"Trying Like Hell to be a Unitarian" (i.e. Smart and Good)

A friend sent me this quote from Pastrix, a book by Nadia Bolz-Weber, an incisive and funny Lutheran pastor who blogs at "Sarcastic Lutheran," has lots of tattoos and swears a lot, and really gets the idea of grace (see the book at p. 45):

While in California, I spent several months trying like hell to be a Unitarian. Quakerism didn't work for me, Wicca was great, but I always felt like I was just visiting. So I hoped Unitarianism would be just right. Unitarians are such smart, good people. They seemed so hopeful. They vote Democrat and recycle and love women and they let you believe anything you want to, and I wanted to be one of them badly. But I couldn't pull it off. Four years of sobriety hadn't come to me as a result of hopefulness and positive thinking. It was grace. Unitarians just don't talk much about our need for God's grace. They have a higher opinion of human beings than I have ever felt comfortable claiming, as someone who both reads the paper and knows the condition of my own heart. Having had the experience of getting sober and feeling like God interrupted my bullshit life, I couldn't be comforted by my own divinity or awesomeness, although I'd love it if I could. In the end, as much as I desperately wanted to be Unitarian, I couldn't because what I needed was a specific divine source of reconciliation and wholeness, a source that is connected to me in love, but does not come from inside of me.

Unitarians are the example here, but the streak runs through me and through an awful lot of us: the streak of maintaining a very high opinion of ourselves and of the capabilities of humans in general. As a result, when other people fall short of those expectations, boy, are they in for a verbal or digital thrashing. (Those people who slam the other side without showing any sympathy or grace, I sure do despise them.... Oops, sorry.)