I’ve never been a reli­gious guy. I don’t believe in God. I see a lot of the crap that goes down in the world in the name of one God or Another, and it doesn’t do much to change my opin­ion. My mother used to take me to church when I was lit­tle (she took the whole fam­ily), but all I got from it was an abid­ing love for sugar cubes and a mem­ory of a burn­ing bush col­lage I once made.

As a young and not so young adult, I dab­bled in church­ing, but noth­ing ever stuck. I mar­ried Catholic, so we tried that (shout out to Sacred Heart in Omaha!) but we also checked out the Methodists and sev­eral Uni­tar­ian Uni­ver­sal­ist congregations.

But you know what? Going to church every freakin’ week is hard. So we didn’t.

Then we had kids. Cou­pled with our recent move to Kansas City—a move we hope and plan to be our last—that set us to church hunt­ing again. The local Catholic parish is pretty strictly con­ser­v­a­tive, so they were out. We tried a UCC con­gre­ga­tion in the neigh­bor­hood, as they are pretty inclu­sive, yet still Chris­t­ian (some­thing we wanted to try on for size), but between feel­ing like fresh meat and their pub­lic recit­ing of the creed (which I will para­phrase as “do good in the name of Christ”), we did not feel com­pletely comfortable.

So we went back to the well, and looked up the local Uni­tar­ian Uni­ver­sal­ist church. The Shawnee Mis­sion Uni­tar­ian Uni­ver­sal­ist Church (SMUUCh, and if that isn’t rea­son enough to join…)

The first time we vis­ited, we found it full of peo­ple. Young, old, fam­i­lies. There was singing, and food after­wards, Sun­day school and a ser­mon. It was like real church! As we walked up to the front door, see­ing Priuses in the park­ing lot, the hip­ster glasses on the woman greet­ing us at the door, I turned to Tiffany and joked, “these are Our People.”

But I was right, I think. Four months later, we are mem­bers (if you know us, you know we don’t buy ice cubes with­out research­ing them for a month prior). The com­mu­nity is large, vibrant, engaged and engag­ing. They have exten­sive reli­gious edu­ca­tion classes, exten­sive adult groups, and a strong com­mu­nity ser­vice ethic. The church is active in the national UU organization.

And, if you’ll par­don the lan­guage… they are Lib­eral as fuck.

So, we’ve found a com­mu­nity. It hap­pens to be a church. They have accepted us despite our foibles, as they accept every­one. They will help us learn and grow and most impor­tant of all, they will help our chil­dren learn and grow and be Good People.

I still don’t believe in God, but I have always believed in some­thing. Now I can go, once a week, to be with peo­ple who also believe in some­thing. This isn’t our first time at a UU church. They vary widely, and depend sig­nif­i­cantly on the min­is­ter at the front of the room. But more impor­tantly, the com­mu­nity behind the church is what dri­ves it (and, more pro­saically, hires and fires the min­is­ter…) That com­mu­nity is what we were look­ing for, what we have found, and what we have joined.

Thank God.

I wish you all the best of luck find­ing a com­mu­nity you can con­nect with, churchy or not.