Say your truth - kindly, but fully and completely. Live your truth - gently, but totally and consistently. Change your truth easily and quickly when your experience brings you new clarity. — Neale Donald Walsch, author of the series "Conversations with God"

In Today's Workshop...

We talked about understanding, professing, and living your truth. Through the stories of Eboo Patel and Mary Ellen Giess, we looked at the challenge of articulating our faith in a pluralistic world. We then took what we have learned over the course of this program and created our own personal faith statements, to clarify for ourselves and to help us articulate to others what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist.

Explore further...

• The Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), founded by Eboo Patel, "builds mutual respect and pluralism among young people from different religious traditions by empowering them to work together to serve others." One of the ways they do this is through Better Together, an online network of leaders for the interfaith youth movement. Sign up for this network and meet other young people of faith interested in building bridges of understanding and action. Watch videos of other youth talking about their faith on IFYC's YouTube channel.
• Several short video examples of professions of faith from Unitarian Universalists can be found on YouTube including "Why I Am a Unitarian Universalist","Unitarian Universalism: You're a Uni-What?", and "What Unitarian Universalists Believe". Search for others. Do all the statements on YouTube reflect your beliefs?
• Now that you have articulated at least some reflections on your faith, practice it with others. When you find yourself in a situation like Eboo Patel, sitting at the school lunch table with friends of a variety of different religious backgrounds, initiate a conversation about religion and faith. Share with them what you have learned from this workshop and ask them if they have ever thought about what their faith statement might be like. Simply opening the conversation can be very significant for your friendship.
• Volunteer to be a greeter at your congregation. At some point, you will certainly be asked to talk about Unitarian Universalism, so this is a great way to practice your faith statement. You will also be providing a service to your congregation and you will get to meet many new people of all ages.
• Revisit your faith statement: The quote for this workshop encourages us to change our truths as new experiences inform and shape our faith. Revisit your faith statement on a regular basis, and make changes that reflect your developing understandings. Create a time capsule containing a copy of your current faith statement and any other notes or items representing your current understanding of Unitarian Universalism. Put them in a container and label it with the date and the current date five years in the future. Store it somewhere for safekeeping, and five years from now you will be able to see how your faith has developed and deepened since this moment!
• The word "articulate" can also mean "to form a joint or segment" (think of "articulated" invertebrates, like spiders and lobsters. Just for fun, imagine your faith as an articulated animal. What would it look like?