44
" His books and articles, while highly regarded among Buddhist practitioners, were deemed not academic enough by his committee, too geared to a popular audience. Perry decided to leave academia then, thinking he’d write and teach meditation. He was lucky, around that time, he said, to have a brief meeting with the Zen master Thích Nhất Hạnh, whom he asked for guidance. “Thầy was completely unimpressed that I was a Buddhist monk and insisted that I should practice within my own Western religious tradition. I tried to explain that I personally had no religious tradition, but he wouldn’t budge. I left our meeting feeling unheard and angry. But he’d planted a seed. “Not long afterward, I was teaching a meditation course in a rented classroom at a UU church. The minister there sat in on a class and invited me to preach one Sunday. In that pulpit, I found the Western tradition I could work within. "
― Michelle Huneven , Search
45
" The interim had an interesting if musty mind; he identified as a Christian Unitarian, a dwindling, more conservative branch of the denomination rare in California. I enjoyed him, but nobody else at the AUUCC liked him very much. Or at all. To hear him tell it, the churches that he’d previously served were all in dire shape when he arrived. He’d mopped up after “negotiated settlements” and all manner of ecclesiastical and clerical dysfunction. While I thought that Sparlo had made us into a strong, sane, healthy church with a board that functioned like an intelligent, reasonable brain and an endowment the envy of many, the interim, who was used to coming in and fixing things, found deep problems where we saw none. He found it ethically objectionable, for example, that a powerful lay leader was the church’s salaried secretary. “That Belinda Bauer knows too much,” he once told me over pho. “She thinks she runs the church. "
― Michelle Huneven , Search
55
" Who are we to demean a faith that sustained millions through centuries of institutionalized injustice? Who are we to deny a God that comforted the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, the orphans and widows who had nothing but faith to see them through? We UUs say, ‘We welcome you, whoever you are, whatever you believe,’ but we have work to do to live up to that. We do that work here at First UU when we worship together; when we have a community pizza night or a bread-baking class; when we run together, sing one another’s songs; when we hold hands and say Dear God, Please Lord, God bless us, and amen. "
― Michelle Huneven , Search