Reflections on All Peoples

Stories from members and friends about what the church means to them.

Patrick Gutierrez

The All Peoples Church UU Podcast—#1 Patrick Gutierrez

Rosalyn: [00:00:00] Welcome to the All People’s Church UU podcast. Our narrator today is AJ, and we’ll be talking to Patrick Gutierrez.

Patrick: All right, my name is Patrick Gutierrez, and I’ve been a member here since 1982.

Rosalyn: Wow, that’s a long time.

Patrick: Well, I came from First Church.

Rosalyn: First Church? What was that?

Patrick: [00:01:00] That’s on 2500 Purington. That was the first Unitarian Church in Fort Worth.

Rosalyn: And

Patrick: then there was a split that led to the formation of this church with the folks who broke away.

And then when we came in 1976 we went to First Church and saw that the situation, uh, that the church was struggling and it struggled until it saw the need to merge again with the healthy church. When, when my wife, Judy started when we, well, we both started there and Bob Hill came to the conclusion that we just weren’t going to thrive.

Mm hmm. And that led to the talks of merging the [00:02:00] church. And when we sold the property of First Church, Mm hmm. It gave this church enough money to build, uh, the sanctuary that we’re in now.

Rosalyn: Wow.

Patrick: So, but we had a lot of members back then.

It

was around 200.

A.J.: You were telling us about this church, but from the, from, from the first time you can remember, what is your historical background religiously?

What were your family? And how did that affect you in your young life? Well

Patrick: as you can tell by the, the last name I my Hispanic heritage is that my family is Mexican. And so I came up in. In that Mexican culture, and I grew up in the, in the 40s and 50s in Kansas City, Missouri, and I lived in a a neighborhood that was primarily [00:03:00] unionized steel workers who worked for United States Steel.

And there were a mixture of in that neighborhood, there were a mixture of immigrants from Poland. And Italian and Mexican, and a smattering of uh, black, blacks, but very, very small percentage. So, it was a working class neighborhood, basically blue collar. And because of the culture, the Mexican culture I came up in the Catholic Church.

So my, my question back then was, if Jesus is nailed to a cross, how can he do all of these wonderful things they’re telling me to do with him nailed to that damn cross? Because [00:04:00]

A.J.: Seems like a finite solution.

Patrick: Yeah. I’m thinking of Batman and Superman comics that my older uncles had, and that I would look at.

And I’m going, you know, Superman can fly and Batman can do all these wonderful things with, but how does Jesus do all of his wonderful things with his hands and feet nailed to a wooden cross? So that was my first religious question.

A.J.: And I bet the church loved that. So, how did that lead you down the journey?

to find this church. How did that bring you here?

Patrick: My wife and I grew up in a neighborhood that was again, a mixture of different cultures. Uh, the other, the new culture that, that I was [00:05:00] discovering when I was growing up down there were we lived in the edge of truck farms. This was along the Missouri River bottoms and there was a lot of rich river soil down there.

So there were a lot of small farmers down there and There were Italian farmers and Mexican farmers and Belgian farmers. And that was the new culture for me were the, the, the Belgian culture. The names I can think of were Van Der Dong and Van Holtzen. A lot of Van whatever names.

A.J.: Van and Yeager.

Patrick: Yeah. So they were an interesting culture because so many of them were farmers and they were still using, at that time, workhorses. So, I would see, horses [00:06:00] actually doing, uh, the plowing and hauling things. So at any rate, because there were so many cultures down there, there were also a lot of religions down there. And because of the mix of religions we went to each other’s churches at on occasion. And I would go to a a Nazarene church maybe on occasion with friends, or I would go to the Baptist church, or I would go to the Methodist church and and I was Catholic, so, but it was all the same kids going to all the same churches.

So we, we were pretty eclectic in our religious practices. Loyalties and affiliations and in the, in the summertime, we would go to the Baptist Bible Sunday, what do you call it? Bible school, because they had the best athletic [00:07:00] equipment. And in the wintertime, we would go to the Methodist church often enough because they would go skiing in the winter.

So we would go ski. And then in the Nazarenes we would go because their Preacher was a Hell and Brimstone preacher, and it was, he was quite a show. We just went for the drama.

And and then, and then, but for the most part, I went to a Catholic school, and my wife went to the was a Baptist, and she went to the Baptist church, and I went to a Catholic church. But when we got married we had two children and we wanted to do birth control, but the Catholic Church said, no, no, no, no, that’s, that’s a mortal sin.

So we went, we got to find a different church. One, one where we don’t feel guilty about practicing birth control [00:08:00] because we had our two children, two girls, and we were happy with that. And so we started looking around and we found the. Unitarian church in Kansas City. And we went, this is a place for us because we went to a series of uh, lectures called God in the image of man. And we went, do you know, if they can have those kinds of thoughts, we would like to find out more about this religion. So we started going there and found, found a place for us that. Let us basically be responsible for our own religion. And we liked the freedom of that concept of being able to come up with your own religion and It took a long time for us to lose [00:09:00] our Christianity, leaning towards Christianity but away from the Baptist church and away from the Catholic church.

And finally, embracing just Unitarian Universalism and the ability to look at other religions like Buddhism and Islam and I was always taken by the Sikhs. So it, it, it was nice to be able to look at those and just make a blend of my, a blend of that into my own religious beliefs.

A.J.: Fascinating.

Patrick: So, It was because of the Church’s, Catholic Church’s rulings on birth control that we began looking at Unitarian Universalism or looking for other religions and found Unitarian Universalism.

A.J.: So here would be my next [00:10:00] question to you then. That explains how you got here. What’s made you stay here?

What has kept you coming through these doors?

Patrick: The thing that kept me coming to this particular religious community is the fact that they embraced freedom of thought and translated that freedom of thought into a spiritual strength and into uh, social action. Uh, and so this community gives me the freedom and to practice what I call my religion and the ability to act on that religion and to influence.[00:11:00]

My family and my community and the different people that I have met here. have just reinforced that. So that keeps me coming back, that reinforcement of freedom of thought, freedom to act on what I believe and just to practice that in this church community. Since I’m so old now I’ll be 82 soon It I don’t practice or I don’t act much anymore.

I’m primarily a caregiver now, but at least in my caregiving experience I have to draw on a spiritual strength to be able to practice or act, how can I say that? Yeah, the, the, that spirit, I draw on the spiritual strength [00:12:00] to act as a caregiver and it reinforces that what I’m doing is good, the right thing to do. Basically, I’m caregiving for my wife who has dementia.

A.J.: Now, I, I love your insights and I love everything we’ve had. So I just have one more question for you and then I’ll, I’ll, I’ll take you off the hot seat. Okay. If you had one thing you could say to somebody who had no idea what our church was about, just words of encouragement, what would they be?

Patrick: I would hope that someone who walks through or into our church would find what I have found in my, what, 50 years of being a Unitarian Universalist.

And that is to be free to think and act [00:13:00] and influence. And mainly I’ve done that at the family level because Part of my culture is that the family is just so important and to have passed that on to my children and to see my children pass that on to their children. Has sustained me and given me my rewards, so to speak, because I have raised, and my wife and I have raised three wonderful children, and we have six wonderful grandchildren.

And they, I didn’t think they all would, but Even though two of them are Methodist now they, they are still grounded in that Unitarian Universalism that we demonstrated. To them as, as parents. [00:14:00]

A.J.: That is absolutely amazing. Mr. Patrick. Yeah. You’re an amazing person and I appreciate it.

Patrick: Oh, well thank you.

A.J.: I, I always enjoy talking to you. I don’t get to as much as I’d like to,

Patrick: but, well, it, it’s hard when you’re back there. horsing with the sound equipment and so thank you for the interview

A.J.: indeed. Yeah, it’s been a

pleasure

Rosalyn: This has been a production of all people’s church U.U. You can find us online at all people’s church UU. org[00:15:00]

Patrick: Because I’m old church And Being with people like you and the other people Just makes me want to Be even better when I’m here.