Imperfect Genius

The second largest annual gathering of UUs is happening right now in my backyard. Well, not literally, but it’s pretty close - only 45 minutes away.

SUUSI, or if you prefer the long version, Southeast Unitarian Universalist Summer Institute, is a gathering of approximately 1,000 attendees who come to the mountains of Virginia for one week in July to share an environment of love, personal freedom, ethics, and joy in an intentional, nonjudgmental community.

In the words of one attendee:

…SUUSI was a huge first for me in many ways. Not only my first SUUSI, it was my first retreat of any sort. It was the first time I’ve ever shared my spirituality with a community. It was my first extended interaction with strangers in three years. It was my first real UU participation. These things I knew, but it turns out that SUUSI was a first for me in ways that I never could have imagined.

I have lived my life in a bitter, cynical world full of bitter, cynical people. This is what I have known, and for all my worldly viewpoints, this is what I believed that all people have known. I never could have conceived that such a thing as SUUSI could exist. I could never have been prepared for what I would find when I pulled onto that campus.

I found myself Friday night at a local pizza joint trying to explain to one of my bitter, cynical friends exactly what it is that I found. Try as I might, despite all my over-developed skills of articulation, I could not communicate in words this thing I now carry inside myself. “It’s a social club,” he said. “It’s a chat room without computers.” In the world he lives in, the world I so recently inhabited, there is no context for understanding it. There is no frame of reference to give it meaning. Last night, I was speaking to one of my less-bitter, less-cynical friends and I was able to convey it in a word. I found beauty. I found people who see beauty in life. And now my life can never be the same.

It has been a week back in the Real World, and my head is still spinning. It looks the same. It sounds the same. I have the same apartment with the same cats and the same messy kitchen. I have the same parents, the same friends, and the same neighbors. But everything is different now. I have this force inside me, this connection, and it will not rest. It dances, it leaps, it twirls. And it sings, oh how it sings.

My old life is quite simply inadequate now. I have no choice but to orient my life around this amazing new thing I have found. I don’t have the slightest idea how that will happen at this point, but I have faith that it is inevitable. New places, new jobs, new people, and somewhere a congregation that I can finally call home… perhaps. We shall see what shows up. But whatever may or may not come, I cannot escape a single, pervading feeling: I have only just begun.

I told several of you that when I discovered the SUUSI website, I declared myself a UU and signed up. But I think I got it backwards. I think I signed up and then during SUUSI I became a Unitarian Universalist. You have indeed given me your treasures, and I do love you so. Thank you, from every part of my soul, thank you. - Chris

Although this person is speaking about a specific experience, to one degree or another these words describe all the intentional UU gatherings that I’ve been to. When I returned from Womenspirit last year I was at loss of words to describe the incredible things I experienced there. In fact, I had a very hard time talking about it at all because tears formed in my eyes, not from sadness, but from the sheer joy of finding such a wonderful, loving community.

I know people probably thought I was a little strange because I couldn’t finish a conversation about it without needing to find a tissue, but it was a very powerful, life-affirming experience that cannot be fully expressed in words.

Another attendee shared this view:

SUUSI gives us the “simple gift” of an amazing glimpse into who we can be at our best… what life would be like if we lived as our best selves. - Ethel-Marie

As an adult I had become accustomed to the cynicism and negativity expressed so often in our culture. I often felt like I had “wrong planet syndrome” wherein I couldn’t relate what I thought life should be like to what was actually happening around me. I wasn’t even aware of what “my best self” looked like.

I didn’t know how truly beautiful life could be until I experienced a UU retreat. It was there I discovered the community I had longed for. My spirit blossomed during those five days, and it restored not only my faith in humanity, but in my own ability to carve out a meaningful existence for myself and my family.

I came home from Womenspirit carrying love, laughter, gentleness, and reverence in my heart. I felt so full of these things I thought I would burst. There were so many life-changing moments that I couldn’t embrace them at once and to this day the experience is still transforming me, often in subtle but profound ways, and I expect that it will continue to do so for quite some time.