101
" How do we live in—and change—a reality that includes climate change, mass shootings, and racism? How do we address income inequality, sexual predation, mass incarceration? By not turning away. By engaging. By cultivating kindness and compassion, by seeking justice, by loving the earth, and by tending the great interconnected web of which we are all a part. In such a deluge of spiritual thought, I felt charged, inspired to be better, more generous; I felt more dilated to beauty and suffering, and grateful for the slant of sunlight, the different greens of leaves, the sweetness of pets, the soft chuckling of our chickens, for my husband’s amusing Albert Einstein hair. "
― Michelle Huneven , Search
112
" Without hope, solely on my counselor’s advice, I began to pray. I prayed to the Gods of my childhood. To Adonai and to Jesus. And slowly they drew me up, out of the abyss and into the world again. “I still pray. Over the years, my conception of God has grown increasingly abstract and depersonalized, so that today, in prayer, I open myself to life itself, to the ongoing creation of which we are all a part. “I would describe my present theology as constructive Black humanism seasoned with process, liberation, and eco-environmentalist thought. "
― Michelle Huneven , Search
113
" Ah, our facilitator,” Charlotte said. “Everyone, this is Helen.” I knew her. Helen Harland was my long-lost friend from seminary. One of the five other UUs in my class, she’d been my confidante there, my study partner, my ally. I hadn’t seen her in sixteen years. Unlike me, she’d finished her degree and been ordained. She’d then taken a job at a small church with an ingrown, hidebound congregation—no seasoned minister would have touched it! The two years she spent there were so difficult that when she left, she left ministry. For a while, she worked at a retreat center near Santa Barbara, and she planned to go to grad school again, this time to become a therapist. She called me the night before she left for a month-long silent meditation retreat. That was sixteen years ago and the last I ever heard from her. "
― Michelle Huneven , Search
114
" I’m liberation and eco because, friends, we have got to pull out of this individualist, consumerist consciousness that’s destroying the planet.” She paused again, then lowered her voice a notch. “You ask, How can my theology serve differing beliefs and theologies at the Arroyo church? [She meant us, the AUUCC!] I would say, because my God is what you call life itself. And we must, all of us, wake up to life! To paraphrase the great theologian Howard Thurman, What the world needs is people who have come alive. So come alive, people! I say: Come alive! "
― Michelle Huneven , Search
116
" Ah, our facilitator,” Charlotte said. “Everyone, this is Helen.” I knew her. Helen Harland was my long-lost friend from seminary. One of the five other UUs in my class, she’d been my confidante there, my study partner, my ally. I hadn’t seen her in sixteen years. Unlike me, she’d finished her degree and been ordained. She’d then taken a job at a small church with an ingrown, hidebound congregation—no seasoned minister would have touched it! The two years she spent there were so difficult that when she left, she left ministry. For a while, she worked at a retreat center near Santa Barbara, and she planned to go to grad school again, this time to become a therapist. She called me the night before she left for a month-long silent meditation retreat. That was sixteen years ago and the last I ever heard from her. Yet here she was—and back among the Unitarians "
― Michelle Huneven , Search
120
" UU ministers rarely go by pastor,” said Belinda. “I don’t know why.” “In seminary there was a preaching/pastoral divide,” I said. “You’re intellectual and a preacher, or you’re compassionate and caretaking and a pastor.” “I’d say that Pastor Gray has no problem with her preaching,” said Adrian. “And coming up in the Black Baptist tradition, I always considered ‘pastor’ as reverential as ‘reverend,’ and maybe a little more personal and loving.” “Filipino churches, the same,” said Curtis. “We love our pastors.” “Pastor Doris,” Belinda said. “Pastor Anyone. That’d be a first around here. "
― Michelle Huneven , Search