In Which I Go to Church

I made a deal with my parents when I was young. I went to church with them on Sunday and to Sunday school, no questions asked, and when I got to high school I could decide what I wanted to so for myself on Sunday mornings. As a high school student, I naturally chose to sleep until noon.
When my parents mentioned that they had seen a Unitarian church as they drove through downtown Iowa City, I latched on to the idea. I have only gone to church at home on Christmas Eve for the last six or seven years. But I decided to attend this morning.
I was pleasantly surprised. When I first awoke, far too early for the weekend, I was terribly tempted to crawl right back into bed and shut out the world again. But I kept telling myself that I would ruin the rest of my day--the rest of my week--if I chickened out now. I went down to breakfast, and there were a few stragglers, but very little of the noisy shuffle I have come to expect. I left far earlier than was necessary, and found myself wandering around the junction between Iowa City and the university. I walked three blocks out of my way to find a Starbucks--for the material comfort of a latte. The Unitarian Universalist Society of Iowa City is a small building. The society dates back to the late Nineteenth Century, and the church looks to be from the same time period. It has a pointed roof, framed by dark wooden beams that give weight to the experience of sitting in the pews. There is an alter room at the front of the sanctuary, with a row of candles against a yellow banner. Against the dark wood and the sharp point of the roof are soft, Romanesque arches that span the three sections at the front of the sanctuary. The main church was designed as a cross--traditional, and an interesting aspect of the house of such a liberal faith. The sermon was about Louisa May Alcott and her father Bronson Alcott. Bronson was an idealist and a Transcendentalist thinker. He tried to found a commune based on values of finding inherent good in each human and in bringing it out in the world at large. The project failed miserably. But the message of the sermon was that there is always failure and disappointment, but that such is life. There would be no light without shadow, no joy without pain. I'm not sure that it was conveyed in the clearest way possible (the readings bogged the message down in a discussion of Job and the suffering necessary for true faith), but I think that the ultimate take away was that, even when things seem darkest, there is another day. There is a cycle into which we all give ourselves from the moment of our birth to the moment of our death. There are certain realities of this cycle, but it is not static; it is what we make of a day, how we perceive the strife.
This is a particularly relevant message for me at this moment. I have to put one foot in front of the other, continuing through discomfort, uncertainty, fear, in order to find comfort, security, happiness.  I'm not sure if this is the right place for me, but I'll go back next week. It made me feel closer to the ground, which is rarely a bad thing.