In 1990 I came to BUUF a religious refugee. I welcomed an environment that didn’t try to name what was holy or even expect that anything had to be Holy. I was living in liminal space (the great “in between”) for years, and BUUF was a safe place to land. I grew up with a gas lighting guru God who was exclusively male, judgmental and cruel. Unfortunately, he was also the first one I called on when I was suffering, and I felt more comfort in that than I wanted to admit. As I began to untangle that rubber band ball the healing journey became a spiritual one.
With that kind of ambivalent attachment I couldn’t bring myself to become an atheist. There was great relief in learning that being agnostic meant that there still could be some kind of mystery out there, and that fit fine for a good long time. I healed myself through a couple of decades with that belief. When a friend recently said she had fired her Higher Power I realized I hadn’t quite done the same, but I certainly rejected the one originally forced upon me.
In 2017 when I heard about the Quest program offered at BUUF, an 18 month spiritual quest, I was ready to understand more of that mysterious mystery. The biggest surprise during this time was having to admit to myself how little I was in contact with myself. Although I felt pretty darn woke (which should’ve been my first clue) I came to realize I was not centered on my True Self nearly enough. I had swallowed the lie that the God handed down to me, gave me no power or value or strength. As a result I spent way more time reading and listening to others than listening to any Inner Teacher or nurturing any “small point of light”. I hadn’t spent nearly enough time in the deepest space inside where Anne Lamott suggests there is “relief from anxiety and self consciousness, where there is room to breathe, to settle in, settle down, mull things over without anyone’s hot breath on our neck.”
When asked to cultivate a spiritual practice during Quest I immediately leaned toward yoga and meditation because I already used them both with some success. They were outward motions of what I longed to do better on the inside. I leaned away from centering prayer because it sounded like everything I was running from. It wasn’t until sampling it that I realized I was protesting too much because after establishing it as a practice I found a wide open door to that deep space.
In that space I have learned many things. For example, if there was ever an entity that needed rebranding and new pronouns it was God. “He” was much bigger than a gender or a name. The ancient Jewish people didn’t want to limit “him” with a name so for a time they even removed the vowels from YahWeh making it Yh-Wh, becoming simply the sound of breath. With sacred breath I learned to more fully come out of what Lamott refers to as the “casino mind” that keeps most of us from hearing any still small voice, and I made “a conscious decision to begin listening harder. Whether it’s [from] Mt. Sinai, a pasture, a library...or [wherever]...to have a feeling of at one-ish with the universe”.
In this place of breath and contemplation I have not only been led to a great oneness but also a deep and abiding love that has made everything so simple. In doing so I learned that all my incongruent parts could be reunited. And I learned that wholeness leads to holiness because I didn’t feel like a traitor inside myself anymore. Everything got set right. The best thing is I’m no longer ashamed of praying to a monster God because I had never been talking to him in the first place. I am so grateful to BUUF for being part of helping me create the conditions to reimagine a familiar, vulnerable and compassionate Presence that I now see has been with me all along.
