A thing my minister said in a sermon recently that made me happy. This is a foundational belief that I can get behind. Very simple, very useful.

I asked another church member in a theology chat what's the "ask" of UU. The answer was just show up! Respect people. That's a totally reasonable ask.

I, personally have some eclectic spiritual beliefs that I don't feel the need to necessarily share with anyone. I find it helpful to put some space holders for the unknown and to direct my life through a certain poetic narrative, and it is important to me. My personal relationship to a devine. Believing in the inherent dignity of every human, showing up to service and respecting the congregation in no way gets in the way of my faith.

Mostly posting as a question to see if I'm missing anything. Can one really be accepted as a unitarian regardless of their metaphysical beliefs? It almost seems too good to be true.

Hi. New here. Started going to a UU service about a month ago and found it so refreshing to listen to moving sermons that bring me to tears and declarations of intent that I dare hope could ignite love and justice through a world that feels so unjust and frightening.

No mater what I think about whiteness, how detestable and false I find white supremacism concepts I'm perceived as white by the people who find that consequential and it has real effect on how easy it is for me to move in the world. That means I have an easier time getting jobs, moving around unafraid of police, and xenophobia, unexamined or explicit. I wasn't born understanding this. Even though I came of age in a very diverse public school system. I had to break out of the matrix of whiteness as a norm.

Here's the good news, from my experience. when you start really digging into what race means critically, you will be uncomfortable for a time, you will be scared, and then you'll be MAD, and then you might spend some time being sad, then hopefully you'll start to see that there's plenty to do about it. You'll start recognizing the heroes that have done something about it and are doing something about it. And you won't do the work to be "good" and you'll know the work may never be finished. You'll do it because you see your non white friends better, Understand their experience better, You'll love and respect them for their resilience, and be grateful for how their work and the work of their ancestors is liberating ALL of us.

I think a lot of people come to UU because they want to be liberated from oppressive concepts like original sin, which is total misogynist mumbo jumbo with no basis in anything, where as critical race theory and anti racism is based on a long history of atrocities, made evident by peoples living conditions RIGHT NOW.

To get started on the track of awakening justice into the world, I can suggest the 13th available on netflix. I think it should be required watching for Americans, especially people living a white experience.

If you want to go deep into deprograming your own internalized white supremacy (your not inherently evil, it happens to everyone in a white supremicist world, anyone can be fooled) I highly recommend Dawn of Everything by David Graber. It's long but the first 3rd is what is especially useful.