Interfaith

This year as in others, we will be offering a special program for families who are facing interfaith issues, particularly during the November/December holiday season.. For many of us who have become active as Unitarian Universalists out of another faith tradition, we can find ourselves religiously challenged by parents, siblings, children, spouses, partners, cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and our own past. With each other's support, we seek and celebrate the uniqueness of our relationships with the people in our lives. INTERFAITH FAMILIES AND THE WINTER HOLIDAYS

Interfaith families may be the norm rather than the exception among us. Not only Jewish and Christian families of origin, but when parents are from widely divergent branches of either Judaism or Christianity, or western, African, native American, far eastern, south Asian or middle eastern backgrounds. Religious differences often are more complex when combined with language or racial elements. The United States is becoming the most multifaith country in the world. Many families come to this congregation specifically because we honor the religious journeys of each person. We do not attempt to "convert" people out of the continuity of their personal spiritual development. Children have the opportunity to honor the pathways of both parents while they discover and create their own personal religious orientation. As a religious community we live at the meeting place of our world spiritual heritage seeking to sponsor each individual in the context of a global religious citizenship. The holidays bring out the oldest levels of our religious enculturation, not so much intellectual but emotional. Gatherings around Menorah or Christmas Tree transport us back to grandmother's knee and intimate family experiences, giving us affective perspectives on how much our lives have changed. Holidays often provoke feelings of loss and grief particularly when we realize our children may be strangers to experiences so intimate in our own stories.

See the "Current Events" page where we post dates and times of the Interfaith Circle for discussing our anticipations of the winter holidays ahead. We have found these circles exceedingly valuable for parents to listen to each other's experiences for negotiating the holidays for their households, how they relate to their families of origin, how they interpret and develop traditions for their childrennister to their own spiritual health and that of their partner. All are welcome to attend this meeting whatever may be the interfaith constellation of your family(, how they mis). And consider, if you do well in your celebrations of the holidays, that others can benefit from your insights and experiences.

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