The poet Edwin Markham, who was born in 1852, and became the poet laureate of Oregon from 1923-1931, was invited to read his poem “Lincoln, Man of the People” at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in 1922.
But UUs most often remember him for a tiny little poem that expresses his Universalist beliefs in love that is big enough to include everyone—and offers a radical understanding of belonging. The poem, called “Outwitted,” says:

He drew a circle that shut me out—
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!

Think about what the poem says: He wanted to shut me out and say that I didn’t belong. He said that my beliefs made me someone who had to be pushed away. But because I live from a place of love, I did something very clever and sneaky—I found a way to include and welcome him, even when he wasn’t willing to include or welcome me.

That’s Universalism—love big enough to offer belonging to every human soul. Not because everyone is like us or even necessarily likeable, but because Love is big enough to include everyone.

There are gifts that

come of breathing,

that come of blood

driving through veins,

no charge. Just being. 

One is the noise of existence. 

Another is when the noise stops.

After the theater 

of the self has closed; 

after the season of the self 

goes to reruns, music 

begins, slow, silent. 

Then, you hear . . .

it was the thought itself

that created the chains,

the blinders. When the 

mis en scene is struck,

gifts come, without 

breath, without blood. 

Thinking of it
is your first
mistake. A

scurry caught
in the corner
of a cat’s eye–

did it dart
down that hole,
that, or that?

One thing for
certain–it
won’t come

back to sure,
after you catch
a scurry out

of the corner . . .
Then you’re a
cat peering

down that
crack, that,
and that. No

it won’t come
back, that relax
in old after the

cat’s seen
the scurry of . . .
doubt. There’s

a hole, a fissure,
a crack there.
Bat at it!

There. There.

I’m just not willing to choose only one.

I have been a student of religion all my life, it seems. But I have lived in worlds that press me to choose. I attend a Christian seminary. I have been in a “goddess group” of Wiccans.  I honor humanism. I have had the holy joy of worshiping with Muslims, with Pagans, with Protestants, with Catholics, with Jews, with Hare Krishnas.

Sometimes, kind practitioners of one particular religion or another will profess that they know what I truly am (and it is always what they are). I take these as compliments, for I know they are intended that way.

Others are not so complimentary. Mine is a deliberately syncretic faith. “Syncretism,” to many in exclusivist religions, is a heresy, an un-holy mess, something to be avoided at all costs.

Well-meaning people will explain that it doesn’t matter what I choose, but I must choose, and only one. Only then can I go truly deep into a religion.

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