I am spending some time in Germany, England, and Scotland.  In Germany I am seeing my teenaged daugther for the first time in ten months; she has been an exchange student living with a host family, the head of which is a Lutheran minister.  I figured it might be good if I worked on my UU elevator speech (not to mention it’s good for the MFC).  I am also visiting friends from nearly 30 years ago, people who share some religious history with me and who have not seen me since my deciding to become a UU minister.  Plus, Germans generally don’t know much about Unitarian Universalism.  In England, among my husband’s family whom I am meeting for the first time, I think there may be also the need to be clear about this strange faith-religiony-thing.

So, here goes…

Faith, in its short hand, has implied steadfast belief.  Who among us, however, has not known that faith is a double-sided coin, with questions and uncertainty on its other side.  For Unitarian Universalists, our faith has embraced this other side not as faulty or weak, but as inherent and necessary, shaping the belief aspect into individualized packages, rather than one shared one, as we journey together.