Dear UUA - Get Fucked. Love, Andie

Those of you who are a part of my life on the "outs" (that is to say, beyond the world wide web) know that the last few months have been hard ones for me in regards to my spiritual self. Really, for the last year, I've been feeling a greater sense of disconnect from Unitarian Universalism and I've been trying to figure out what that means, seeing as how I am working on an MDiv with a supposed goal of becoming a UU minister. I kind of thought that maybe this stuff was part of my process, that I my identity as a UU would be stronger once it got tested by fire.

This quarter I registered to take UU Polity, and I dropped in two weeks in. I found myself angry while I was doing the readings for class. I couldn't stop thinking of the questions that UUism didn't answer for me, couldn't quit thinking of the ways in which we have totally disconnected from our history (and how we're not willing to admit that), about how lonely I felt at GA this summer, about how I felt totally voiceless and community less in a huge group of people who were supposed to be "mine." I couldn't stop thinking about how disoriented I felt in the midst of this denomination.

So I told myself that I would take this quarter to think about things, to think about what I was gonna do and how I was gonna do it, to figure out where I fit in, if I fit in at all. And if I'm honest, I'll tell you I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop.

and drop it did.

The one great connection that I had with UUism was my experience as a youth. The ways in which Continential youth programs were so summarily ended, with manipulation of the culture of YRUU and youth culture in general, through grooming, through fear, through the desire to create structures which won't trouble the water  . . .it seems to make clear to me that the UUA has little to no interest in empowering youth. 

I'm the GAP, ya fuckers, that you want so desparately to be "minding." I am a UU raised, not a come-outer. I am totally alienated. I became alienated the moment I aged out. 

If the UUA's only goal is to be a church for spiritual refugees, then they had damned well start owning that. Maybe they are . . .maybe dismanteling the youth program is a message: we do not intend to raise UU's. we do not intend to create multi-generational community. we do not understand well enough what we "are" except in negative theologies, and the positivity that came with youth communities scared us too much to handle.

Just be honest with me, Bill. Just be honest. Gini. Be fucking honest, UUA. You don't want me. you never wanted me. you don't want me and you don't want my friends, my comrades, my fellow young UU's. You want your complacent ex-Catholics.  Not your homegrown radicals.

so, peace out. The lutherans have been awfully nice to me . . .