To follow up on my last post… Yesterday I went to a Sunday service of the NUUF (Netherlands Unitarian Universalist Fellowship) in Amsterdam. It was the first time in my life that I went to a Sunday service without being forced to by either my parents or (as was mostly the case) my school.

It had taken some courage and support from other UU people for me to go to Amsterdam, since I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into. I didn’t know what their Sunday services were like, I didn’t know how many people would be there, I didn’t know how old those people would be, etc. To be frank, I was afraid I’d be a twenty year old between a bunch of 65+ people :|.

Luckily that was definitely not the case. When I entered the church (which really didn’t look like a church from the inside), I was greeted with ‘Hi, you must be Tijl’ by Bill Britt, a guy I briefly had email contact with and who does administration in the NUUF I suppose. Anyway, that was a real help to…

…get more comfortable, and I must say that I felt comfortable more quickly than I could have hoped for. There were also some other new people, so I wasn’t the only one.

In the end we were with about 20 people ranging from 17 years old to almost 80, I think, with the most people being between 30 and 50. So I could definitely live with that :). Most of them were Americans, but there were also some Dutch people and even a couple from Sweden. English was the language of the service obviously, but you all know that my English isn’t that bad, so… ;)

The service consisted of some songs on guitar played by the 17 year old girl who’s the daughter of the minister, a text from “Siddhartha” by Herman Hesse, some hymns (yes, I had to sing :P), a meditation text about the connection between the Universe and a piece of paper, an introduction course to ‘Chi Kung’ which is an Eastern technique to find more energy and spend it wisely, and also a lighting of the chalice.

We were offered the chance to light a candle for any joys or concerns we had. I took that chance to light a candle of joy for Susanne who’s having great fun right now with her tour in Canada, and I lit a candle of concern for a Canadian friend of mine (the girl who gave me the ‘Spoon Theory’ link), as I was chatting and playing some online pool with her, but every half an hour or so, she would suddenly disappear because she was bleeding again, feeling nauseous and throwing up…

After the service, we had coffee and tea with some pie that somebody baked apparently, and after that some of us even went to a nearby pub to have a drink together to get to know each other a bit more.

All in all I had a great afternoon and I really enjoyed it… much more than I could have hoped for :). A nice way of spending an otherwise boring Sunday afternoon. I’m looking forward to going again next month and getting to know those people a little better, and I’m even thinking of going to the Thanksgiving dinner some of them are organizing. My cooking skills might come in handy again ;).