Different Dream

The preacher said this morning that when he was a child in fundamentalist Sunday School he dreamed of a non-dogmatic religious education, one where you could ask questions and doubt.

I grew up in UU Sunday School, and wanted someone to tell me it was okay to believe in something. As a child beset from a very young age by anxiety about non-being, I needed something to have faith in. It is true that when I visited more conservative churches I was glad to know I didn't have to fit into a dogmatic box, but freedom from dogma is not enough for me. What I needed as a small child, and what I want today is simply something to get me through the nights when one feels adrift in an infinite universe, and your non-being sits like a chaperon in a dark corner of your bedroom making the "why" of life seem urgent and ever-present.

As Nancy Shaffer writes in her poem "A Theology Adequate for Night"

"But-- this may work in the night:
Something that breathes with us, as others
sleep, something that breathes also
those sleeping, so no one is alone.
Something that is the beginning of love,
and also each part of how love is completed,
Something so large, wherever we are,
we are not separate; which teachers again
the way to start over.

Night is the test: when grief lies uncovered,
and longing shows clear; when nothing we do
can hasten earth's turning or delay it.

This may be adequate for the night;
this holding; something that steadfastly
breaths us, which we are also learning to breathe."

That is my dream for religious education: to learn again and again that there is something steadfast in the universe, to learn how to remember it in the dark of the night, and to breathe.