A couple of weeks ago, there was such an abundance of questions at our Question Box service that we couldn’t answer them all in worship, so I’m hopeful that this Bonus Track can cover a few more things that are on your mind.
Kathy asks: How can we have more visibility in NE Ohio for all the great work we do and all our
good intentions? This is a great church!
I agree with you, Kathy! Just answering for myself, I think the best way for more people to know
about the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Cleveland is for people like you to talk about it.
Share about your experience here. Brag about the initiatives that you’re proud of. I strongly
believe that your authentic passion for your spiritual community will do more than any
marketing campaign to increase the congregation’s visibility.

One more question, from Andria: What is it about UU that prevents us from using the word God
more often?

Again, speaking only for myself: Self-imposed restrictions. I know a lot of people arrive in
Unitarian Universalist communities with specific definitions of God that don’t work for them
anymore. Some people have experienced spiritual abuse in other religious spaces, and that kind
of trauma stick with us if we don’t work to metabolize it. (It sticks with us even when we do the
work, but the work helps us recalibrate toward wholeness a little more easily.) So, we just avoid
a word rather than do the hard work of redefining it in a way that makes more sense to us.
There’s also the problem of not being assured that everyone you’re speaking with holds the same
definition of a word. This is a challenge with a lot of religious language. The definitions aren’t as
precise as technical language, and sometimes we erroneously believe that all words have very
specific universal meanings that everyone agrees on. So, some people avoid using the word God
because they don’t know that other people are going to understand what they mean in the way
they intend.

Personally, I was really put off the first Sunday I was in a UU church and there was a lot of God
language in hymns and readings and prayers. One of the congregants said, “Oh, just make that
word mean whatever you want it to mean!” Easier said than done. We often say these kinds of
things, but then expect that any given individual knows how to do that very challenging work of
reconstructing a theology from concepts and words that have been really painful or harmful in
the past.

I believe that we need one another to do this work well. And I believe we probably need to be
more expansive in how we hold spiritual language, whether the word is God or salvation or
whatever we might have some prickly feeling around. Often, when I use the word God in a
worship setting, I’ll include some other possible words for people to connect with, like “the
divine.” Or “spirit of light and life.” Or “inner wisdom” if that gets at what I’m talking about.
But it would be really something if we weren’t quite so activated by words, but could explore
and unpack them and reassemble their meanings in a way that has deep integrity with our life-affirming values.

Maybe a step toward that is co-creating safe enough space that we can all openly use the language and theology that resonates with us, and invite ourselves into open-hearted listening and learning from one another’s faith.

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