Member Testimonial: Robert W. Wallace

Thank You, Lisa Jennings and Church of the River

My wife Lana and I have been members of the Church of the River for just three years, but this congregation has had a much longer and larger impact on our lives than that short time span would suggest. It fact, one could argue that we are UU’s today because of the existence of this congregation. Here’s the story.

I don’t recall the exact date or even the year; it was sometime in the late 1970’s or early 80’s. I had recently finished graduate school and had landed a research position at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Our department was in the basement of the old central building that has now been torn down and replaced with the new entrance-way and patient clinics. A group of the younger staff and graduate students would gather there daily in the conference room during the lunch hour, where we munched our sandwiches and engaged in free-wheeling conversations about the goings on around town, dissected department politics, and poked fun at each other and of course at our more senior colleagues who were not there.

I sometimes joined the group, and on one of those days the conversation somehow turned to religion and to local churches. A young graduate student by the name of Lisa Jennings was also sitting at the table that day. I don’t remember all that she said, but I do vividly recall her saying that she and her husband David, who was then a medical student at UT, attended the First Unitarian Church of the River, and that it was a place to go to hear interesting philosophical discussions.

Although I didn’t say anything, Lisa’s comment immediately grabbed my attention. I had grown up here in Memphis deeply immersed in the Church of Christ. I went to high school at Harding Academy, a Church of Christ school, and then four years to their Harding College for undergraduate study. Based on this experience, the last thing I would associate with church would be interesting philosophical discussions.

By the time I finished my undergraduate schooling, I had begun to move away from the theology of my upbringing. At the time I heard Lisa’s intriguing comment about the Church of the River, I had not been involved with church for years, and would have likely described myself as an agnostic, hostile to the idea of involvement with any religious group.

Despite my intrigue at Lisa’s brief comment, Lana and I did nothing to investigate further until some fifteen years later, in the early 1990’s. At that time, work had taken us to Vero Beach, Florida. We knew no one in the local area except work colleagues, and we were looking for community. By then I had mellowed some and done some reading about Unitarian Universalism, which I found intriguing. So, Lana and I looked up the address of the local UU’s and did a drive by. What we found was an office in a storefront located in a rather run-down area of downtown Vero Beach; it was not an inspiring beginning.

But at about the same time, Lana was taking a course at the local community college, where she met another student with whom she enjoyed talking, and whom, by the end of the day, she had invited over to our house for dinner later that week. That evening, Lana told me about the encounter and the dinner invitation, but knowing my anti-church bias, warned that her new friend’s husband was a minister. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?” I said as I envisioned an evening being proselytized by a local fundamentalist minister.

Well, as you can probably guess, it turned out he was the minister of the local UU Church. We had an absolutely wonderful evening together, and over time, we all became good friends. Soon we were attending and then members of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Vero Beach, which at that time was meeting in a local elementary-school cafeteria. There we met warm, friendly and interesting people, and I was delighted that I fit right in with my many doubts about the theology from my early roots.

Since then, as we have lived in different places we have always searched out the local UU churches and they have always become the fundamental basis of our community. When we made the decision to return to Memphis upon our retirement, one of the things that intrigued me was the possibility of re-exploring Memphis as part of a very different religious group than the one with which I grew up. I have not been disappointed.

What a joy it was when we finally visited the Church of the River, and I discovered Lisa out front of the church that Sunday greeting visitors, more than 30 years since that lunch table discussion were I first heard about Unitarian Universalism. Everything about the service—the setting, the warm welcome from the congregation, Burton’s sense of presence and his message from the pulpit, and of course the music from the choir—was beautiful. So much so that Lana commented as we drove home that “The service was like a gift wrapped up in a beautiful ribbon.”

Lana and I have found this to be a very special place. As Lisa noted more than thirty years ago it is a place to hear and discuss interesting philosophy. It’s also a place to find warm, interesting people and a place where we’ve made some very good friends. It’s a place for inspiration, enlightenment, happiness, and a place for sadness at times of loss; it’s a place to hear and to make beautiful music, and most important, and as Burton often reminds us, it’s a place where we can grow our souls.

So, first of all, I encourage you to talk about our church community; you never know when someone who is sitting quietly might be listening closely.

Second, this amazing church is a place that deserves and needs our generous financial support. I urge you to be as generous as possible. One of the wonderful things about this church community is that we are all in it together, and together this can continue to be a very special, even an amazing place.

(October 28, 2012)