Two weeks ago, I talked about sustainability, the first of three reflections on that subject. As I was considering what sustains me in this journey through life, I realized — with a “Duh!” — that religion might maybe sustain me. Notice the hedging! I was not prepared to say, without qualification, that religion sustains me. After all, I think of myself as being a staunch humanist! Then, again, I am a minister. Shouldn’t religion be something that sustains me? And, shouldn’t religion also sustain us all as an institution — a faith community that we call San Gabriel Unitarian Universalist Fellowship?

I did not get into the heart of any of that last week. I talked about religious language instead. There were several reasons for my doing that — including that I thought a “primer” or an introduction to how Unitarian Universalists use words (or don’t!) might be useful before I went any deeper into religion, the word and the concept. Then, I had a conversation with a born-again Christian and I was bemused by how relevant that was and also grateful that I had postponed the “Religion: Why Bother?” reflections for a week…. God works in mysterious ways, right?! Hmmm…. I don’t exactly believe that. Nor do I necessarily believe that “everything happens for a reason”! And, there I am again, right back to hedging my bets about religion.

As I said in “The Messenger” last week, my pondering of religion led me to a book titled Why Religion? that I had been intending to read for some time. The author, Elaine Pagels, wrestles with her conflicted thoughts about religion and why it is still a factor in human life well into the twenty-first century. Should we Unitarian Universalists be paying more attention to what religion is, while defining it within the framework of our stories and experiences? Are we even capable of looking at the word religion more objectively than we have in the past? Does religion comfort us or challenge us or basically just confuse us — or all of the above? Join me this week to contemplate what the place of religion might be in today’s world.