by Lindy Gifford,
I grew up Unitarian Universalist. By high school I had stopped attending church—in buildings—and for many years, nature was my only church. When our two daughters were small, we joined the Midcoast Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Damariscotta, Maine, and I have been a member ever since.
Unitarian Universalism draws wisdom from many sources, including scripture, science, poetry, humanist thinkers, and personal experience. I am sustained by all of the six sources of Unitarian Universalism, but the one that speaks most to me personally is the first:
The direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life."
For much of my life, this sense of something mysterious and wonderful has come over me most often through my own experience. On hikes and canoes, on walks with a beloved dog, looking into the eyes of our newborn daughters. It has always been gorgeous, very hard to describe, strangely familiar, and elusive. Like the memory of a lost paradise. But always it births “a renewal of the spirit” in me.
The more I pay attention to life and the miracle it truly is, the more I understand that paradise was never in fact lost—just forgotten. And it is not somewhere else, but all around us, all the time, right here, right now. Not just in peak experiences and not just in nature. Not just in a newborn’s eyes, but in everyone’s eyes, could we but see it. We only need to remember—remember what we actually already know. And I believe that each of us must come to that in our own way, by our own path.
The full text and a podcast of Remembering the Mystery and Wonder are featured in the July/August Quest Monthly, a publication of the Church of the Larger Fellowship, “a Unitarian Universalist Congregation Without Walls.”
Lindy Gifford lives on, and learns from, the Damariscotta River. She is the mother of two smart, independent daughters and has been successfully married for 38 years. She has worked as an archeologist, photographer, artist, and graphic designer and was ordained an interfaith chaplain in 2015 by the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine (ChIME). She is Reflectionary editor, the author of Doodle-ography Journal doodle-ography.com, and soul proprietor of manifestidentity.com, helping people publish books and websites.
Photograph of sunset on Pemaquid Beach by Lindy GiffordPhotograph of Lindy on the Damariscotta River by Angie Arndt
