I have been a ULC minister for 12 years now. I was sitting at work talking with a friend when he mentioned that he was going to be giving a class in Reiki. I had just seen a documentary on it not long before and was interested. I asked him what it was and he said, "Have you ever held your hands together and then apart and you can feel something between them, even though you can't see it?" I said that I had. "That's pretty much what Reiki is." Needless to say I went to the class and in a few months time was a Reiki Master, which I thought was really cool! But I was also now a ULC minister and I had no idea what that meant, other than the "We believe that everyone has the right to worship their own God in their own way..." which I had no objection to, and actually applauded. Within a matter of months I had preformed my first wedding, first of seven or eight now. It was a change for me since I had grown up Catholic though really didn't believe, and as for most of the other Christian denominations was totally turned off. Judaism sounded cool and I still have a great respect for it, but now know it's not my answer. Neither is Buddhism though I have a small Buddhist shrine in my bedroom and often like to sit in front of it and meditate. It just seemed like no matter what faith I found there was always something that wasn't quite right and didn't sit well with me. For a long time I blamed the religions, but I realize now that's like blaming a dogs for barking or biting, it's just what they do. A bit harder to wack them on the nose with a news paper, though. Religions are collections of people who believe in a similar philosophy of the Divine and when one speaks of the Divine, things tend to get heated thus; religious wars, matyrdom, dues and tithes, scriptures which makes one feel horrible about themselves, and wrong ideas being accepted as dogma in the absence of truth (or even a better idea). It comes down to power.
I'm done. No more bashing of religions for me, I was just making a point. The fault didn't lie with the religion, the fault lay with me. How can so many people agree on what they believe the Divine to be when the Divine is Everything? Forget the rock and the tree, try looking up to the stars and seeing the womb of a Creator who gave us a place to exist where we could exist, seperate and apart from the Great Totality, the Absolute Truth. I've always told my friends and strangers when they asked what religion I was that "I'm not anything exclusively". I believe I was led to this faith, the inclusive faith, which not only allows for multiple personal imaginings of God but encourages them. There should be nothing taken away from a person who wants or needs the communion with an "authorized religion" but God save me from such a fate. My truth does not reside in a building or a book or even, dare I speak such blasphemy, a website. I have been truly blessed to realize that my truth lies within myself, God lies within me, and also to have been accepted into an organization like the ULC. So that's how I got here.
