My Faith Journey

My Faith Journey

Written June, 1992, from my personal archive

I probably always was a Unitarian Universalist and just didn’t know it. I can remember that as a child I was sent to Sunday School (Reform Jewish -- yes, Reform Jews had Sunday School!) as soon as I was old enough to use public transportation (in Philadelphia where I lived for my first 47 years). When the time came for confirmation (at age 16), I wasn’t sure I wanted to be confirmed. The faith itself was fine (with principles in many ways similar to those of UUs), but I couldn’t see that it affected the way most of the members conducted their daily lives.
Being too timid to rebel or to question my parents’ assumptions -- our family had been Reform Jews “forever” -- I accepted what seemed to be the inevitable, but without much enthusiasm. When I tried to participate in youth activities, I never felt comfortable with the values others in the group seemed to practice and to take for granted, but I didn’t know what to do about it. (I was acutely conscious of being much less affluent than my Sunday School classmates and not being part of their social circles.)
A couple of years later, when I attended the University of Pennsylvania, I met the man who would become my first husband. He was what I would describe as an “indifferent” Protestant and mostly non-practicing. He had positive impressions of the work of the American Friends Service Committee (the headquarters of which were in Philadelphia), and suggested we visit a Friends (Quaker) Meeting.
Here I finally encountered folks whose principles and approach to life largely agreed with my own, and most of them seemed to act in accordance with their beliefs. We later married “under the care of” our Quaker Meeting and raised our children as Friends. (Incidentally, one of the series of books used in the Sunday School was Beacon Press” “Martin and Judy” stories by Sophia Lyon Fahs, a noted Unitarian Universalist religious educator.)
I was fairly happy as a Quaker, even teaching in a Friends school, working for the American Friends Service Committee, and eventually becoming managing editor of Friends Journal, a national Quaker magazine. I never felt quite able, however, to understand or practice the mysticism that is central to Friends worship and governance. I also at times felt uncomfortable with what I call “the Christian assumption” in some Quaker writings and in messages given during meetings for worship, (“Messages” could be defined as spontaneous sermons given by participants at the religious service, which, in our branch of Friends, was not conducted by a minister.) However, Friends, like Unitarian Universalists, are a non-creedal church.
Eventually, after George (my second husband, now deceased) and I came to Tucson and found the Quakers here less open-minded than we had anticipated, George suggested that we try the UU church. Here I found the kind of community and feeling of acceptance for which I had been searching, along with theological openness and principles totally in harmony with my own.
I had “come home” -- in more ways than one. How I might feel at another time in another community, I cannot predict. But at this time in this place I believe I have found the right church for me.