Shirley Ryberg, Jan Robinson, and Peg Duthie
June 28, 2009

Shirley:

I am Shirley Ryberg, and I am a member of this congregation.

When I was a very little girl, my mother told me that God was Love: God was always present to help and to heal.

I believed her. After all, she was my mother!

Now, in my 90s, I know that she was right – that there is a powerful spiritual dimension which we can access.

It is not a Santa Claus.

It is transcendental, and can only be proven by experience.

I have gone from faith by hearsay – that is, hearing my mother – to faith by life’s happenings, and I often had doubts along the way.

I have written of this. The problem is – I can’t read what I have written.

So I brought along my wonderful daughter. This is Chris Neiman. She’s smart. She can read.

[Chris, reading aloud Shirley's words:]

Fourteen years ago I fell in love with the intellectual honesty I found in this church. No one was required to make statements of belief that they didn’t really believe. Agnostics and even atheists felt at home here, and so do I.

My mother’s words were hearsay. The Bible is hearsay. The teachings of the Buddha, of Jesus, of Lao Tzu – all hearsay.

All I can ever KNOW of religious truth is what I have proven in my own experience.

My mother’s faith did not support her in her personal despair, and she took her own life when I was seven.

My next four years were spent with my grandmother, who reminded me to say my prayers at night but gave no other instruction.

Most nights I complied, but not always. Yet when I was eleven, I noticed that my days went better when I had said my three little rote prayers the night before.

Did this make me more prayerful? Hardly.

During the next few years, back in Chicago with father and stepmother, there was nothing religious about my life at all.

This was the early ’30s, the heart of the Depression. We moved several times, evicted for non-payment of rent. I used cardboard to cover the holes in the soles of my shoes.

When I was a sophomore, I had a wonderful experience. My Italian girlfriend invited me to join the high-school girls choir of the Basilica of Our Lady of Sorrows, and for about a year I had a musical experience which enriches me to this day.

I felt reverent in that church, and oh, how I loved the music! I knew it all, from the first Kyrie to the last Amen.

It cured me of my anti-Catholic prejudice. My parents had been born and raised in Milwaukee, solidly German in those days, strictly divided into Lutherans and Catholics as they had been in the Old Country.

When my grandmother thought I was getting too uppity, she would threaten to send me to the schwartzemutters, the black-robed nuns we saw walking two by two along the streets.

My religious contacts again went into limbo. In due course, I graduated, found a job, moved to Arizona and got married. That was 1938.

Eleven months later I was in labor with my first child. This is where awareness of God came back to me. As each contraction began to build, I found myself repeating my childhood prayers. I was so serene doing this that the doctor told my husband to go home, that I was many hours from delivery.

Not so. He went, but very soon a nurse was shocked to see that the baby was crowning. Then there was commotion.

I was not spared one iota of the pain of childbirth. In fact, I required stitches.

However, that experience fixed in my mind the immanence of God and the power of prayer.

It did not, however, make me a prayerful person. I was too busy just living, coping with the necessities of married life.

Yes, I prayed when the kids got sick, but I also took them to doctors, and learned about nutrition.

Only when problems became overwhelming did I really get down to business in prayer.

It has been my experience that when I reach out to All-That-Is, there is Something that reaches back. If, in prayer, I am wise enough to Drop the problem and simply but strongly reach out for One-ness, and say “Thy will be done, because I know that Your will is better than any solution I could come up with” – when I pray in this manner, things always change for the better, often in surprising ways.

Once I had a really spectacular result. We’d been living on a very small houseboat with our six children. It was, of course, inadequate housing but the only home we had, and now we were under notice to abandon the marina we’d spent two years developing, and move the houseboat.

To where? We had three children who needed to go to school. We would need access to a road, to electricity, to a dock.

It was a situation beyond solution. It came to me to pray that our home was not a floating wooden cabin – our home was God, was in God and we could not be dispossessed.

For about a week I was deep into this kind of knowing. It never occurred to me to pray to save our business, the marina. Just HOME.

On the morning of May 5, 1950, Clyde went off to work 17 miles away in St. Paul, I sent the oldest three children off to school, nursed the baby and took care of the other two little ones, and – sat down to pray.

An ordinary wind came up, not a storm, and set all the boats in our marina to rocking, including the houseboat. Nothing unusual.

A 30-foot Steelcraft cruiser was tied to our houseboat to recharge her batteries. Nothing unusual.

But the precise angle of wind and waves changed that steel boat into a battering ram, and by late afternoon our houseboat was sunk. Our home, you might say, was gone. Not so. The unlikely combination of circumstances that sunk the houseboat took us out of an impossible situation. Our children were never upset. Friends took us in that night. Clyde went back to work for the company he’d left to build the marina. We rented a cottage but by July had a real house and a mortgage in Bloomington, Minnesota. The children were back in school.

This was an answer to prayer that ended up in a way we could not have imagined.

The sinking of the houseboat was definitely and specifically a proof to me that prayer works.

I don’t stay in this state of spiritual discernment all the time. In fact, my life is very daily, and I usually get deep into trouble before I wake up and turn to the Source-Energy.

Knowing that God IS has not kept me from grief and sorrow. My husband passed on 27 years ago. One son died at 21; his body is buried in Fort Snelling National Cemetery in Minnesota. One son died at age 54, and his body is buried in the Tennessee Veterans near here.

I am in loving relationship with three of my children, and that is good, but there are three who have separated themselves and do not communicate. I mention this only to show that knowing God as a never-failing resource has not spared me of life’s challenges.
Instead, those challenges have enriched me.

Shirley:

I live in an attitude of gratitude. I am thankful for all the pains and problems I’ve had on this journey. I am grateful for the sense of joy that is with me much of the time.

I started this journey believing that God IS, that God is good, and there is a cosmic purpose for my life. I still think so. Blessed be.

Jan:

I grew up in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains in Northwest Arkansas. My father was a member of the Church of Christ, as were most of his family. In my early years, we lived in a small community called Black Oak. Church was held in a one-room building which held a school for grades 1 to 8, where my sisters and I attended for our first three or four years.

My first memory of an encounter with religion was when I was three or four years old. I remember one of the songs we sang in the old church: “There’s An All-Seeing Eye Watching You.” I guess it was meant to tell us that God was watching over us and protecting us, but it wasn’t received that way by me. Like many children of that age, I took the words literally, and I heard it as very frightening. On occasions when my two older sisters and I stayed at Grandma’s house, we slept with three of our aunts in their upstairs bedroom. The stairway was not lighted, and at night it would scare me to death to go up those stairs. I just knew that the “All-Seeing Eye” was going to be just around the corner of those stairs waiting to get me.

There was a lot of fear involved with my Daddy’s religion. Perhaps the incident of the “All-Seeing Eye” was the beginning of that fear for me. I was soon afraid not only that I would do something “sinful” for which I would be punished by God, but that even thinking something “sinful” would bring about the same punishment.

I don’t remember being taught that “God will provide,” at least not tangible things, and not in the same way I hear so many people say it these days. I didn’t learn that God would, in response to prayers, cause our team to win, put money in our pockets or food on the table, or even heal our sicknesses. I did see him, (yes, HIM) as the great creator, a protector and overseer of his creations. I also learned to fear His wrath and the threat of eternal damnation in the fires of Hell.

My religious upbringing did not allow for questioning. I was expected to accept whatever I was told, whatever interpretation of the Bible the men in our church made. Nevertheless, I did ask questions. The first question I remember asking about God was of my mother. I must have been about ten years old at the time. I had been thinking about death, particularly the death of my brother when he was five, and how short were the lives of so many people I knew. I asked Mother why would God create us in His image, but decide to end our lives after so short a time? If Mother gave me an answer, I don’t remember it.

I remember in Sunday school classes asking questions of the teacher, such as: since mortal men were the ones who wrote the Old and New Testaments, how did we know that what they wrote was true? They could tell us anything they wished. Why should I believe them? How was the Word of God the Divine Word if it came through mortal men? Wouldn’t Divine Revelation require a miracle? How could we believe in miracles without independent verification? I don’t recall an answer to these questions either, but I do remember being informed that ours was not to question why, but to accept without question.

I didn’t completely break away from the Church of Christ until I came to Nashville to go to graduate school. During those years as a student in the Department of Psychology at Vanderbilt I began to question more often and persistently the things that I had been taught in Sunday school classes. Now the questioning became more emotionally wrenching, and I sought help in dealing with these struggles. I was advised to go see the Dean at David Lipscomb College for counseling. The only thing I remember of that session was his telling me that if I continued to associate with psychologists I would be doomed to Hell. Apparently he saw psychologists as the epitome of liberal thinking, and therefore dangerous to the fundamentalist religion for which he stood. This was the last straw for me. I left the Church of Christ for good. I occasionally set foot in my family’s church for weddings or funerals, but never for a Sunday morning sermon.

Thus began my active search for my own church home.

It was about this time that I married one of those “dangerous” psychologists. My husband was not interested in going to any church. But he relented and joined me on my search for a new church home. We attended Catholic masses, services in several protestant churches, and went to Friends Meetings. It was when we were living in Florida that we visited a Unitarian Church in Ormond Beach, and we went back several times. When we returned to live in Nashville again we began attending this church. We both liked the experience we had here. We felt comfortable with the others attending this church. They were intellectual, and were constantly questioning. There was an active Women’s Alliance, and they were very warm in welcoming me. I was five months pregnant with my son at the time, and the need to find a setting for providing religious education to him was a prime reason for our decision to join. We signed the membership book in November 1966.

So what exactly do I believe?

1. I believe in God, the creative force behind the universe, and behind the existence of human beings. I can find no other way to understand the amazing order of nature. I do not see God as someone who is always watching over his creations and directing their lives. I believe strongly that we were created with soul, spirit, intellect and will, and the capability, and indeed the responsibility, of using them to solve problems, to care for our world, our neighbors, our communities, our earth, and ourselves.

2. I believe in prayer. Not the kind of prayer that asks God to take care of my problems for me, but for help in finding the strength, wisdom, courage, and creativity given to me by my creator to enable me to handle things myself. I particularly find the Serenity Prayer helpful in my everyday life: “God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference.” I believe in prayer that speaks gratitude for the blessings we have received, prayer that offers positive thoughts and wishes for others who are struggling with illness and other misfortunes.

So what is prayer for me? It is my way of trying to connect with that higher power in times of celebration to acknowledge my gratitude for the good things that happen to me. It is a way of trying to be more aware of the larger world and those persons in it, particularly with respect to my responsibility to them. It is a way of seeking wisdom, courage and strength from something or someone outside myself or more deeply within myself.

Do I believe that prayer works? Yes. It helps me redirect my thoughts, emotions, and energies so that they are more productive. It brings me back down to earth. It makes me feel better even without visible results.

3. I believe in the Bible, not as the one book that is the word of God, but as one of many books with teachings that help us to live the best life we can. I see it as no better and no more true than the Koran, The Torah, or the writings of many others both religious and secular. They all are great sources of guidance for us.

4. I have not been comfortable completely rejecting the concept of being a “Christian” While I do not think of Jesus in the same way as my family does, I have accepted many of his teachings and hope that I am incorporating them into my own life. If being a Christian means being a good person, kind to others, responsible for self, responsible for my part of the earth and community, then I am still a Christian.

I have seen the Sunday programs vary from intellectual discussions and discourses on social and political issues, to very emotional expressions of worship. While the topic of the sermon and the presenter changes from week to week, there are services that truly inspire me. There are others that cause me to question myself and my beliefs. And there are some services when I allow my mind to travel its own way with little relationship to the sermon topic. Music for me is the most significant and the most emotional part of the worship experience. Whether the choir is singing, or I am listening to the pianist play the prelude or offertory, or hearing a wide variety of guest musicians, church would not be worship without music.

What seems to bring people together in this church is the need for a strong community of warm and caring individuals whose ideals are like their own, individuals who put their beliefs into action in the community. This is a place where the passions of all can be shared in an accepting manner. This is where enthusiasms multiplied can create action.

This is truly now my church home, my family.

Peg:

My name is Peg Duthie, and I’ve been a member of this church since 2000.

In the spring of 1987, I was about done with high school. As is customary with many schools in Kentucky, public as well as parochial, our commencement ceremonies consisted of two parts, the first being “baccalaureate,” which is essentially a Christian religious service with a graduation theme. It was taken very much for granted that everyone would attend, and when I said that I would not, I received quite a bit of flak from assorted classmates and teachers, ranging from “It’s really just a social occasion” (translation: you are being such a party pooper) to “I don’t see how anyone can not believe in God.”

There was one other student who skipped baccalaureate. His name was Rusty, and you could say he had fundamentalist leanings. He was the guy who, during sophomore English class, drew a coat hanger on the chalkboard and started talking about the evils of abortion. The thing is, Rusty and I actually got along quite well, and never more so than when we ended up talking about why the whole tradition of baccalaureate offended us both. In his case, he was disgusted at what he saw as lip service to God from people who ignored His commandments the rest of the year. In my case, I was severely allergic to group prayer in secular settings, and I still am, even though I now identify as a theist rather than an agnostic. Whether it’s before a banquet or a road race or a charity event, one-size-fits-most public invocations generally make me feel more isolated from the other participants rather than more connected; it tends to remind me that I didn’t grow up as a Christian, and that I don’t do things in the name of Jesus, other than when I’m really upset and cussing up a storm.

My extended family is a mélange of Taoists, Buddhists, Methodists, Catholics, and nonbelievers. My upbringing was predominantly secular, although there were a couple of years Mom took us to Baptist church for social reasons, and I did a fair amount of reading on my own. My college adventures included singing in a gospel group called “Choral Thunder,” showing up to Episcopalian roundtables because of the free meals, and an ongoing lover’s quarrel with Judaism too complex to squash into this homily. During my twenties, I lived primarily in Michigan, and when I stepped inside a house of worship, it was almost always for a rehearsal, a concert, or a wedding.

In January of 2000, I moved to Nashville because of my husband’s job. It was great to get away from Detroit’s ice storms and gnarled-up infrastructure, and I wasn’t worried about my ability to meet new people. About nine months in, however, several incidents took place that made me realize that everyone I’d met outside of work knew me mainly as Mrs. Duthie – that is, as Andrew’s wife. That didn’t sit well with me, so I started to think about who I might want to meet on my own and where to find them. I’d known for years that my beliefs were compatible with Unitarian Universalism, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to risk getting involved with a church. I was afraid that I would hate the music of any church contemporary and inclusive enough to welcome a mouthy heretic like me. I didn’t want to be pressured into fundraising, or to end trapped into attending countless committee meetings.

Around this time, I ended up with a Sunday free during a business trip to Denver, and on a whim I decided to visit First Unitarian there. Two things stand out for me from that morning. The first was suddenly feeling homesick for the Midwest: there were several older women in Guatemalan sweaters and hippie sandals at that service, and they reminded me so much of the outspoken liberal activist tree-hugging women who had been among my friends up north. The other was singing “Dear Weaver of Our Lives Design” for the first time. I thought, I can go to a church that sings hymns like this.

I am intensely uncomfortable whenever I hear the phrase “So-and-so is a UU and just doesn’t know it.” The term “convert” likewise makes me grit my teeth. For me, being a Unitarian Universalist isn’t only about what one happens to believe, but about intentionally choosing to become affiliated with a faith community. When people find out that I’m a lay preacher, they sometimes feel compelled to explain why they themselves don’t go to church, and I end up having to reassure them that I do understand. That I’ve been there myself: Congregational life isn’t for everyone. Unitarian Universalism isn’t for everyone.

And as it turns out, I was right to be apprehensive: since Christmas Eve 2000, when I signed the membership book here, I have attended more meetings than I can count, I’ve been involved with multiple fundraising projects, and there are certain frequently-programmed hymns I viscerally loathe. But this church has also connected me with incredible role models and supportive friends, and being a member here has ultimately propelled me into becoming a better person. Being among you has helped deepen my faith, and expanded my awareness of the many ways we can help and encourage each other to become and stay true to our better selves. In the course of delivering nearly forty sermons over the past eight years, I’ve learned that there’s no telling what people actually hear of what I say – never mind what they remember, if anything – whether it’s here in the pulpit or next to the coffee pot or out in the wider community. But I have also witnessed and experienced how sometimes simply showing up and being present can be exactly what is needed to help someone stay the course or work up the nerve to try something new. I have seen how small, local acts of hospitality, friendship, and faith can turn the world around.

[The closing hymn: "Turn the World Around" (Singing the Journey #1074)]