Every folder in every box I open in our Archives can bring delight and/or enlightenment. This letter to the church from Lynda Zimmer on January 30, 1994 offers both.

The first things that caught my eye in this place were the banners.

I was here for a friend's memorial service in March of 1991. I kept looking away from the sad faces to these beautiful banners.

I was wondering, "What do these people believe in? Could it possibly be all these religions woven into one?"

I recognized the symbols of many of my foreign friends and I felt clothed in some kind of kinship by these banners.

There were good intentions to come back, but I never did that year. I was much too busy smoothing and weaving my same old cloth a little tighter.

It was more than a year later - June, 1992 - my husband died suddenly. As my world rapidly changed, a friend suggested I ask Will [Rev. Will Saunders] for advice. Oh yes, I know that man. He's the standard bearer of all those banners.

In August 1992, I came to study these banners more closely. What I found inside was a rich tapestry of people - some with pennants for the softball team, two with flags for 4th of July decorations, others with signs for the auction - and all under the cloth of Unitarian Universalists. I was struck by the diversity of those cloth signs and the tolerance of everyone for each other's banner.

I never had formally joined a church in my adult life and I remember nervously asking what a reasonable pledge would be. I didn't even have a full-time job, but I wanted to somehow support this parade with my streamer.

Former churches I attended were so boring - with lots of memorized prayers and rules. The fabric seemed to be plain white sheets afraid of stains or wrinkles. Here, I learn something every time I come. It may be about the Beatles or Martin Luther King. Sometimes it's Romania or music or how to relieve Christmas stress, but I go away with a new idea, a new flag to wave in the breeze. We are a group who can mix up our cloth and paper napkins at a circle supper or extended Sunday potluck. And we can look with tears at parts of a quilt commemorating victims of AIDS.

At our annual auction we celebrate our diverse tapestry of talents ranging from outdoor handyman work to cooking to computing and translating. 

I went to a New U meeting to read the scrolls or hear the word on exactly what this place was about. Instead, I was asked my opinions of Christianity and pageantry and listened to. Everyone wrote their own scroll and now they are all a part of this place, too. How empowering to have one's own beliefs woven into the cloth of life in this place.

I am proud to bring relatives and friends here. I know they will be accepted regardless of what cloth of belief they wear.

This is a comforting place where you can throw off your security blanket - announce a happy or sad patch of your life - then just feel others stitching together during the coffee hour, wrapping a quilt of comforting support around you.

I found spiritual meaning here through the Seekers group even though my participation was brief as a silk scarf fluttering in the wind.

And, I found a link to my past. She is a lady I picked to befriend through Care Core. All I knew was that her late husband used to be the minister here and she loved music. I soon found out that she had been friends with my great-grandmother in another city, and that my great-grandmother had been a Unitarian.

I feel like raising a banner.