This is the first time I've spoken at the service here since I
graduated high school in 1990.  Then I gave a few words about how
great it was to have beloned to an open church and so long and
thanks. You can think of this as a progress report.

Today I address a big question.  Why am I here?  Why am I, twelve
years after graduation, still an active UU?  And why are so many of
the people I grew up with not here?

The force that breaks young UUs away from their religion is best
described as Brownian motion, the random zigzagging of dust motes as
they are bombarded from all directions by high speed air
molecules. Before you turn 18, you're attached to your family.  When
you get older, you gain mass and inertia: careers, kids, houses, a
spouse-- in short, a permanent address and long-term habits.  In
between, you're like a tiny speck of dust, so small that you're not so
much drifting as thrown around in random directions.  College, grad
school, job offers, Wanderlust, and migrating friends all contribute.
I can't count how many people I've worked with who were up-and-coming
or well-established UU leaders whose life events took them who knows
where, and leaving no forwarding address.

We can't stop this Brownian motion.  But we can and should throw a
rope to those who want or need religious community.  Let me describe
the ropes people threw me that kept me UU.

During my first year of college my best friend, a high school senior,
was planning my favorite youth conference, Boone.  So I got to
go. When I got there I felt old.  I wasn't in high school, I wasn't an
adult advisor, I didn't fit.

But at Boone there was a "post high" representative sent there to
invite graduating seniors into young adult UUism.  He told me about
Circles, a young adult group that even today meets every Sunday
afternoon at FUS.  And he told me about Opus, the annual conference of
C*UUYAN, the Continental UU Young Adult Network.  He threw me the
first two ropes to keep me UU.

That summer I hung out with the Circles group.  They were a great
bunch of people, but I was 19 and they were in their late 20s and
early 30s.  It was hard for me to go out to dinner with them on my
summer job salary.  For all the fun I had, this was a tenuous
rope. But in August there was Opus.  A week-long conference that
changed my life on many levels.  I've been to every Opus since.  And I
left my first Opus with two more ropes: a religious community for
wherever I went, and young adult leadership training.

That fall I transfered to Grinnell College in Iowa.  The nearest
congregation was an hour's drive away.  There was a campus UU group,
run by one burned-out senior struggling to keep it going.  Here I was,
a few years into college, with several tethers to UUism. Few people my
age were lucky enough to have been thrown one rope. Over the next few
years I dedicated myself to creating more opportunities.  I took over
the Grinnell UU group.  I started the C*UUYAN Website.  And I became
the treasurer of Prairie Star District's Young Adult Network.

When I became treasurer I was told that the Young Adult Network's
relationship to the district was simple: we wrote a budget request and
they gave us money. Other than that, they didn't know us and we didn't
know them.  But it did get my name on the District's list of potential
volunteers.  A few committees later I was invited to join the District
board.  I remember the phone call to Sarah Greene to tell her my
decision.  "Great!" she said, "now all I need to know is which
congregation you belong to."  I didn't belong to one.  None of the
ropes I had been thrown were connected to the life of a congregation.
All of the people who had thrown them were volunteers, and few of them
attended church.  But to be on the board I had to belong to a
congregation.

To join a congregation I needed faith-- I needed to believe that a
congregation could provide what I got from young adult groups: a
refuge from secular society; a hangout with like-minded people; a
place where my religious beliefs will be challenged in new ways and
will not stagnate.  That last point is trickier then it sounds.  How
many of you find fresh nourishment in the theology of your childhood?
Yet from a congregation I expected even more.  Something I saw on a
trip to First Parish in Boston.  That church has a graveyard--
weather-worn testaments to 18th century people who were born
Unitarian, died Unitarian, raised Unitarian families, and are
remembered as Unitarian.  From a congregation I expect a lasting
identity: a set of beliefs and rituals strong enough and sound enough
to last generations. I made my leap of faith.  But I wonder: what
religious legacy will I leave to the next generation?