Testimony of Bill McLaughlin

December 16, 2001

In the fall, Dena asked if anyone on the food & shelter committee was interested speaking to the topic of living our faith. I volunteered.

From the earliest age I had inherent ideas about what was right about religion and what was wrong. When I was six years old I asked my Sunday school teacher why, if darkness and blackness always represented evil in the bible: why did our minters where black. She said she did not know and called the minister. Reverend Nichol came and said "honestly Billy – they called me Billy then, I was much smaller then – I don’t know". It seemed to me – they should get their symbols straight.

Now at a young age a lot seemed logically wrong to me except for one story, which I thought marvelously, right. Diane recounted it a several of weeks ago, the Good Samaritan. At the same time I spent a good portion of my days from the age I could walk until eleven years old at the house of my best friend, Danny Hum. The Hums were from china. There, I learned a whole bunch more things, which I felt were inherently right. For, I was a boy to ask questions.

By the time I was in my early teens I had developed my own set of beliefs, an admixture of Christianity and eastern religions.

Maintaining those beliefs has allowed me survive a great deal in life. I have survived the loss of my closest friend, my own breakdown in my early twenties, and the loss of both my parents who I loved very much. Those beliefs have also allowed me to try and help others survive the misery and suffering which I believe is at the core of being human.

For the past fourteen years I have worked with socially disadvantaged people in downtown Toronto. I have worked with people who suffer sever mental illness of every form, people who are homeless and socially isolated and most recently people who are in crisis: often people encountering the abyss of existence, when it seems less painful to die than to live.

When I tell people what I do for a living. I oft get the response don’t you find it depressing. For me I cannot imagine how helping people can be anything but the opposite, invigorating. So two years ago when I came to check out First Unitarian in attempt to find a community to practice my faith in, I was immediately hooked by four words: "service is our prayer."

Thank you for listening.

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