I never planned on joining a church. I certainly never planned on going to seminary, and becoming a minister of a church. This wondrous journey began for me with a question, and an unexpected response.
I was introduced to a Unitarian Universalist minister, and I had never met this person before, and I had never heard of the faith he belonged to. Like many who first hear the phrase “Unitarian Universalism,” I was convinced that it was some kind of new age group, a cult, or both. I asked this minister a simple question: “What do you believe?” His response planted a seed which would bloom and guide the next decade of my life. This minister responded: “It’s not as important to know what I believe, but rather I try to help my congregation discern what they truly believe.”
I imagine if you took a random sample of people in Youngstown, and asked them the broad question: “What do you believe?,” you’d gather a variety or responses. I imagine these responses to include a belief in God, a belief in family, a belief in a strong work ethic, a belief in nothing, a belief that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, a belief that kindness matters. There are an endless variety of beliefs swirling around in even one single individual. We hold contradictory beliefs about ourselves and the world every waking moment. These beliefs become actualized and triggered by the world we surround ourselves with: our friends and neighbors, family, the news, stories we’ve learned, stories we’re still trying to find a way to tell.
I have continued to remain fascinated with the question of “what they truly believe.” Embedded in this question is the assumption that what one says they believe may differ from what one truly believes. There exists a gap between surface belief that can be recited, and the lived experience of belief that is proven true in one’s living.
I am far more interested with the latter. I am not as interested in what one says they believe, as I am in recognizing what one truly believes by how they live their daily life. Our life is the true proof of our belief system, whether we know it or not. The goal of our church community is to make this a conscious process, to teach ourselves and others that we have a choice about beliefs that will guide our lives. This choice demonstrates in no uncertain terms that each one of us contains the opportunity to be the authors of our life, to tell a story of beliefs worth living for.
We are surrounded by myriad stories, and we can’t get enough of them. We ingest movies, tv, books, news reports more rapidly than we ingest solid food. This is because stories are important for sustaining ourselves, more important than even solid food. We live and die based on the stories we tell ourselves.
This month’s worship theme is “Stories of Youngstown.” We will have a chance to explore what we truly believe as a community about who we are, where we’ve been, and where we might go. We will have a chance to find out what we truly believe. We will have a chance to make a choice about which stories we need to tell, and which stories we want to live by.
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