REsources for Living
What comes to mind when you hear the word “quest”? Knights of the Round Table riding off in search of the Holy Grail? King Pellinore on his eternal search for the Questing Beast? An ongoing search for perfection, like my lifelong quest for the world’s best lemon bar?
Does a quest have a single goal, like the Holy Grail or the perfectly buttery-tangy lemon bar, or can a quest be more general—a kind of way of life? Perhaps it says a bit too much about my exact age, but for me the words that come to mind in defining a quest are the famous words: “These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise—its continuing mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.”
There you have it. To be on a quest is to be on a mission, to feel like you have a purpose. On a quest you know your life has meaning because you have a goal. Most religious faiths have a tradition of pilgrimages—a kind of religious quest to get to a special holy site. Muslims are expected to journey to Mecca once in their lifetime. Christians might visit the sacred site of Lourdes in France. Jews might go to pray at the Wailing Wall, the last remaining bit of the Temple in Jerusalem. Pagans might go to the great circle of stones at Stonehenge, or to Delphi where the ancient Greek oracles uttered their prophecies.
A pilgrimage to a sacred site can be a wonderful quest to connect your own life to the sacred tradition of your religion. But here’s the thing. Unitarian Universalists don’t really think that any one spot is holier than any other spot. Our tradition pretty much says that the sacred is right here, right now, in everything around you. So where are you going to go on your quest to meet the holy that’s better than where you already are?
Well, the theme words from Star Trek have a suggestion. The purpose of your quest could be the process itself—exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life. Yes, where you are is just as holy as anywhere else, but that doesn’t mean that you should get stuck in a rut. New people can challenge your assumptions, introducing you to ways of thinking that never would have occurred to you on your own. Exploring strange new worlds—that is, worlds that are new and strange to you—reminds you that there is always more to know, and that “truth” is something that can shift in surprising ways.
Our fourth UU Principle says that we affirm and promote “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” This means that being on a quest—a continuing mission to seek out new life—is part of who we are as Unitarian Universalists. Learning and growing is not just what we do, it’s who we are. We’re explorers, even if we don’t have a spaceship available to take us at warp speed to new galaxies. We’re explorers of life, people who might not be on a pilgrimage to a particular holy spot, but who are on a journey nonetheless, recognizing that all the paths we travel and all the people we meet along the way are holy.
More than 20 years ago I wrote a little song which, at the time, I called “Pilgrimage.” The words are from the Sufi poet Rumi, who lived more than 800 years ago. They go like this: “Come, come, whoever you are: wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. Ours is no caravan of despair. Come, yet again, come.”
I think that pretty much sums up our UU quest, our pilgrimage. Everyone is invited on the journey. Whoever you are, join us in our sacred wandering, our joy in leaving behind the tried and true in search of new adventures. Nobody says the journey will be easy, and there will probably be all kinds of trouble on the way, but we carry with us hope, not despair. Anything can happen. We just need to commit to being on the road together.
With luck (and a whole lot of effort), we expect to launch a brand new CLF website soon, at www.questformeaning.org. The CLF is on a quest to be the kind of place that people of all ages can come to for worship, for learning, for chatting with people who care about the things we care about, for comfort when they are sad, for help in planning celebrations like weddings and baby dedications, and, well, for all the things you might want from a UU church—only for everyone, whoever you are, wherever in the world you are, at whatever time of the day or night you might want to get there.
It might be kind of rocky at first, as we figure out what works and what doesn’t. That’s how a quest works. You don’t have to do any part of it perfectly. You just have to set out and keep going. Luckily, we’re all in this journey together. Come, yet again, come.
- REsources for Living - December 1, 2020
- A Fond Goodbye - December 1, 2020
- REsources for Living - November 1, 2020
