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By Sheri Byrd
July 30, 2000
This past March, fifteen or so Davies regulars and a few others from
the community participated in a course called, “Building Your Own
Theology.” We met 2 hours each Sunday afternoon, for 5 weeks.
The first day, Reverend Don asked all of us to fill out an index
card in the following way:
Upper left corner: Name one religious value you cherish.
Upper right corner: One religious value from your personal history
that you have rejected.
Lower left corner: The religion into which you were born.
Lower right corner: One religious value with which you are now
struggling and would like to explore.
This simple exercise proved to be intimately soul-searching for most
of us. In these simple disclosures, we learned so very much about
each other. We also learned, to our relief, that we were a community
of people who could trust and support each other without judgment or
reservation.
In a following session, we explored critical “religious moments” in
our lives, as we each defined that phrase. Another time, we were
asked to draw pictures of our images of God at various points in our
lives. We also explored various morals, which we all assumed were
pretty clear-cut issues, and found that nearly without exception, we
could find circumstances where the moral lines blurred
significantly.
We each wrote and shared our personal ten commandments, and found
they were remarkably similar.
Finally, after exploring the required academic areas of ethics,
human nature, and God, plus our personal religious histories, we
each wrote our own credo: a personal statement of “I believe,” a
guideline by which we each live our own lives.
Each credo was intimate and personal, but the amazing commonality
among them was a deep commitment to leaving our credos open-ended,
always receptive to learning, growing and changing with life’s
never-ending lessons of experience.
Today, several of the participants in the course will share their
credos with you. I’d like to thank them ahead of time for sharing
these most personal thoughts.
Sheri Byrd's Theology
I live by the Golden Rule, because the fabric of the universe is
woven in such a way that I will eventually feel the effects of all
of my own thoughts, words and deeds.
God is both the sentient creator, and continuing designer of the
universe, as well as the essence of all that exists within the
universe. The more we learn and discover through exploration – and
introspection – the more we are able to discern about the essential
God.
The soul, the essence of God within each living thing, is timeless,
immortal and may choose to incarnate innumerable times as it
nurtures itself toward the natural pattern of evolution.
Humans are creatures of free will, but if we choose to act with
respect and compassion, and live consciously in harmony with the
examples given us in nature, the essence of God within us grows and
creates goodness, truth and beauty throughout our lives.
[Other speakers have not yet submitted their readings. Note: Ones'
beliefs often change in time. The Building Your Own Theology class
is held often at DMUUC and is open to the public. If you'd like to
take this class, please call DMUUC at 301-449-4308.]
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