In recent months, I have travelled to some professional conferences and made couple of family trips where we had to stay in a hotel. Our accommodations were always nice. There was, in each place, places to eat inside and outside of the hotel. Sometimes, in the room itself, there were not only the standartd coffee maker, but also refrigerators and even a way to warm food.
There was, in none of these places, a kitchen. That’s when I became aware of just how securing the experience of kitchen is. Whether it’s our own home kitchen or the kitchen of a friend that we temporarily enjoy, there is something very securing about what the kitchen is for us. The kitchen is a place of nourishment, of acceptance, of protection, and of centering.
This is also, for me, what Unitarian Universalism provides. The steady inquiry into and work with the world’s Wisdom nourishes me. I know that when I enter my Unitarian-Universalist community not only will I be accepted, but so will everyone else. This is as close to unconditional love that I have ever experienced. Unitarian-Universalsim, by encouragine me to find, explore and live my own path, protects me by telling the rest of the world that this is wha we are each here for and called to do. Finally, whatever the journey has left me with today, whether it is some of deep wisdom or deep wounds, lighting the Chalice and breathing deeply brings me back home, to my self, the Interconned Web of all Existence. Unitarian Universalism has become my religious and spiritual “kitchen.”
Funny isn’t it, how a religion that eschews dogma and doctrine, which tells us to be in search of and explore wisdom in all it’s forms, which will not tell us what to believe, can send us forth into that kind of search and secure us all at once.
