Do we have a vision for UUism, or a change we hope to make?

Disclaimer: The “Behind the scenes” blog is not entertaining at all. This is “journal of how we are creating Mirth and Dignity”, written as we go. It’s a purely educational resource (and a place for me to record what I’m thinking… A kind of diary). I’d have killed for this resource five years ago, but unless you’re my particularly narrow kind of weird, this blog is not recommended reading.

Anna, who is A CHURCH GEEK JUST LIKE ME posted a question in a comment about whether there are connections we hope to make (or strengthen), or changes we’d like to inspire on encourage in UUism as a whole.

I can only speak for myself (Liz), when I say that I used to have a LIST OF CHANGES LONGER THAN MY ARM and I would talk to ANYONE WHO WOULD LISTEN. This was rarely effective, because usually the person I was talking to had a list longer than their arm, and was trying to get ME to listen to THEM. Sometimes we agreed, sometimes we argued, but our conversations always had one common thread. They accomplished nothing, because we were not actually in charge.

So… UUism as a whole runs democratically, there are a LOT of hands on the wheel right now, and it is a big boat that turns slowly. Or it would, if we were all pulling the wheel in the same direction. Which we are not.

When I was in seminary, I remember this one prof teaching us about how to push back at atheists who would not let anything get too spiritual, and I remember thinking “My problem with bullying atheists is not that they are atheists, but that they are bullies”. I do not sort people by theism level, I sort by arm-twisting-of-others level, and the prof in question was definitely in the arm twisting camp. Over time I came to think of this as “I don’t want to learn how to be more effective at tug of war—I want to learn how to drop the rope”.

Anyway. About change. There is a different way to turn a boat, if, say, you are not the captain. There is also the tug boat method. Where little boats that can be nimble go out there, and try a bunch of stuff out. And then when they find a way through the ice they throw a rope to the mother ship. So for a while I was thinking “Not my cruise ship, not my steering wheel. I am a TUG BOAT”.

I don’t think that way any more. Because tug boats are just another type of tugging, and I want to get away from that. And because I no longer actually think the thing I’m doing could be transferred back to larger institutions, or even (in most cases) churches. And because I’ve kind of fallen in love with the stuff I’m doing and the people I’m doing it with. I am just excited about the memes and the podcast and the shenanigans and the meaningful stuff all sandwiched in. I care less and less about the direction of other parts of UUism—I certainly don’t care enough to try and explain to someone who isn’t asking. And, to be really blunt, nobody is asking.

Well… No institutions are asking, anyway. A lot of people reach out, though. There are individuals, who are in the same place I was ten years ago, thinking “I want to do a thing, but I feel like the options we are offered as valid things are… Missing something”. I want that person to have a lifeline I didn’t have at that stage. Not because I am trying to effect a big change, but because I feel for them. I want them to be able to build their thing.

So that’s part of the reason I’m writing this. But to be honest, for a lot of this I am not actually equipped to teach or help anyone. I am very definitely still figuring it out. The point of the blog is to find the six people (HI ANNA!) who might be willing to bounce ideas around as we figure it out.

This is why I am writing about this on a tiny blog in a corner of the UUHS web page, rather than on a Facebook forum where it might spread. Or pitching it to UU World magazine, or some such. I am not hoping to change the world. I am hoping to find a half dozen people who will bat ideas around with me while I figure out what to do with this fun and fabulous thing that I’ve stumbled into and want desperately to be a good steward of.