Sunday Adventure

I started my day in a very different way this morning. I set off by myself to a church on the other end of town.

Aside from occasionally accompanying Sylvain to Mass, I haven’t attended any church regularly in about seven years.  When I first moved to Windsor, I was hoping to re-join a congregation of the Religious Society of Friends, but there isn’t one in this city.  Feeling a need for instant community in those early days, I set out on my bicycle on more than one Sunday trying to find a service to sample, but my social anxiety got the better of me. The closest I came was hovering in the door to listen to the organ music and choir. It may sound like a cop-out, but I stopped short of entering one church basing my decision solely on the type of music wafting out through the door.

The other day one of the facilitators of our ACIM circle mentioned that Unity Church is quite compatible with The Course. She said that many who attend that church do The Course, and many who do The Course end up going to that church.

This piqued my interest. I had to find out what it would be like to be in a room full of people with this sort of mind-set.  Many churches have come right out and called ACIM the work of the devil, so I had to find out what type of congregation would embrace it. I took a pen and wrote on my calendar on the next Sunday, “Unity.”

From the minute I walked through the doors of the chapel, I felt good. The usher greeted me with a warm and authentic handshake.  I picked a seat among the concentric circles of pews and began reading the program that had just been handed to me.  Suddenly I felt the warmth of a hand on my back. A woman about 20 years my senior was making her way around the back of my pew to introduce herself.

Warmth.

That’s what I felt there. Lots of human warmth.

I’ve been in churches in the Bible Belt where people fall all over new visitors, but that’s very different from what I experienced this morning. The kind of welcome I got in the some (not all) churches in the South was a sickly sweet welcome that felt superficial.

There is one point in the service when people say hello to those standing nearby. In Sylvain’s church they have this, too. It’s when you wish each other peace and shake hands. The Spiritual Leader let us know ahead of time that this would happen at the end of the next song and suggested that we could shake hands or, if we preferred, we could put palms together and say Namaste (the Spirit in me acknowledged the Spirit in you), or whatever we were comfortable with.

When that time came, I learned very quickly that pretty much nobody settles for Namaste or a handshake. They all hug. Everyone hugs everyone.  Lucky for me, I’m a hugger.  I got a lot of nice warm hugs today.

Coming from one keyboardist and one soloist, the music was amazing. This congregation is blessed to have a singer with a voice every bit as divine as that of Joan Baez. I am not even kidding. I would go back just to hear her sing again… and to see her lovely smile.

I liked the fact that a same-sex couple sat with arms around one another.

And… not to skip the most important part… the sermon was good. Oh, and the five “Unity Principles” written out on the literature that I was given resonate with the way I already look at reality. I notice that different Unity churches word these slightly differently, but I’ll give you the version I was given today:

1. God is absolute good, everywhere present. Many paths lead to the one, loving God.
2. Our essence is of God, and therefore human beings are inherently good. This essence, called the Christ, was fully expressed in Jesus.
3. We create our experiences by the activity of our thoughts. Everything in our lives has its beginning in thought.
4. Prayer and meditation are important ways to heighten our connection with God.
5. Knowing and understanding Unity principles is not enough–we must also live the truth that we know.

When several women approached me after to ensure I was staying for cake and coffee, I felt fine about saying yes.  I did not feel pressured. I did not say yes just to be nice. I really wanted to stay a while.

That experience sticks out in my mind in how it differs from the experience I had while attending Quaker Meeting when I lived in Toronto for 14 weeks for school.  There I was showing up week after week, often staying after Meeting to join the line for a bowl of soup, often settling down on a comfortable chair in the parlor with people chatting all around me. Yet nobody ever asked my name or how I came to be there or whether I would come back again. In my experience, Quakers are very hands-off.

The same woman who had put a warm hand on my back earlier was now showing me around. Here is the coffee, here are the plates, come sit with us.  I sat with her and two others.

By the time I finished eating and visiting, poor Sylvain was about to go bonkers. I had promised I would call him after the service so we could decide whether to meet for brunch. It was very late by the time I called and the poor guy was starving. We met at Velvet and I told him all about it.

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