It was about noon when we realized the maps we had used all morning weren't the correct maps.

We were three Unitarian Universalist ministers high in the Sierra Nevada mountains who had left our cabin at 9 a.m. for a 4 hour hike with a backpack of water bottles and food, a dog and one badly photocopied map of, it turned out, not where we ended up.

Looking at those maps all morning, we could have sworn that what the map revealed, we were seeing right in front of us. Isn't this contour line on the map that peak over there? It must be! It has to be!

I'm happy to say that we found our way home. Using the position of the sun, our relative knowledge of where the cabin was located, a willingness to trust one another's intuitions and a faith that we'd find our way somewhere, we found ourselves in the backyard of another house in the small development. Never had I been so happy to trespass.

In the weeks following, I've thought a lot about that day. I've wondered about how readily I wanted to completely trust the map to tell me where I was, to make the world around me conform to the map, even when it didn't match up. I've remembered how I felt unnerved, even fearful, of being "lost", how I worked hard to be faithful to what I knew was true: that we would be okay and we'd find Highway 4 sometime, even if it was the next day. And I remember that feeling of relief washing over me, of laughing out loud when I saw the wood-shingled house through the trees. "Once I was lost, but now am found." Well, hallelujah.

We are all on a journey through our lives. We who are a part of this congregation share the map of Unitarian Universalism, though we will take different trails. Some of us found this map along time ago. Some of us just found it, perhaps after discovering that our earlier maps didn't match the new landscape of our lives. We had thought we were lost, but looking at our new map, we know ourselves found.

As summer ends, we begin the circle of another church year. Whether we know this Unitarian Universalist map well or have just discovered it, we are not alone. We are journeying together. Hallelujah.

The Rev. Rachel K. Anderson