Want to be part of it

Until this year, I had never gone to church of my own volition. Back in the 1950s, my grandmother would sometimes drag me along with her. I don’t remember the denomination, let alone any of the lessons. As a young adult, I attended the occasional church wedding, and now I’m at the age where funerals loom on the horizon.

We in Arkansas have come to the point where church overreach is now apparently government-sanctioned. Our current political structure seems bent on helping the church extend its tentacles into nearly every aspect of our personal lives: what to read, what to teach our children, who to love. What’s more, they plan on using own our tax dollars to pay for it.

My Gen Z sons, while reading news on their phones, call it doom scrolling. I understand where they’re coming from. Fighting back against the political machine here in Arkansas is like shooting pellets at Panzers. And then, in the depths of my despair, I attended a service at the Unitarian Universalist Church here in Hot Springs. It was nothing like I’d imagined. So different that it could be called the Un-church.

One of the hymns we sang was a Cat Stevens song, another from the Broadway musical “Hair,” but the one that really touched me had this line in it: “We are gay and straight together, singing, singing for our lives.”

This small congregation, standing up against the odds, standing up for what’s right, standing up and singing, raised my spirits. This is the church I want to be part of, this is the Arkansas I want to be part of, this is the America I want to be part of.

If you’re ever in Hot Springs on any given Sunday, come sing with us.

DAVID MALCOLM ROSE Hot Springs