Berkley Center

Patience DeWeese: Not only was I raised a Jehovah's Witness, but I was a third generation Jehovah's Witness. So it was not only our religion, it was a big part of who we were. It was our identity.

Keturah DeWeese: Was there a certain point when you kind of realized that the Jehovah's Witness religion wasn't really right for you or you didn't really feel like you belong there?

Patience DeWeese: Yes. I would say the shift started when my father got sick and I happened to stay home with him instead of going to the meetings. So that created a space for contemplation, separate. And that led to start questioning things. And with Jehovah's Witnesses, it is the only true religion. So once I started questioning that possibility, the rest of it just didn't make sense.

That is absolutely the hardest thing I've ever done is make a decision that I knew would lead to being shunned by everyone. Imagine everybody you've ever known in your entire family being lost at sea, all of them on a ship and the ship sinks. That's what that experience was like.

But things lined up for me to go to college, and something I wanted, but never thought would happen, and changed everything. Opened up my mind to a whole new opportunities, and just open up my mind period, to start thinking about different things and thinking things in a broader sense, something I never thought I would do.

Keturah DeWeese: When I went into my teenage years, I also kind of started to lean a little bit away from the Witnesses. I think I kind of learned a lot from you, a certain open-mindedness, to even if you only believe one thing, it doesn't necessarily mean that everybody else is wrong. There's bits and pieces and lessons to be learned from everything. And I think that's really important. And to not be so closed off from everything. From that point to now, what do you think are the most important lessons that you've learned?

Patience DeWeese: When I was a Jehovah's Witness, I was not involved in making the world a better place because I believe that God was going to do that, and that my job was to tell everybody that the end was coming soon and to become Jehovah's Witnesses.

Now, I don't believe that God's going to come and fix it all. That our duty as humans, the most important thing is love and care for each other. That's why being a Unitarian Universalist fit, is that concept of the importance of caring for each other and making the world a better place. And I liked how they have open for you to question and to look at things. One of the tag lines I saw is, come to the UU, we have questions for your answers. And I like that, because my faith is very much still evolving. And where I was 10 years ago is so different than where I am now. And I know I'm always going to be in transition. And I found a whole world could be that way.