One summer, my interfaith, Unitarian Universalist family and I went to a cousin’s house for Shabbat dinner. My cousins are Modern Orthodox, and they really know how to do Shabbat—the evening was full of warmth and love and ritual.
我13岁的女儿被迷住了，特别是与蜡烛。在国内，我们点燃蜡烛安息日（当我们记得），但我们只光两项。在这里，他们点燃蜡烛时蜡烛，足以让整个橱柜火焰光。我女儿很享受模仿她的表兄妹，他们连连摆手光三倍以上，并说她知道安息日祈祷什么。我们都喜欢看这些美丽的礼仪如何第二天性是我表弟的家人，熟悉的睡前亲吻道晚安。
I’ll admit it: part of me wishes we had such strong traditions. But our family is different. I grew up a liberal Protestant, like my mother; my father, a lapsed Catholic, has gone to church with my mother for decades. My husband, while ethnically Jewish, went to a Hindu temple with his father as a child. His mother—also a Jew—was raised in Ethical Culture; her parents were atheists. Even before we had kids, my husband and I had settled on Unitarian Universalism as a logical faith home for us. It seemed to be the best fit for our joyful hodge-podge of religious and spiritual leanings.
And for the most part it has been. But that year, we’d taken some time away from our UU church. Our lives were so busy, and church just seemed like one more obligation to fulfill. What we wanted was respite and renewal. For a while, we tried Church of the Open Air—going for family hikes on Sunday mornings. My husband and I loved these hikes, and our son and daughter enjoyed them, too. But for my daughter, something was missing.
Soon after that Shabbat dinner with my cousins, my daughter asked if she could go to Hebrew school at our local temple. She started going every Sunday, and during the week would study in a beginning Hebrew workbook the temple gave her. Here, in her new class, were new friends in a tight community with a clear identity. She was hooked. She brought us to services. I went to a class for newcomers to Judaism, so I could keep up. A few weeks in, she said she wanted abat mitzvah在今年年底。
This threw us for a loop. We hadn’t planned on bat or bar mitzvahs for our children. More importantly, we weren’t sure whether this new love affair with Judaism was going to last, and we didn’t want to rush into anything.
我们坐下来与她,告诉她,一个晚上if she really wanted a bat mitzvah, we’d support her (though we would probably need to wait until the following year), but that we were wary about moving too quickly. And we told her why we’d chosen to become UUs all those years ago—because of who we were and who our family was. We reminded her of all the faiths contained within our one family. We suggested she make a pros and cons list to help her weigh such an important decision (which she dutifully did). And we suggested we return to our UU church to see how that felt before making any further commitments at the temple.
接下来的星期天，我们都去了教堂。我们的女儿和儿子参加了他们的宗教教育课，和我的丈夫和我坐在服务。We watched people we hadn’t seen in months process up the aisle to light candles at the altar during our Joys and Concerns time, sang familiar hymns, listened to a provocative sermon, and chatted during coffee hour while the kids played in the church playground. We left feeling renewed and happy—especially my daughter, who skipped through the church parking lot with a big smile on her face.
“Well,” I asked her. “What did you think?”
“I want to go here,” she said.
但仍有蝙蝠成人礼的问题。从童年过渡到青春期是儿童生活的主要过渡时间，这就是为什么大多数传统信仰与祭祀纪念它。许多UU教堂提供长达一年的即将年龄宗教教育类中间高中生，他们在审视自己的信仰旅程，了解更多关于一神教普遍主义，写自己的信仰的陈述，他们呈现给众末的一年。这是UU相当于一个酒吧或蝙蝠成人礼的。但是，我们的教会并没有提供这个类。
所以，我们设计我们自己的。我邀请最接近的女性我的女儿，她的祖母和姑姑到了女性的周末聚集在一起。We each brought symbolic gifts for her, including a flowered wreath, a new journal, and a favorite hymn, as well as stories to share—stories about my daughter’s essential qualities, about role models in our own lives, and about our hopes and dreams for her as she grew into her own woman. We asked her questions. Who did she hope to become? Who were the mentors in her life thus far? What did she want her future to look like? Then we sent her off on her own for several hours of quiet time by a nearby waterfall. Later, we met her there, and she shared some of her thoughts with us. We capped the day off with a swim in the river—a symbolic washing away of childhood and a rebirth into adolescence. And then we celebrated together by splurging at a delicious Italian restaurant.
这是一个美丽的，令人难忘的周末，完全我们自己的仪式，仪式出生的我们家的混合宗教身份的出来。这不是一个蝙蝠成人礼，当然，如果我的女儿以后的生活决定她想成为一个蝙蝠成人礼，她将得到我们的祝福。但就目前而言，这个解决方案感到右。它不仅巩固我女儿的身份为统一世界的深深信仰的家庭，这也促使我们其余的人回到家里，太家中，我们会选择对我们家的信念，已成为家庭对我们的信心。
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