Following the Spiritual as a UU

Over the course of my life, I have come to believe that there is a quiet voice that lives within us, a whisper in the wind, a flicker of light in the chest, a pulse that hums through our bodies, a sense that we are not entirely alone within ourselves. Some name this voice God. Others call it spirit, source, or simply intuition. Others deny they feel it at all, or they feel it but refuse to open the door to hear and listen to it. Humans are not required to agree on its name, what we call this spirit, only to listen for its presence and to honor its calling when we feel it rise.

I come from a background marked by trauma, some personal, much of it systemic, and too much deeply religious in its origins. I carry scars from being rejected by the very churches that raised me, where I was told that being two-spirit and pansexual meant I was unworthy of love, leadership, or belonging. That my future was to burn in hell, in eternal suffering because of who I am. I endured systemic abuse rooted in patriarchy, in cultures that told me my body, my truth, and my voice were threats. I know what it feels like to be silenced by doctrine, to be shamed in the name of holiness, to be told that who I am is incompatible with the wishes of God. That the words of Jesus in saying love one another somehow did not include me. And yet, it was in the ashes of that rejection that I began to hear the Spirit speak for the first time in my own voice, not in theirs. It was in the trauma of their rejection that I determined that their view of who I am and who I am allowed to be or become will not overwhelm that voice of the Divine. For me, the journey toward healing did not begin in a flash of divine certainty or a mountaintop revelation. It began in the rubble, when everything I trusted seemed to collapse. It began when I could no longer pretend that surviving was the same as living. I was angry. I was tired. I was shattered in places I didn’t know I could be broken. I swore off church. I swore off God. And still, there was a spark, a voice, a tiny ember, pulsing low but steady. The spark of life deep within my body and mind. The divine. The Spirit within.

In the Christian tradition, the Holy Spirit descends like a dove, gently with peace. But in my life, the Spirit doesn’t always descend quietly. Sometimes she rises up from the soles of my feet and demands that I move, even when I have no real idea of where I am going. Sometimes she interrupts my work, my life, my sleep, everything- and not just with clarity, but with moments of deep discomfort when I am nudged to question, to seek, to grow, to open the door, to listen to the voice of transformation, and to become in ways I have never seen coming. And it is that Spirit that I think I miss serving the deeply analytical, academically sourced UU world where I currently serve, and I do not think I am the only one.

Our Unitarian Universalist tradition named six sources of wisdom, from prophetic voices to world religions, from personal experience to science and reason for decades. They were partially retired with the Article II revision, but they are worth considering. Every one of them has this in common: an invitation to pay attention to the voices within and without you in the world. They taught that deep wisdom, whether it is drawn from the poetry of Rumi, the sacredness of the water, or the traditional Christian narrative, asks us to listen. To listen not only to ideas but to our bodies, to the Earth, to the stories of those who have lived through suffering and still choose joy. I think this listening to the spirit, to be prophetic, to set aside the structures and the systems, is something that is desperately needed in our association if we are to do the work of justice, and if we are going to convince our younger people with unitarian and universalist leanings, that this is a space to belong in. Right now, too many congregations and fellowships continue to center their work on the will of the majority, which makes them feel like social clubs to outsiders. That means they become great places for social gatherings, and so people get connected and join, only to drop off and disappear when they find their spiritual call is not hearing the sources it needs to transform.

Following the Spirit, for me, meant learning to trust my body again. To believe that healing was not weakness but sacred work. That the anger I carried could be transfigured into courage. That the sadness I buried could become compassion, hope, commitment to radical inclusivity and change. And that my queer, mixed-race, neurodivergent body, forged across generations and continents, was not an error to be fixed but a truth to be claimed. Our UU spaces are filled with people carrying similar church hurt through the doors. When they are only analytical and rooted in sharing things read in books, not tapping into the source of love and joy that is divinity, they are denying their hurting membership access to the tools within that might help them survive, heal, and thrive. Being welcoming, being radically inclusive must include wholeness and health for all the parts that make us human, and that includes our inner self.

It was the Spirit that led me to The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries. It was the Spirit that showed me that call and ordination are not limited to privilege or institutional power. It was the Spirit that reminded me, in moments of deepest doubt, that I am still becoming, and that the Divine does not need my perfection, only my presence and my willingness to be open to transformation.

And it is the Spirit that calls me now, as a Unitarian Universalist, to ask those serving this associaiton to go deeper. Because here is the truth: our congregations are dying. Not all of them, but many. And the ones that are growing in healthy ways, bringing in families and vibrancy, are often doing so because they have chosen to be courageous, to center Spirit, justice, community, and belonging in ways that challenge the dominant culture’s obsession with comfort and control.

For years, we said we were the place for the spiritual nones, for those turned off by traditional Christian practices. But saying we welcome people is not the same as helping them connect to healing for their inner spiritual life. And too many of our congregations have become allergic to the language of Spirit, uncomfortable with words like grace, afraid to touch mystery unless it is first wrapped in metaphor and sterilized by reason. They have abandoned the prophetic and the mystical. Meanwhile, the numbers of children, youth, and young adults dwindle. And we are ignoring the truth, that the seven generations following ours are telling us something with their absence.

They are asking: Why should I come? What does this teach me about how to live, how to heal, how to belong, how to grow? Does this place help me connect to something greater than myself, even if I still stubbornly insist I don’t believe in anything at all? Does this place exist just to provide social interactions and activities to keep adults, especially older adults, entertained or does it serve a larger role in this community?

We must have an answer.

We must offer something deeper than potlucks and programs. We must offer spiritual practice, not in the abstract, but embodied and accessible, and in a way that our young people can take with them when they move far beyond our buildings. We must help people find the Divine spark within themselves, whether they call it God, or justice, or breath, or wonder, and they must know it intimately. If not, the hard moments of life as adults will become harder. To become more than social clubs or books study groups, we must become the place where our folks peo can cry in the pews, laugh during meditation, and rage into the chalice flame, Reintroducing the Spirit of divinity means we can offer those hurting more than platitudes.

This moment we find ourselves in demonstrates again that the work of persisting, resisting in the face of continuing oppression is something that is going to take all the parts of ourselves. As a UU committed to justice, I understand and know that the work requires more than we can carry alone, and it becomes impossible if we do not use our abundant wholeness. We were made for more than fear and fatigue. YOU were made for more than fear and fatigue. You were made for liberation. There is wisdom waiting in your breath. There is healing in your hands. There is joy and love waiting in your Spirit’s center.

So let us build communities where we follow the Spirit’s call, not into comfort, but into courage. Not toward certainty, but toward connection. Not into silence, but into a holy kind of listening to each other and the divine.

Let us become, together, the builders of a deeper Unitarian Universalism, one where sacred healing is centered, joy is practiced, Spirit is followed, love is our guiding star, and all generations can find a community of seekers to return to across the world. And let us remind ourselves that just because we have opened the door to wisdom beyond Christian and Jewish texts, that does not mean we need to close off the wisdom we can find within them, nor do we have to reject the Spirit just because we believe the Spirit is part of a Unitarian God, not a Trinitarian one. kfr, 4 July 2025