is no God. There is only us, and our own divine and damning creations and destruction. Our faith has to be in something more than ourselves and our ideas of a God. It has to be a faith in circumstances...that whatever happens, our time here has been worth it. That we have done what we need to do, and hopefully leave the place a little better than how we found it. And then we teach our children to do the same.

We are God. We create heaven and hell for ourselves everyday, every moment, with each choice we make. This is it, my friends. Now go outside, and play nice.