Across the country, today or one of these winter Sundays, Canadian Unitarian Universalists are taking "Sharing Our Faith" as the theme for their Sunday Service. The Canadian Unitarian Council, CUC for short, which is the organization uniting 50 or so Canadian Unitarian Universalist congregations, encourages the use of this theme as part of its long-range plan. One of the goals of that plan is

To raise our collective consciousness about our strengths as a religious movement and empower our members to feel confident in their identity as Unitarians or Unitarian Universalists.

This morning's service, then, is about who we are religiously and how we can feel pride in sharing that identity, as well as how we can best make our existence and our identity known to others.

Last year when I spoke on this theme, I called it "Sharing the Faith", but I acknowledged that I had a little trouble talking about "the faith". It's not so much the word "faith" that bothers me -- I understand that as indicating "what we believe", not involving "blind" faith. It's more that I'm uneasy with the use of the singular -- "the" faith, as if our beliefs were a single entity, when in fact we are so diverse in our views. This year, though, it's "Sharing Our Faith," which I'm taking to mean our personal, unique faith. I tend to think that as a congregation we have many faiths and are followers of many religions.

I think, though, that it's possible to discern what one ancient document from our Unitarian heritage called "things commonly believed among us", which give us our identity. At the very core of those commonly-held beliefs is the welcoming of diversity. That may be the one faith we hold together, a faith that it's all right to believe differently from one another and to live differently from one another, that it's even a good thing, because it means we're each searching for truth and not accepting someone else's beliefs.

If you were at the Annual Congregational Meeting last Sunday, you heard me say that I think we have to expect not only frequent disagreements but even conflicts in our life together, because we care passionately about our beliefs and they're often different from those of the person sitting next to us. We don't try to gloss over those differences, we celebrate them as making possible the conversations which move each one of us a little further on in our search for truth and meaning.

While my difficulty with last year's title has now dissolved, I suspect that for some of you there may still be a difficulty with the concept of sharing our faith. It's all right if we just mean that we hold some beliefs in common here, that we share a common outlook, but "sharing" may also suggest evangelism to you, proselytizing, even a kind of pressure which is at odds with our principle of tolerance and respect for other people's faiths. It might mean being visible in the community as an unusually diverse crowd of people, even as rather odd. Suggesting that we should share our faith may also provoke all kinds of anxiety in those of us who have a hard time expressing our feelings about anything more personal than last week's Super Bowl game or what's the best place for a winter vacation.

While I respect the reservations we may have about sharing our faith with others too loudly or forcefully, I want to repeat what I've said before about why I think we need to share it: there are many spiritually homeless people out there (and perhaps in here, too), and just like the physically homeless, most of them crave a warm place of their own, a shelter from the winter chill, walls that are strong to keep hate out and hold love in. We have that here, but most of the religiously homeless don't know about us. The desire to share, the sense that we need to share, comes from a recognition of our own abundant good fortune in having a spiritual home and a hope that others might be similarly blessed. When you've got something good, don't hug it to yourself, pass it on!

Two weeks ago I asked the discussion group which gathered after the service to give me the benefit of their thoughts on sharing our faith, and although we only had a very short time for it they came up with some helpful ideas which tended to confirm the importance of passing on the good thing that we have here . Someone pointed out how much easier it is to open up about our beliefs when other people do, and while this could mean never being the first to mention religion, it might also be a reminder to us to keep our ears open for opportunities to share. If your neighbour is discussing local issues with you, for instance, you might be able to say, "We were talking about that at Unitarian House last week," clearing the way for further conversation.

If you find it easier to be subtle and indirect, you might like to use symbolic ways of being visible and present in the community -- a discreet UU sticker on your car, wearing a CUC pin, maybe even one of those rainbow triangles which affirms our celebration of diversity in sexual orientation.

Most of those in the discussion group agreed that our acceptance of diverse points of view means that we're definitely not about persuading others to our beliefs, but that we do have opportunities, even a responsibility, to make people aware that there's this "alternative faith community" in K-W. We can support the publicity provided by our newspaper advertisements, our yellow pages listing and our sign outside, by our own readiness to mention our congregation's existence and location and the fact that we're part of it, that being a Unitarian is part of who we are. Several people mentioned that they'd been in this area for years before they found out that there was this free-thinking congregation here, and how much they regretted those unaware years. One member had a good Unitarian friend, who for years didn't mention her congregation or her beliefs -- when she finally did, it was a wonderful revelation, but it could have been wonderful much sooner! We can help make sure that doesn't happen to other people; we can get the word out that we exist, who and where we are, and what we stand for. As the Minister of the Winnipeg congregation said, way back in 1912,

What is our duty? Shall we sit down and congratulate ourselves that we are wiser than the majority? Shall we idly dream of the decay of creeds and complacently wait for the broader religion of the future? Shall we say we are few and feeble and creep like grasshoppers in the sight of the giants of orthodoxy? Or shall we learn the secret and deliver the message of a new evangelism? ... Let us not be the slaves of Unitarian traditions, but the leaders of a world-embracing ..... religion.

That quotation, by the way, comes from a play for voices about our history, called Turning Points, which was presented at the CUC Annual Meeting last May, with our own Lee Dickey participating, and which is another great way of sharing our faith among ourselves -- we hope to present it here, too, in the near future. (And by the way: the CUC Annual Meeting this year is in Calgary, on the Victoria Day weekend as always, and about 300 representatives of our roughly 5000 Canadian Unitarians will be there, sharing our faith. Maybe you'd be interested in being part of those meetings -- let me know if you are!)

Just suppose you're in general agreement that sharing our faith is a good thing, with your own personal perspective on how publicly or privately, loudly or quietly, you might go about that, it will be as well, I think (in fact I believe it's quite fundamental and vital), to ask yourself what our faith, your faith, actually is. Accepting that there are as many answers here as there are people in this room, it's still possible to talk about those things commonly believed among us, and most notably the Principles and Purposes which we've covenanted, as a congregation, to affirm and promote. Even the seven Principles, though, don't provide the kind of concise and succinct statement of faith that many of us would like to be able to express. I've thought long and hard, as I'm sure some of you have, about how to share my faith simply, in a way which not only reflects my individual convictions but says something true about who we are collectively as Unitarian Universalists. Now, when someone asks me what our faith is all about I say,

"Our central Principle is a free and responsible search for truth and meaning, and we meet to support and encourage one another in that search."

I'd never want to absolve you of the responsibility for deciding on your own statement of faith, but just in case you'd like to consider adapting this one, because it's in a form that's easy to share, I'll say it again:

"Our central Principle is a free and responsible search for truth and meaning, and we meet to support and encourage one another in that search."

For many of us the primary reason that we're in the Unitarian Universalist congregation is that here we welcome all who freely seek truth. If we're free thinkers, we're welcome here as we may not have been welcome in other churches. You perhaps know, if you're not a born UU, what a wonderful discovery that was for you -- that here was a place you could be yourself, in all your questioning and doubting, your individuality and independence. I wonder how you found out about it -- maybe a lucky few of you saw a sign that advertised Unitarian House as a centre of liberal religion, but most of you probably owe your discovery to a friend. I think an important part of sharing our faith is making it as literally visible as possible. "Everywhere we go, we're gonna let it shine!"

The second adjective in this central Unitarian Universalist Principle, "responsible," often gets overlooked. The search in which we engage as is not only free but responsible, and I suggest that this part of the principle deserves more attention than it usually gets. We may not even have very much idea of how responsibility and freedom go together, especially how the one affects the other.

How do we act responsibly in our search for truth and meaning without limiting our freedom to search? In a way, I think the coupling of freedom and responsibility in our religious quest is the next step on from the acceptance and encouragement of one another which is our third principle. In many, perhaps most, of our congregations (and across Canada those congregations spread from St.John's, Newfoundland, to Victoria, B.C.) there are varying levels of tension between the diverse elements among the members and friends. I remember hearing about a UU Pagan who gave a talk on paganism; the Programme Committee followed it with one called "Why I Am Not a Pagan". The Pagan found that response insulting, but as a local newspaper reported, "Among Unitarian Universalists debates are not only a way of life but the way to spiritual growth."

My guess is that the members who arranged the follow-up talk felt that they had a responsibility to give the other side of the picture, and that the freedom on which we insist for ourselves as individual seekers can only work for us as members of a congregation if we make it our responsibility to look at the other side (or sides -- there are usually many). The diversity of views in our congregations can lead either to friction and divisiveness or to growth and a more nurturing faith. "Which it will be in your congregation", one experienced observer has said,"depends in large measure on the willingness ..... to confront the issue (of diversity) boldly and openly." We have a responsibility to deal with the diversity which freedom produces, not to shy away from it. Avoiding our differences may make for comfort, but it doesn't encourage us to move along in our free search for truth and meaning.

A vital part of our identity, of who we are, is our open disagreement with one another on many things, and our faith that the love we have for one another overrides even the deepest of differences, without ever neutralizing them. The responsibility which goes along with religious freedom is the responsibility to speak from our hearts, honestly and directly, knowing that it may get us into trouble (and this goes for the members and for the Minister), knowing that it may offend some people and that not everyone will agree with us, not even feeling that they should agree with us, but knowing that, as Emerson said, the gift we have to share with each other is our faith, our life passed through the fire of our thought.

Another congregation I know about has friction between those who are enthusiastic about growth in numbers and those who feel that the inner, spiritual growth of the current membership is more important. Their minister encourages members to voice their discomfort and seeks, she says, to "give everyone permission to come out of the closet with their beliefs." And this, I believe, is a responsibility we have in our free faith: to be true to ourselves, to voice our feelings and our convictions, to come out of the hiding places in which we've been keeping our beings and our beliefs, to dare to share them with each other in the trust that this is a place of acceptance and celebration of one another at the same time that it may be one of disagreement and difference.

A teacher of theology has observed that "giving voice to deeply held beliefs can be a transformative experience." Maybe you've noticed, yourself, that when you make the effort to put your thoughts into words you not only feel freer but also more aware of what you really think. Sharing our faith happens, I believe, when we struggle to articulate our faith, for our own benefit as well as for others. Most of us are not mindreaders, and we're grateful for the openness which helps us discover what our fellow members believe, which encourages the sharing of our faith.

The sharp theological distinctions between us are fading, and what seems to be evolving is a "new humanism" -- one that maintains the naturalistic insights of traditional humanism but is softer-edged and more open to a sense of awe, mystery and wonder. That may be part of what makes it especially attractive for gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people who still don't feel welcome in more traditional churches to come to Unitarian Universalism --if they know we exist, if they can find us. We have a responsibility, I believe, to go out of our way to offer a home to all those who yearn for religion without dogma, to put out the welcome mat for them. Because this is our faith, this is what we stand for as individual Unitarian Universalists, as members and friends of this congregation, as part of the Canadian Unitarian Council, and as part of the wider movement of free religion.

Our central principle is a free and responsible search for truth and meaning, and we meet to support and encourage one another in that search. That's what our faith is about. Let's share it ever more widely, with one another and with as many people of all sorts and conditions as we possibly can. May we be helped to draw circles which take each other in rather than keep each other out. May the circles reach wider and wider. May we share the faith. So may it be.