UU Sermons updated

Including the one from Easter Sunday.

MP3 files linked from this page.

Mary Magdelene

Mary Magdelene, Goddess in the Gospels

A warning — this is by no means the view of Mary held for the last, oh, 1500+ years.

A nice segue into the heart of why I’m searching in the first place

Saturday is going to be…interesting. A friend is getting married, in a full Catholic mass. It will be the first time I’ll be attending a Catholic mass, or even going into a Catholic church, since my realization last year that I don’t really have a place within Catholicism.

I’m happy for N, and yet at the same time, I’m a little nervous. I know the Catholic service inside and out. How am I going to feel sitting there, in a church, and not participating?

Will anyone else, particularly those I went to high school with (including Nicole’s family) notice? Will they say anything?

I think part of my apprehension is due to how surprised I was when I realized I couldn’t keep going — my perception of the divine had moved just far enough that suddenly… It’s never a good sign when you find yourself mentally arguing with the priest over the gender/non-gender of God, and you suddenly realize that for all the lip-service paid to a gender-neutral God, every single prayer is spoken to God the Father. That’s when it hit me; right in the middle of mass is when I had the moment of “oh, CRAP, what do I do now?”

I try to make light of it by telling people, “if the Protestants were right and Catholics actually worshiped Mary as divine alongside God/Jesus, I probably wouldn’t be in this mess.”

So, I’ve spent most of the last year doing much, but still not nearly enough, reading and thinking. Consider that I had the “oh crap” moment sometime during the post-Easter season; it was September before I could bring myself to investigate something else (Unitarian Universalism) on my own, at a public service, rather than just meditating or praying at home. Even now — and I’ll admit I haven’t been very regular at the UU services — but I’m still surprised every time how little I feel the need to adapt what is said to fit my own beliefs. I’ve borrowed books from kolys (again, not quite enough), I’ve bought a few more, re-read others, including parts of the Bible (mostly those cited by the other books I’ve read). Searching, searching, searching for something that rings true.

So, I guess you’d say my interests have spread from the “traditional” Christian/Catholic, and various pagan ideas, to include the humanist (a big portion of UU thought). Then add to that at least some curiosity about Judaism, if only so I know H’s background…I feel like I’m just all over the place on this. But then, it doesn’t help that I consider myself a “religion geek” of sorts — I’ve always been curious about what makes other faiths tick. The significance of that is just becoming more and more relevant; unlike when I was younger and it was just curiosity, a desire to learn about other faiths without becoming very involved, this search has given me all the more reason and opportunity to openly pursue that knowledge.

At heart, I don’t, can’t, believe in a one true faith. Only paths that are or are not right for a particular individual.

*sigh* After last night’s nightmare, I tried to nap this afternoon. I’m not sure how well that actually worked, and I suspect if I keep going right now, I’ll just be babbling or repeating myself. I don’t know if I’ll come back to this before Saturday, but it seems reasonable to believe I’ll have some additional thoughts afterwards.

UU Wedding order of service

As put together by the interim co-ministers at the church I’ve been attending.

I am Sophia Seeker

I grew up in a faith tradition that no longer fits me as well as it once seemeed.

For the better part of the last year, I have done a lot of reading, a lot of external and internal searching.

That search continues to this day — 25 years are not undone in a few short months — and I have created this journal as a place to collect the various information I find, as well as my own thoughts on what I find.

There may actually be some public posts, things I would consider “general information” — stand-alone links for interesting stuff, with little commentary by myself.

There will also be locked posts — my own thoughts, for only myself or possibly my significant other; others that might include whatever friends I decide to include in updates. I can also see myself specifically asking for feedback on a particular subject.

The overall idea, however, is that this journal is specifically for me. I know not everyone I know is going to agree with every idea I entertain, but in the end, I need the freedom to reason or sense it out for myself.

OK, that seems as good a start as any.