Longtime member Lynn Heath wrote the following as a letter to the Board of Trustees, and has asked to have it published here as well.  The intent of this blog is to provide a place for congregants to have a place to share their thoughts about things we, as a congregation, should be talking about.  It provides a forum that is longer than a Facebook post, and more public than an email.  If you have something to say, and think that this is the right place to say it, please send your piece to revwik@uucharlottesville.org.

I remember a church where members of the congregation reached out in love. We reached out in love, even when it was hard.

In my first or second year as a member, a young man who grew up in our church committed a serious crime. His brother was in my RE class, and I watched that class make a circle around their friend. They held him in their arms, and in their hearts, and they told him they would be with him.

And the congregation surrounded that whole family. They raised money for legal help, although the crime was a terrible one. They wrote him letters throughout his prison term. Some members visited him regularly. They held on to that young man, and they loved him, and he started a new life.

That congregation knew how to hold both the perpetrator and the victim in their hearts. I was new to the church, and it was a powerful message.

It was the same greeting extended to me. I came to the church hurt and angry and lost, and I was surrounded by love. There was an energy that surrounded me and pulled me forward, out of my misery. I met people who embodied love, who lived the seven principles. I met people who modeled what I wanted to be when I grew up. They loved me into being a kinder, happier person.  They gently challenged me, and I rose to that challenge.

I remember when my church adopted a new statement of covenant. The draft said “if” we fall out of covenant, we will reach out to bring each other back. We changed it to “when,” in the knowledge that we are all moving towards the goal, but we will inevitably fall short.

It’s been 16 years since I joined the church, and I tell people my life has been transformed by this church.  Nearly all of my friends belong to TJMC, and all of my good friends do. I was invited into a book club that talks more about church than books. I think of it as the “kitchen cabinet,” because its members include such wisdom, such breadth, and such commitment to our beloved church. Among our members, we cover almost every aspect of church life, and our varied perspectives add greatly needed depth to our conversations.

One of my first church events was the dinner where the Alliance (literally) passed the torch to the UUppity Women. We honored those women who built our church, sustained it, and provided leadership for so many years. It was a sacred moment, full of history, appreciation, and continuity. As that group ages into our senior years, I don’t see the same spirit. Instead, I hear how a small group of people thinks they run the church and they need to let go. Not only do we feel unappreciated, we feel maligned.

I find myself in a crisis of faith. I want to believe my church is a church of love, that we support each other and we support our church. It’s becoming increasingly hard. Our church is doing a great job of afflicting the comfortable, but has it stopped comforting the afflicted? Has that job been off-loaded completely into our individual circles of friendship?

I remember when we were rallying for marriage equality, and Dick Dershimer movingly and bravely stood up and said that he had been homophobic, and we had gently challenged him and stretched him and he had changed his views. We didn’t bully him or shame him or guilt him. We loved him into examining his own beliefs, into a personal search that led to transformation. We met him where he was, we stretched out a hand, and we walked with him on a new path.

I don’t see that happening now. I see voices being stilled, being outshouted. I don’t see room for growth; I see demands for immediate change. I don’t see room for dissenting views. I don’t see people being lovingly brought back into covenant. I see judgment and casting out of those we don’t agree with. I see prescriptions, proscriptions, punishments, and harsh words aimed at people deemed complicit. Some of us are wondering what on earth we did wrong, why we are encouraged to form “accountability circles” when our leaders seem accountable to no one, and – possibly most important – what form dissent is allowed to take these days.

As Unitarian Universalists, we are called to a personal search for meaning, but also to test that meaning by bringing it back into community. One of the best things I have learned in my years at TJMC is to listen deeply and non-defensively, to see what I can learn from others. In countless committee meetings and outside discussions, I have learned that the best solutions are derived from thoughtfully incorporating wisdom from many sources, despite the time it may take to reach agreement.

I think we have lost the church that I loved. I think we have forgotten how to give each other the benefit of the doubt, to believe that we are motivated by good intent. We are so busy looking for ways we have breached our covenant that maybe we have forgotten that we agreed to it in the first place. We agreed that we would try our best, that we would fail, and that we would try again. In love.

Lynn Heath