I Believe in Love

“Churches and dictators, politics and papers,

Everything crumbles, sooner or later,

But love.

I believe in love.”–Elton John, Believe

A week before Christmas, 2023, and six months before my diagnosis, I began researching something I’d read about the previous summer. I’m not sure what prompted me to look it up that Saturday; probably, it was just boredom. My wife was gone to brunch, and it was a cozy weekend morning.

I’ve always had a complicated relationship with religion. Throughout my adult life, I’ve read extensively on many faith traditions, old and new, and always found them both fascinating and (nearly always) troubling in one way or another. Most of them–especially these days–want you to subscribe to the notion that they are the “one truth”. Some take this as far as suggesting that anyone who does not believe the same is inherently evil or will be subject to eternal torture in the next life. Christianity, especially the flavors practiced in America, is particularly heavy-handed about such things. Even as a child, I struggled, then rejected, that idea. Most people are born into the faith of their family; a comparatively small number convert; a larger number, at least in the United States, end up either accepting or drifting away from their family’s faith if it doesn’t set well with them.

Since my late teens or early twenties, I’ve basically believed that it matters less which doctrine you follow than what you do with and make of your life while you’re here. If there is a higher power that is as loving and just as the world’s religions generally want us to believe, then that is what will matter. If there is not, then you have made the most of your brief time here by making the world a better place.

But there was no name for what I thought or believed or practiced. I just went on reading about Judaism, about ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses, Celtic mythology, or the Gnostic Gospels (among countless others), taking what felt right from them, and doing my best to be a kind and good human. (These themes and related research have frequently made it into my novels and short stories.)

So it was with curiosity, but no real expectations, that I started reading about Unitarian Universalism—a faith tradition that had its roots in Christianity, but which had, in the intervening centuries, far outgrown them. It is a faith based on shared values and human decency. It does not preclude you from believing in other faiths while practicing it at the same time. It expounds the virtues of “deeds over creeds” and teaches that our actions in this life matter. It takes wisdom from many sources, including from the major world religions, humanism, reason, science, and history. It says that we are all part of an interconnected web of life on Earth, and that we should respect that life. It embraces diversity, including members of many ethnic and religious backgrounds, as well as those from the LGBTQ+ community. Most of all, it teaches love and tolerance. “Love at the center,” is the expression of its core values.

In short, it was a group of people with a faith tradition that nurtured and valued the life I was already trying to live, but in a better, more explicit way. It gave words to the things I felt but had either been unable or afraid to articulate. These were, it seemed, my people.

Locally, there was a fairly large congregation of Unitarian Universalists, I discovered. Over the next two and a half months, my wife and I watched their services online, and I continued to research and learn more about the UU faith and its history. It spoke to me as no other faith had. It didn’t tell me what to believe or what to think; it was open to a diversity of thought unlike any other tradition. Its focus on common values of decency, charity, the welfare of our fellow humans and the planet, were all the kinds of things that inspired me. And the UUs did not hide or excuse the times in their history where they had fallen short. On the contrary, they took lessons from those failures, vowing to remember and not to repeat them. Yes, these were indeed my people.

As my wife and I endured the loss of our beloved dog, Monkey, coped with my initial hospitalization, and then faced the reality of my MDS diagnosis, we also increasingly became more interested in Unitarian Universalism. We started attending services in person in March of 2024, and in May, just a little less than two weeks before my diagnosis, we officially became members.

Through our local congregation, we have met some of the most amazing people it’s been my privilege to know in my life, and some of them have become among our dearest of friends. Over the last two years it has provided comfort and solace during trying times, both for us personally and as we struggle against an increasingly fascist government here in the US which rejects the values we hold dear. (Not to mention its disdain for those of us with disabilities or its determination to destroy the healthcare and medical science that I desperately need.)

Whether it was a higher power, the universe, dumb luck, or just coincidence, we found Unitarian Universalism just at the moment when we would need it most. For that, I am eternally grateful.

Whatever you believe, believe in love–and keep it at the center of your life.

2026-01-22