Bob and his wife Sue have been members of MDUUC since 2005. Bob is a prison reform activist –– using his training as a lawyer –– as well as a teacher and amateur actor. Bob served on the Ministerial Search Committee, 2007-08, and Sue is a valuable volunteer in the church office and member of the Finance Committee.
I am a dedicated introvert and I have the test score to prove it. Early in our time together the members of the Ministerial Search Committee all took the Myers Briggs personality test and I scored, well, introvert. I confess that on my really reclusive days if I hear the phrase “social networking,” my first thought is “the bubonic plague.”
Obviously, it’s often hard for us introverts to feel a connection with others. In December, 2004, tsunamis flooded land throughout the Indian Ocean, killing over 200 thousand people and destroying hundreds of villages. The truth is I didn’t care, not really. Oh, I shook my head and murmured sympathy, but the horror of this tragedy didn’t touch me very deeply. I had little or no sense that the victims were “my people.” Fast forward to August, 2005 when Katrina hit the city I grew up in. This time I felt the suffering and loss of the victims, and felt it more deeply than can be explained by the fact that I lived there 40 years ago. Why the difference?
One reason is my discovery of fellow UUs whose words and lives affirm our connectedness with each other, who gave me a vision of community –– that word that sends shivers up introverts’ spines. People like Theodore Parker, who broke the law to welcome into his church a fellow human being whom the law could see only as a slave. Parker and many others have shown me what our shared humanity means, and offered me a vision of a faith lived by embracing that humanity.
But this vision might not have resonated with me except for the experience of being a part of this community. By the time of Katrina’s destruction I had been to many of these Sunday morning gatherings celebrating openness and inclusion, compassion and justice. And I had worked together with others on committees –– who knew that could be transformative –– especially with the members of the Search Committee who, despite my documented introversion, welcomed me as a contributor to its work. Through all of that and coffee hours and shared meals and classes and conversation I have found community here. You are my people.
My experience here and in the larger world of Unitarian Universalism at large woke me from the introvert’s dream of separateness and left me open to being nudged –– prodded by that insistent, sometimes aggravating, always holy urge –– to seek community beyond these walls. That nudge ultimately led me to work for the men and women who live inside our prisons and jails. It has been a privilege and a joy to join with others working for justice and the humanity of those who have been banished from our larger community and forgotten. To stand with them because their humanity is also mine. Because they, too, are my people. We are for each other. You taught me that. That lesson and the nudge that goes with it are precious gifts, for which this introvert will always be grateful.
