Breathe, Just Breathe

I’ve returned from the Association of Unitarian Universalist Music Ministries (AUUMM) conference in Atlanta, and it was one of the most remarkable five days I’ve ever spent in my faith.

(There’s some insider UU stuff, but a bigger message emerges for readers outside Unitarian Universalism, so stick around.)

After several years of challenges, AUUMM’s organizational and conference leadership has steered us to a place of much better organization, focus, and hope. We who have been around a bit knew this going in.

We didn’t know just how much it would matter to our experience at conference.

From the very start on Wednesday evening, through closing circle after worship on Sunday, something incredible-magic-holy-spirit-we-were-a-murmuration-healing-powerful-holy-shit-we-kept-crying-it-was-so-meaningful-and-real-and-good-and-caring-and-connective happened.

Over and over again, I saw people deeply listening to one another (and was part of those conversations). We were hugging, and laughing, and never in the same configurations because there was always someone new to talk to, to engage with, to sing with, to conspire with, to be with. Some people remembered to document the moments and took pictures that shimmered with gold and amethyst and silver that may or may not have been the light.

We sang with our whole bodies, taking cues from each other as though we were conducted by our hearts and the truth. We trusted the energy in the room, trusted each other, trusted the moment.

There’s something still ineffable and indescribable about what happened last week, that to me is a piece of what I think is about a bigger something that’s happening for our entire faith; I have been describing it as a Pentecost moment, although I’m not sure that is exactly the right language to use. But something is about to break open in the most beautiful of ways - something that will help us meet this terrible moment that we find ourselves facing. Last time we faced fascism, it was humanism that broke through and transformed us. I don’t know what it is this time. But I know - I feel - there’s something. And I’m not the only one. I’m having these conversations with others, and I hear of them happening. There’s something about to break open, even if we can’t quite define it yet.

What I do know is that - in the words of one of my more cynical colleagues - our religious professionals are more ready for it than our lay folk. And it could be a real struggle; we already saw some of that in our work toward the changes in Article II to redefine our purposes as a set of values rather than a list of principles.

This year’s AUUMM conference brings me a bit more hope now.

Because as I have long said, we sing our theology, and these incredible musicians who lead music in our congregations are singing and playing and teaching the theology we need right now - and more, they believe it. They felt it. They know it in their bones. They connected with it last week on a molecular level, and over and over, they keep posting about how their experience of the conference changed and energized them. And they are the ones bringing music every Sunday to worship, getting everyone to sing these songs and these words and this theology.

And because they believe it, they just might get others to loosen a bit and begin to believe it too.

The rest of us have to relax our grip and trust for just a moment, please, can we just release the stranglehold that our fake fights and anxieties over the small things have on each other, and instead…

Let us instead…

And know that …

Because love finds all of us, just as we are, just where we are.

How about we let go and let something incredible-magic-holy-spirit-healing-powerful-meaningful-and-real-and-good-and-caring-and-connective happen for all of us.

And then share that with others. Be that love that others need too.