Member Testimonial: Deede Wyatt

Paul Cook asked if Robert or I could talk about what belonging to Church of the River meant because we are long time members, having joined in the late 1980’s. That got me started down a long road of reflecting upon our religious backgrounds (or lack thereof). And I realized that we actually met when we were both students at Vanderbilt University at a religiously-connected event, a Vanderbilt Interfaith Association work project to fix up a home in a low income area near the Vanderbilt campus to be used as a recreation center by the neighborhood children. Robert didn’t really say much to me then since he was focused on the Vanderbilt basketball game on the radio.

I got a phone call a few days later from Robert, who then went by Jethro, his middle name, inviting me to attend the Nashville Unitarian Universalist Church on a Sunday morning and then have brunch. Back then the male to female ratio at Vanderbilt was around 3 to 1 and getting dates on a Friday or Saturday night could be a challenge. But most of us had no plans for Sunday mornings. So our first date was at a UU church.

As it happened, most of my good friends in high school belonged to the Wausau Universalist Unitarian Church and I had attended a few of their youth group meetings. By junior high in upstate New York and high school in Wisconsin my parents had pretty much given up on going to church except on Easter Sunday so I didn’t have a “church home”, as they say in the South. When I was in grade school in California my parents would drive my sister and me to a huge Presbyterian church for Sunday school and drop us off while they went out to brunch. So that was about the extent of my church upbringing, although I did manage to score a Bible at some sort of communion ceremony.

Robert, in contrast, lived in the same small town in Northeast Georgia and in the same house growing up and attended the same Baptist church. His mother was Canadian and had belonged to the Anglican Church so when she married his father and moved to Rome Georgia she attended the Episcopal Church. Robert’s dad was happy to change religious alliances and enjoyed the pageantry of the more formal church service. Robert started out as an Episcopalian as well, but apparently was not well behaved in the children’s area and he was asked to leave. His mother then took him across the street to the Baptist church where all the other members of the Wyatt family were in attendance. And there he stayed, even joining a Baptist student group at Vanderbilt until he lost his religion, as they say. He came to realize that the Baptist Church was not a paragon of inclusiveness.

We were married in a congregational church in Nashville by the Vanderbilt chaplain after I graduated and Robert was half way through medical school, and that was our last church visit except for various friends’ weddings over the years. It wasn’t until we were living in Lexington, Kentucky, for the second time that we started thinking that maybe we should join a church, probably because by then we had young children. And we turned to the Lexington Unitarian Universalist Church, which was a very free-spirited place. The minister did the service only every other week and the congregation did the other Sundays. It was situated out on a large swath of land and very much a part of nature, although our setting here is unrivaled.

When we moved to Memphis, we at first started attending the UU Fellowship, which was then held in the renegade Prescott Memorial Baptist church building in Southeast Memphis. Then Robert began to feel the need for more of a church presence and he tried out the Church of the River and eventually persuaded me to come along. At first I was very reluctant to embrace this new church with its very formal worship service. The thing that grated on me the most was the old hymnals, which used only the masculine form--everything was “he”, “his” or “man”.

But we came to embrace this more formal service and savored the tranquility of the setting on the river bluff. Burton Carley’s amazing and captivating sermons kept us coming back. And it wasn’t too long until the hymnals were replaced. Our daughters now had an answer to questions from others about their religion, although sometimes saying you are a Unitarian Universalist raises more questions than it answers. But in this very religious part of the world it is good to have a church home.

Our younger daughter, Laura, participated in religious education classes, was Santa Lucia during the Christmas Candlelight Service not once but twice, and was able to use Sue Ferguson, the Religious Education director at the time, as a reference when she applied for a job at Seesel’s grocery. How cool is that? She went through the Our Whole Lives program and attended confirmation classes at Burton’s house. Having a religious education program where children are encouraged to explore and learn rather than be taught what they should believe is priceless.

Over the years, we have been enriched by various church activities. I have read and discussed books in River Readers that I never would have thought to pick up on my own. Friendships have been made in Soup for the Soul, which provides support and fellowship. I’ve “worked my way up” in our monthly soup kitchen and now am the one who shops at the Food Bank and grocery stores for food to provide a healthy hot meal and snack bags for around 90 hungry folks every month. I’ve met church members through Care Committee activities and helped provide meals and transportation to those who have needed it. I have helped tutor children from Hawkins Mill School where I gained a whole new respect for teachers. Meals on Wheels, Hospitality Hub, Manna House and A Room at the Inn are other examples of our church reaching out to the community at large. We have special shared traditions such as Stone Soup, Mother's Day Flower Communion and our Christmas Candlelight Service.

The Church of the River is important to me. It is important to the Memphis community that it exists as a beacon of liberal religious thought and practice. I remember a co-worker in Mississippi telling me about how she and her husband left the Baptist church to join a more "progressive" Presbyterian church where they were interviewed and quizzed by the elders of the church before they were approved to join the congregation. I was taken aback.

We offer support, friendship, a meaningful worship experience, community outreach, a chance for personal and spiritual growth and so much more. We are a diverse group. I have used one of Burton’s favorite quotes by Francis David so many times, especially this election season: "We need not think alike to love alike." The world needs more of this way of thinking and I ask you to support this amazing church.