OUR MESSAGE - Oneness and integrity

Unitarians are people on a search for what they can believe, and who are ready to live within an open and inclusive community of differently-minded other people, who are likewise on their own search.

Words and ideas that keep cropping up for us are oneness, conscience, integrity, compassion, community, justice, respect for difference, reverence, connectedness, open-mindedness.

For some but not all of us, the words prayer, presence and worship are also very important.

Our history shows us to be a collection of people, “a collection of religious seekers, trying to work out what's really important in religion, laying aside one thing after the other: creeds, Bible, doctrine, to get to something that's beneath all of those things.”

              (quote from Stephen Lingwood, Unitarian minister at Cardiff)

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The Unitarian view and way demand integrity.  The word "integrity" stems from the Latin adjective integer, meaning whole, complete, and by implication, seamless.

We see through 'integrity-tinted' spectacles.

We sense that life operates in integrity, undivided, in a oneness or one-through-ness that many see as divine.  And we seek and expect integrity in ourselves.

Seeking integrity in ourselves means two things.  Firstly, to be true to themselves, Unitarians often have to resort to the language of faith and religion when talking about their life experience and their life practice.  And secondly, to speak from their own positions no two Unitarians have the same thing to say about life, the cosmos, religion and faith (or even our denomination).

Overall, we find our Unitarian practice helps us recuperate, helps us move towards peace.

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We find that everyone is in need, and everyone is seeking peace.  And if we can see (as we hear from gifted mystics of every age) that we are one with others, integral with others, integrated with others, we can no longer seek that peace for ourselves alone, because the words "for ourselves alone" cease to have meaning.

We see that 'my' mental disorder is intimate and integral with the chaos and difficulty experienced in 'another'.  'I' cannot mend without 'the other' also being mended. And 'the other' cannot mend completely without 'my' mending too.

As humans have held onto this insight throughout our biological and cultural evolution, in biological terms this understanding must give evolutionary advantage.
This understanding is compassion.
This understanding, this compassion, is oneness, interconnectedness, the way of fellowship.
The way of transformation, conversion, turning round, turning back.
The way of radical love, humility and togetherness.
The way lived by and taught by Jesus and other immensely grace-filled people through the ages.

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Of course, "oneness" and "integrity" are idols like any others, which must in their turn be discarded or transcended.  For there are no words, which we could possibly say or imagine, that can encapsulate or encompass reality.