When I was in my teens my staunchly Methodist mother said, “I’m sure I could experience God in any worship space of any tradition.” This surprised me. My church youth group had Jewish, Unitarian (this was before the Unitarians and Universalists merged in 1961), Roman Catholic, Presbyterian and other guest speakers who explained their traditions to us. They sometimes sounded strange. When we visited other places of worship they seemed very different from our church.

By the time I spent my college junior year in France my theology had dissolved into agnosticism. Then my yearabroad group visited Chartres Cathedral. Something happened to me: I was stunned to silence by the stone pillars and mysterious blue light. What had inspired human beings to create such intricate numinous space so many centuries ago? If it inspired them, what thread in the human soul tied me to ancestors, to the past, to a spiritual inheritance, and sustained my life? I knew something in me had shifted but couldn’t confront it. But for the rest of my year in France I was inexplicably drawn into cathedrals. Though my body remained standing or seated, my soul bowed down before something I could not name or comprehend.

In time I found Unitarian Universalism, a home for my restless spirit, where I could explore my growing faith without embracing any doctrine, and in time ministry called me. By then I could not imagine that spirit, love and truth could be confined to any one way of believing. For my Unitarian Universalist ordination, a Jewish friend commissioned a stole, woven in blue and white rabbinic-looking stripes and embroidered with blowing wheat. A Roman Catholic Sister of Notre Dame prayed. My half-Jewish daughter told a story about a rabbi who embodied God’s love. A Catholic and an Episcopal priest led the laying on of hands. My Unitarian Universalist minister preached the sermon extolling an ecumenical spirit.

And so it is. Every time I step into the worship space of someone’s tradition, I look around. I let it sink in. Once in a while there’s a Chartres experience. I don’t understand everything I see and hear in these spaces. But I don’t understand much when I pray, either, or lead worship from a UU pulpit, or sit with people exploring their spiritual lives. I know this openness to the ways in which others experience the holy enriches my heart, my mind, my spirit. I wonder if I would have opened up in that way, had my mother not one day said, “I’m sure I could experience God in any worship space of any tradition.”

Thank you, Mother.

The Rev. Karen Lewis Foley offers spiritual direction and retreats, and writes. She is a member of the Brunswick Unitarian Universalist Church. She can be reached atrevKLFoley@comcast.net

¦ Local clergy wishing to write should contact Lois Hart at lhart@gwi.net. Lay ministers as well as ordained clergy may contribute.

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