I experience God as the indescribable, self-surpassing reality that is with us, in us and for us; that which we cannot name that bids us to love beyond all human reason. Our encounter with this reality is what we call spirit, and our spirits always matter; our spirits never die—because our spirits are full-fledged members of this self-surpassing reality. When our human time ends, we become part of all that ever was and ever will be.
But it is more than God for me. In truth, theologically, I want it all: the Bible for the wisdom it contains through poetry, song and folk tales; the best of my Catholic upbringing (virtue as a strength; stay close to the divine); Earl Morse Wilbur’s “freedom, reason and tolerance”; the wisdom of other world religions, especially Hinduism and Buddhism, as well as earth-centered traditions; and I want what feminism and ecowomanism teach us about nurturing each other and loving nature. I want what humanism wrests from our corporeal existence to find a sort of heaven-worthy meaning—a theology seeking to be as good as God. Most of all, I want those Seven Principles shot through with the Six Sources of our living tradition.
I call this theology Unitarian Universalism: the oneness of goodness and the goodness of all.
To elaborate: the oneness of goodness means there is something benevolent at the core of all reality—and beyond—and that we are all a part of this one reality, each to each connected by love. The goodness of all means we come from love and that one day, after the humanly obvious parts of us are gone, we return to love. What that love actually is remains a deep, deep mystery. But there is no original sin, only original love.
And so, in short, to me, Unitarianism means we love each other.
And Universalism means you are loved.