UU
Views of...
 Unitarian
Universalist Views of Faith in the Workplace
Rosemarie C. Smurzynski, Editor
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How do you express your faith in the work that you do? How do religious
values and spiritual practice challenge your work life?
In Democracy in America (1835), Alexis de Toqueville
noted the American hunger for a spiritual life. How we “steal
an hour” to “lay aside the petty passions which agitate
life” and “stray into an ideal world where all is great,
eternal and pure.” Many recognize that same hunger today.
The five writers below tell of commitment to Unitarian Universalist
values of equality, human dignity, justice, and compassion and how
they have accepted the challenge to integrate them more fully into
the whole of their lives, particularly their vocational lives.
Jennifer Deaderick
When I was doing stand up comedy, the joy was in making the people
in the audience aware of each other. Some of my favorite memories
are of nights when I decided to use no prepared material. Instead
I used my ten minutes to just banter with the audience, teasing
them slightly, pointing them out to each other. I think that’s
why people go to comedy clubs, to be part of something, to be talked
to directly and to share that with the strangers in the audience
with them.
When I teach computer classes, I have an eye toward getting the
class to be a group, getting them to see each other. It’s
a compulsion, and I think the drive comes from being raised as a
Unitarian Universalist. I have found that at work, I can spot someone
who grew up UU, especially if we’re in a meeting together.
We have a way of doing things, a need to make sure everyone is heard,
that the procedure is fair. The training that we get through our
religious education classes and our committee meetings is amazing.
In every human interaction that I have, my UU faith shapes the choices
I make, but it’s rarely very conscious. I don’t have
a bracelet that says “WWUUD,” (What Would a UU Do?).
The desire to connect flows up naturally, and because it is natural,
it feels right and it works. One of our stated goals is world community
with peace, liberty, and justice for all. A tall order, but one
we can work toward through the practice of one of our other Principles,
affirming the right of conscience and the use of the democratic
process within our congregations and in society at large. As UUs,
we are taught to feel a responsibility to the world and we are encouraged
to rely on our powers of reason—a solid combination.
Jennifer Deaderick is a member of the Unitarian Church of All
Souls in New York, New York.
Jack Cox
As an out gay man and appointed officer of a Fortune 100 financial
services company, I think a lot about how I want to be treated and
valued for my contributions to my employer’s success. I am
guided by our UU Principles. I strive to practice them with others
and want them applied to me as well. These Principles affirm that
personal and professional dignity is rooted in ethical behavior.
They underlie my sense of fairness in hiring decisions and in coaching
and assessing the performance of others. They sustain my hope that
as a role model for diversity and through my voice as an officer
in my company, I can help implement positive change from within.
This chance is why I continue to work for an employer that does
not yet include sexual orientation in its employment non-discrimination
policy or cover unmarried partners in its employee benefit programs.
My faith empowers me to accept the responsibility of leading my
life by example, to become bolder and more outspoken about the wrongs
and lost opportunities I see in life and at work. I don’t
always succeed but I know I will continue to try.
Jack Cox is a member of Unitarian Universalist Area Church
at First Parish in Sherborn, Massachusetts.
Cheng Imm Tan
As an immigrant Asian woman who came to the United States twenty-three
years ago, I saw this country as the land of opportunity, freedom,
and equality. I also saw injustices related to race and class. In
1991 I was ordained a UU community minister. Currently, I practice
ministry in Boston as the director of the Mayor’s Office of
New Bostonians. I meet with leaders from diverse immigrant communities
to address the key issues of language, culture, and immigration,
as well as discrimination. There is no question in my mind that
oppressive structures need to be changed.
Everyone loses when racism prevails. There is no opportunity to
learn from the wisdom of different people or experience the wealth
of different cultures. We find interconnection and build our capacity
to care and create justice together through learning each other’s
histories and stories of struggle
How do activists who want to eliminate injustice and oppression
avoid getting caught in their own egos, agendas, and delusions?
How do they avoid recreating another set of oppressive structures?
To keep moving forward, I’ve learned that I also need to stop
and be still—to listen to the truth of who I am, be gentle
in the places where I struggle with myself, and be kind to those
parts of myself that I reject or judge harshly. Meeting “internal
enemies” is the spiritual work of self-love. I embrace them
with the same spirit of acceptance and love that I try to hold the
world in. This is the spiritual work I need to do in order to keep
embracing justice in the world and embracing all of myself with
a loving heart.
Cheng Imm Tan is an ordained UU community minister, formerly
senior associate minister at UU Urban Ministry in Boston.
Dorothy Smith-Patterson
I have worked in many places as a public health nurse, health educator,
and consultant, including a well baby clinic in Osegere, Nigeria,
and a school for women in Pohnepe, Micronesia. I was a health planner
in the first anti-poverty program in Washington, D.C., and I worked
with Vietnamese orphans who were maimed, burned, and blinded by
American bombs. I’ve been a nurse in a camp for diabetic children
and run a clinic for Moslem women in Ibadan, Nigeria. I was a UU
Service Committee volunteer on a burned church rebuilding project
in Bologi, Alabama.
Everyplace I have worked, as a volunteer or as an employee, I have
seen people doing the best they can to make life better for themselves
and their families with the resources they have.
Now in my mid-seventies, I realize that I am fully invested in
the joys and challenges of human interaction and the search for
answers (although every answer I seek seems to lead to more questions).
I perceive my personal and work values as indistinguishable. My
family, demanding teachers, and members of my childhood Union Baptist
Church told me, early on, that I had a duty to make things better.
Unitarian Universalist Principles provide both a vision and an ethical
base for me, somewhere between the stars and the stones. While accepting
the ambiguities of my existence and my journey, I am guided by my
belief in the power of one person to make a difference and by the
changing social construct of history and culture.
Life matters. People matter. I am here—still questing, still
working, still trying to make the world a better and healthier place.
Dorothy Smith-Patterson is a member of the Unitarian Universalist
Society in San Francisco, California.
David Provost
As a young man working my way up the corporate ladder, I concentrated
on perfecting my professional financial skills while looking forward
to the day when I would become a “success.” I achieved
my personal career goals—getting promotions, more responsibility,
and larger salaries—but I felt unfulfilled.
After much personal reflection, I decided the void was caused by
the lack of a connection between my career and my values. My professional
life was out of sync with my spiritual life. I saw that my work
efforts made a few people wealthy but did not make a meaningful
contribution to society at large. I was living up to my potential
as a professional, but I was not living up to my potential as a
full human being.
After consulting with my wife and family, I shifted my career goals
so that my work would be more in keeping with a commitment I always
had to social justice. I am working now on training and advising
low-income entrepreneurs and worker-owned cooperatives designed
to enhance the livelihoods and lives of entire communities. Working
for economic justice not only provides me with a living but is consistent
with my beliefs. At the end of the day I know that I have accomplished
something meaningful.
David Provost is a former treasurer of the Unitarian Universalist
Association and a
member of the Unitarian Church in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
The editor, Rev. Rosemarie C. Smurzynski, is acting
district executive for the New Hampshire/Vermont District of the
Unitarian Universalist Association. She has served parishes in Sherborn,
Melrose, Andover, and Belmont, Massachusetts.
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