Beloveds, I hope you have a blessed new year: I thought I would share with you all the newsletter article I wrote for as the Intern Minister: Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Fredericksburg.
It is hard to believe a New Year has come, 2022 is behind us all, and we turn our gaze toward 2023. What untold stories lay on the horizon of the New Year? This January, as we begin a new year full of wonder, hope, and pain from years past, we do so with a theme of Finding Our Center. Finding Our Center in a new year, not forgetting the year, the memories, and the lives lost now behind us, we emerge from the longest winter night ready to embrace the new beginnings of the year as we work to name and find our individual and collective center.
James Baldwin once said, “ It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.” For me, 2017- 2022 began the years of vomiting up all my filth. All the lies I had been told that I half-believed.” For me, this was the filth of growing up being told loving my queer, nonbinary self was a sin—the filth of being mocked for having a speech impediment and being partly deaf in one ear. The filth of toxic religious teaching of my childhood and the reframing of the same religious teaching to be those I proclaim today.
Today I can own the Christian faith and spirituality, my queer, nonbinary self, and so much more with pride, grounded in and by the Unitarian Universalist faith movements and communities. There is still filth worth vomiting up from my past, and my desire for 2023 is to continue doing just that. Doing so means I must continue finding both my own and a collective center. So may 2023 be a year of finding our center, healing, grace, accountability, new beginnings, and love.
In Faith and Healing,
roddy biggs(they/them) pronouns
Intern Minister: Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Fredericksburg
Ministerial Candidate: Unitarian Universalist Association