Reverend Jennifer Nordstrom

consciousness laced through and among all matter. For me, God is the vibration—the wave—that moves through matter. God is within me and beyond me, among all things. God is energy that cannot be created or destroyed, but moves through everything, constantly changing form. I believe this interconnected energy is conscious, but its consciousness is beyond my own understanding; it encompasses and moves through the entire universe. What I know of this God I experience in my limited consciousness as love, compassion, deep peace, and bliss. I see it acting in the world through compassion, empathy, generosity, desire, playfulness, beauty, majesty, harmony, comfort, and love. I believe God wants living beings to enjoy life, to love, and to live full, connected lives. If we are listening, God calls us into our best lives through desire. Desire is that little lure in one’s body, the interest, aliveness, connection, draw to something. It is the hope for deeper connection to and understanding of the unity of all being. When I am paying attention, I can feel a pull into a river of flow that moves through me and many things at once. I am comfortable translating my understanding of this thing I call God through various theologies and language-ings.

I have yet to encounter a Unitarian Universalist theology that feels alien to me. One of the reasons I am a Unitarian Universalist is because of its insistence on holding diverse theologies in a container of shared values. Having moved through a number of theologies myself, Unitarian Universalism is the only tradition I have found that can comfortably hold all of my own theological variety. I want to serve a theologically diverse group of people, meeting them where they are on their journey of belief and practice. I have consistently learned from our peoples' diverse theological wisdom, and believe complexity and diversity makes us more resilient as a community. I have noticed that some UU theologies object to the use of the word God, but my experience has been that when we actually start to talk about meaning, there is a huge amount of common ground. Within Unitarian Universalism, I deal with these sorts of discrepancies by being clear about what I mean, being comfortable when people disagree with me, and looking at how our values are shared. I serve people of diverse theological understandings by focusing on our shared values and asking open, curious questions about both shared and divergent meanings. I currently serve the primarily and strongly humanist congregation at Third Unitarian Church, and have found our relationship to be one of mutual learning and joy. For instance, one of the members of Third Unitarian Church is resistant to theism and attuned to language. She has come to me a couple of times concerned about language I have used, and I have listened to her. I asked her about her concern, and about where in her history the upset was originating. We have talked about what the words mean to her, and what they mean to me. I have listened to her, as well as explained the concepts I am referencing when I choose language in a worship service. These conversations have settled her discomfort with my language choices in worship, deepened our understanding of one another, and opened up a space of curiosity in her about different interpretations of language. She has told me that she is comfortable with my language choices now, because she trusts me and has a clearer understanding of what I mean. Our conversations have helped me understand her history more deeply, and have connected me with what she cares about and why. In our conversations she has moved beyond reacting to previously troubling words and concepts and has developed a curiosity about variations of those concepts and what possibilities those alternative interpretations might open in her life and the community.

Humanity is the species within this great river of interconnection with the greatest capacity for complex thought. We can explore these sorts of questions together. Whether or not we share beliefs, in the interconnected web of all existence we are bound to one another. Whatever happens to one of us, the effects are distributed throughout the web. No individual can step out of the interconnection and escape the effects of harm done. Concomitantly, love and care also get distributed through the network of mutuality. Process theologian Catherine Keller calls this “sticky justice” in her book On the Mystery. Our human capacity for complex thought means we are capable of understanding this interconnected reality, and acting on our understanding. In philosophy, they call this concept enlightened self-interest. When we look broadly, we see our self-interest and the interest of the whole are aligned: acting in the interest of the whole is acting in the interest of the self because we are irrevocably tied to the whole. Everything that gives us life comes from the interdependent web of existence. We can choose to lovingly give back to the web and build a world that affords the possibility of life, beauty, comfort, joy and freedom for ourselves and all creatures. We can also choose to ignore the web, or do harm to it, mistakenly thinking we can separate ourselves from that harm. Whatever we choose to put into the river of life, we are the ones who drink it, because it is our life source. Our capacity for complex thought means we can understand that we are obligated to one another as humans and to the entire web of existence. It is our work to continuously recognize this mutual obligation and to pour love and beauty into our existence.