Rev. McKinley L. Sims, M.Div.

Unitarian Universalism espouses a high theology of love, both in a theist sense and a non-theist sense. The Love of God being the ultimate creative force in the universe, the engine of all joy and creation, and the overwhelming grace that ultimately reconciles all souls back into the Creator at the end of the time. Because God loves God’s creation, the only appropriate response that is consistent with that love is to love others in return as best as we can. To love others even when they don’t love themselves, when society doesn’t seem to love them, and when I don’t want to love them because of what they have done, or who they remind me of, or because of any number of reasons. To love them because of their faults, and not in spite of them (and in spite of my faults) is the challenge and the call of my ministry. The question of how to love people permeates all my encounters and experiences with others and myself. I thought I knew how to love people, but my experience as a Psych Chaplain challenged that arrogant assumption. I learned that I was only willing to love people when it was easy for me to view them in their full humanity. If I didn’t have to work too hard emotionally, I was more than willing to love easily, to extend cheap grace to those who didn’t fit my definition of how to relate. My growing edge will be to focus on being present with people in the midst of their “unloveable” behavior, because no one is unlovable in God’s eyes, and the least I can do is try harder.

I believe that God has many names, and many paths lead us to the Holy. I believe that a humanist meal can be as holy as Christian communion and I believe that Buddhist chanting is just as sacred as Jewish prayers. I’m sometimes uncomfortable with how Christian centric my programming can be, and I’m also trying to be more aware of how Christian-centric my imagination is. Recently, I noticed a man staring into space and remembered that he has stated to me that he identifies as Muslim and Buddhist. I offered a leading question that prompted him to make a connection between a picture of a small plant in the dry ground and the Revelation of the Quran to the Prophet Muhammad as a way to make space for his faith to be brought into the discussion, rather than focusing solely on “hope in Christ.” I’m still learning how to walk the line of Unitarianism by providing Christian language and topics to a predominantly Christian audience while making space and honoring the religious experience of others. My growing edge will be to find an authentic presentation of self and interfaith topics that is honoring to all.

The Imago Dei divine spark that resides within each soul demands more respect and deeper love for humanity as beings with inherent worth and dignity part of the interconnected web of all existence. To see God in another is to treat others as beings of inherent worth and dignity, regardless of their ability to speak or relate. Interacting with nonverbal patients teaches me about pastoral presence and care that includes all the ways of communicating that I don’t value in myself. I assume I can’t have a meaningful conversation with someone because they don’t communicate logically through words, but that doesn’t mean I can’t honor the God within them (and in me). I can seek to be a reflective mirror of common grace that is filtered and refracted through the God in me to the God in others and offer to be with people in the midst of their suffering, their joy, and their hope. My growing edge is learning how to be spending time with touch and feel and other nonverbals that communicate presence and pastoral love.