Growing up, I was in the Catholic seminary for nine years. Even before the seminary, I used to go to church every day as a boy. I gained so much solace there. I was able to know how prayer touches that deepest part of us that is aching for God. I owe thanks to my mom and dad for introducing me to the Church and for nurturing my spiritual growth. They let me go to a seminary in Michigan (we lived in Chicago) at the tender age of 14!

In 1982 my sister Cheech died. My beloved Catholic Church would not bury her in a non-Catholic cemetery. This felt like the “straw that broke the camel's back” for me with the church. This, along with other issues, sent me into a spiritual rebellion. Yet during those rebellious years, I couldn't shake the deep angst I experienced—an ache, a longing for God. That longing would creep up, and I would shove it back down. However, despite my issues with the Catholic Church, the church had taught me how to assuage my angst—to experience God in prayer and meditation.

One day during this period, while reading some Native American literature, I realized something. The Native Americans intuited and experienced Creator, Great Spirit, long before the missionaries came to “teach” them about God. It gave me a new perspective.

I will always call myself Catholic on some level. But once I was able to let my anger and defenses down, I ended up at a Unity church when my good friends Franci and John invited me to Unity of Chicago in 1989. They knew I was ready for a new church, as Franci had walked with me through much of my rebellion.

My requirement of any new church was that it had to make me feel the intimacy I felt while taking communion in the Catholic Church. I definitely felt that intimacy during meditation that Sunday morning. I was immediately at home and felt as though I had been “Unity” my whole life. I even left the service that day saying consciously to myself, I'm going to be a Unity minister some day.

John died two years later of AIDS. His funeral was not what I was used to – it was a celebration of life. Rev. Mike Matoin had us all release balloons into the air. I thought to myself, This is the way to do funerals.  

I realize now I may never have come back to God if I didn't allow myself to experience the anger and rebellion I felt. I was being my authentic self—anger and all. I never would have gotten in touch with that need for God had I not honored and expressed the anger and rebellion. In fact, I came out of the experience closer to God, thanks to my lessons from our Native American brothers and sisters.

As James Dillet Freeman says, “Unity is psychologically healthy” and that appeals to me. My advice to others who are feeling spiritually rebellious is to allow yourself to experience your feelings—validate them. If you're angry at God, you're angry. God can take it. No need to feel guilty about any feelings we feel. Feelings just ARE. They are not right or wrong, good or bad, moral or immoral. They are energy that must be expressed. What we do with them is the key.

I have always wanted to be a priest/minister, and finally, after doing 16 years of psychotherapy as a job, then finding Unity, I have found a spiritual home where I can live out my true life's calling.

Rev. Ed Kosak has been a minister at the Unity Church of Charleston, S.C., since 2002.