Christmas gathering 15 December 2024 – an informal bring and share of matters to do with Christmas and hope

For our Christmas gathering this year we chose a less formal format.  After we had done the most important thing — switching on the heating of the Meeting House — we got our hot drinks to start with, instead of doing that at the end.

Then, settling down with our drinks and the chalice candle lit, Christmas music playing quietly in the background, in a circle we sat down to catch up and chat about what Christmas holds for us and our families.  As the session went on we gradually lit candles for issues on our minds and hearts.

We heard the pleasure in the voice of one of our number who is currently reading The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, of which it has been said that "It is a better world for having a book in it that chronicles so many tragedies in a tone that never deviates from hope.”  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Covenant_of_Water

After a while it seemed to be the time to play Do You Hear What I Hear?, sung by Bing Crosby.  Usually played at Christmas, Do You Hear What I Hear? was written in October 1962 by Gloria Shayne and Noël Regney during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States and the Soviet Union confronted each other over the placement of Soviet missiles in newly Communist Cuba. Do You Hear What I Hear? was written by Shayne and Regney as a plea for peace.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Shayne_Baker  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs9FPx3_Slk

Then we had an intriguing discussion about the theodical teasers — philosophical puzzles about the nature of God given the presence of evil— set out by Lance Morrow.  In 1976, Morrow became a regular writer of Time magazine's back page essay. He won the National Magazine Award for his Time essays in 1981, and was a finalist for that award in 1991 (for that essay on the subject of evil).  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lance_Morrow. The three proposals that Morrow examines together in that essay on evil were remembered today as being “That God is all goodness”, “That God is all powerful”, and “Terrible things happen to people (both good and bad)”.  If our blog reader manages to work out a world view that makes sense of these three propositions and can hold them all at once together, perhaps they could write in to us and explain — because like elders before us, we were not able to make them all work at once.

Next we had a request for the poem by Emily Dickinson Hope is the thing with feathers which we heard read out first, before hearing it also set to music by Christopher Tin   https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42889/hope-is-the-thing-with-feathers-314

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGrLL3T0ozE

Following this we began to home in on what Christmas is all about.  To challenge our thinking, we heard a reading by Unitarian Universalist Minister Richard M Woodman (1930-2020) https://www.uua.org/files/2021-06/memorial_book_slt_ga_2021.pdf  The key to Christmas as described by Woodman was new to us, yet seemed to resonate strongly with us.

We beg the pardon of anyone imposed upon, as we set out in full below the Woodman piece that we heard.  (For full apology and an edit of this blogpost for rectification purposes, please email lucyunbox.ringwood@btinternet.com) 

“It is that season of the year again. That eminently impossible yet joyously wonderful season of Christmas. “Christmas impossible?” you ask. The supreme truth and message of Christmas is indeed its seeming objective impossibility.

“We live in a world gone mad. Each hour compiles new proof of strife and tension; of crime and misery; of wars seemingly inevitable; of hunger and cold; of hate and fear. 

“The living reality of our days is not peace on earth, goodwill to all. It is, rather, strife around us and everywhere despair. Such is the world we know too well. Yet it is wise for us to remember that such also is the world our forebears knew before us. Into such a world Christmas comes — as it has come for 2000 years — and into such a world the same spirit, by different names, has come to those of other faiths.

“We who view the Christmas story from a naturalistic perspective easily read the impossible into the attendant notice of miraculous events: chorus of angels, virgin birth and the strange star.  Yet isn’t the miracle only embroidered with these tales?  The impossible event is that in times of deepest despair, visions and inspirations of hope, of peace, of love come to all.

“The real Christmas is the message and miracle that people still hope! 

It is that they still keep alive the poetry of love and peace and goodwill, even when life seems to dim all prospect of such a vision. 

“The impossibility of Christmas is that it comes. 

“Its coming is more than an event on the calendar. Its coming is a revitalisation of the spirit – where people still hope, still see the visions of peace, love, and fellowship. The impossible becomes plausible and life takes on a dimension richer than the obvious.   

“Come, Christmas! 

“Let us warm our spirits by its eternal light. Let us live again in the hope better than we know. Perhaps in living awhile by that faith, we can more fully be what we would be, and can erase the darkness that seems to be.”

We then heard that wonderful metaphor for the spiritual journey and the pain that accompanies the acquiring of a whole new outlook — the poem The Journey of the Magi by T. S. Eliot https://poetryarchive.org/poem/journey-magi/ was read beautifully.  It never fails to impress.

Our last music was sing-along to a Unitarian poem by Rev Edmund Sears set to the tune Noël by Arthur Sullivan, It Came Upon the Midnight Clear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Came_Upon_the_Midnight_Clear  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U_Dzovu1XA  So many traditional Christians sing this carol year after year without knowing it comes from a minister to a dissenting congregation.

Coming to the end of our happy time together, we closed with an energetic, pulpit-style reading of Christmas Credo by Rev Cliff Reed, which sets out several points of belief in free verse (for full version see  https://www.unitarian.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/2002_Spirit_Time_Place.pdf  and scroll down to the image of page 68). We remembered the generations of Unitarians who had sat in that selfsame Meeting House since 1727 at the Christmas time of year, whom we hope might have shared Cliff Reed's viewpoint:

“I believe that there is light in darkness.

I believe there is truth in myth.

I believe that there is divinity in every birth........

“I believe we must admit that Herod is real ....... and can be defeated, that Scrooge can be healed .... that this is the meaning of Christmas.”

Autumn Liminality and the Illusion of Anthropocentrism – #Unitarians in Ringwood Zoom through November 2024

Owing to a change to our schedule, we no longer gather on Remembrance Sunday, so our November service this year was able to address a more general theme.  The sharp-eyed and avid reader of our blog may have been intrigued by the theme trailed some time in advance — ‘Autumn as Liminal Time’ — only to find that closer to the event a different theme was announced : ‘The Illusion of Anthropocentrism.’

Turns out our service leader was toying with us, as elements of both these themes surfaced as we sat together.

The reader may assume the candle lighting, the sharing of concerns, the period of interior reflection, and the formality of prayer in the form of spoken prayer forms.  As one might expect these days, there were prayers for Israel Palestine.  And of course there were hymns — which turned out to have been carefully selected to refer to the main theme as finally announced :

“Source of all being! Throned afar, Thy glory flames from sun and star; Centre and soul of every sphere, Yet to each loving heart how near!”

“The freer step, the fuller breath, the wide horizon’s grander view;

The sense of life that knows no death, the Life that maketh all things new.”

“The green grassy blade, the grasshopper's sound,

The creatures of shade that live in the ground,

The dark soil, the moist soil, where plants spring to birth — 

We look down at wonder below in the earth.”

“We all must say to them what we all know for sure —

that there’s a goodness in the world which ever shall endure.”

 

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  The gathering was introduced using a declaration phrased after Stephen Lingwood in his book Seeking Paradise — a Unitarian mission for our times (p108).  In Ringwood we are finding this book very useful for keeping ourselves on a course that we can more easily talk about than the usual, stuttering and very woolly, Unitarian messages.

“We don’t have the full truth of faith but discern it imperfectly in everyday life. 

The saving faith that we seek is this-worldly and it includes the this-worldly realities of healing, awakening, flourishing, reconciliation, liberation, and justice. 

The language we use to speak about these realities is the language of paradise — where the love of God is known in reconciliation between humans and the earth.”

There were two readings, both from the compilation we know as the Bible.  The first was from the book of Mark, chapter 10 verses 32-45.  The second was from the book Job, chapter 38, verses 2-41.  I can’t remember ever having heard the book of Job used in a church service, of any denomination, so it was quite a surprise to hear it here.  Job is notoriously difficult to make sense of, even for experienced church folk.  Fascinating, therefore, to hear how our president for the day had got a handle on it.

“I have been reading a book by Michael J. Sandel,” she said, “titled The Tyranny of Merit.  In it Sandel gives, at length, a hypothesis by various Jewish rabbis regarding the book of Job.  I have heavily drawn on that work by those rabbis, by way of Michael J. Sandel.”

As even our most engaged blog reader will likely not be familiar with the book of Job, here is a sample of the reading that was given :

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:

2 Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?

3 Gird up your loins like a man,

    I will question you, and you shall declare to me.

4 Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?

    Tell me, if you have understanding.

5 Who determined its measurements—surely you know!

    Or who stretched the line upon it?

6 On what were its bases sunk,

    or who laid its cornerstone

7 when the morning stars sang together

    and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?

25 Who has cut a channel for the torrents of rain,

    and a way for the thunderbolt,

26 to bring rain on a land where no one lives,

    on the desert, which is empty of human life,

27 to satisfy the waste and desolate land,

    and to make the ground put forth grass?

39 Can you hunt the prey for the lion,

    or satisfy the appetite of the young lions,

40 when they crouch in their dens,

    or lie in wait in their covert?

41 Who provides for the raven its prey,

    when its young ones cry to God,

    and wander about for lack of food?

As for the reading from Mark, it was about James and John asking Jesus to assure them of their places at his right hand, when he was secured in his kingdom.  This was against the backdrop of Jesus and his followers heading for Jerusalem and Jesus starting to warn them about what was likely to happen to him when they got there.

In reflecting on these two passages, the president suggested that in the first reading the story of Jesus was reaching its autumn season, the liminality of that ‘between’ season, with horizons drawing in, the expansiveness of summer long passed, and anxiety about survival through dark times ahead being a general theme.  People were beginning to be defensive, even fearful, and feeling control slipping away from them.  She reminded us that under those ‘autumn circumstances’ we humans  — in fact, all animals — put survival first, and that means focusing on ourselves first and foremost.  James and John want to be assured of the fullness, their glory, to come — in the next world, if not in this one.

She imagined the incident as, “They said, ‘You have the power, Jesus — look after us in the next life and keep us with you — we were the first ones you chose in this life — let us be the first ones you choose in the next life.  We want to survive in a way we recognise, we want to remain in control.  In these liminal times give us something to hang onto.’  The others grumble, but not to challenge what is being asked for.  They probably grumble because they hadn’t thought of asking, and these two have got there first.  And what does Jesus say? Jesus says no.  That’s not how it works. He says, All of this? This isn’t about you.  It’s so not about you.  Get over yourselves.”

And then our president for the day turned to the Job reading.  Job is given extremely painful and grievous suffering, despite being a virtuous man, because the poor chap is a pawn in a wager between God and Satan, though he doesn’t know it.  So much is clear to anyone who reads the book of Job.  What is not clear to most of us is why, or what we are to take from the lesson.  But our president reported that the rabbis who have managed to find some sense in it say the following.

The rabbis suggest that Job’s worldly suffering is made worse because both he and his friends assume that suffering is evoked by sin, and that success is evoked by virtue.  Assuming that suffering signifies sin, Job's friends cruelly make his pain worse by claiming that Job must be to blame for the death of his sons and daughters, somehow.  This perplexes Job as he believes himself to be wholly innocent (and the reader of Job is shown this to be true).

Job cries out to God, who takes many pages to reply.  When God does reply, God speaks from the whirlwind and asks Job how much Job really knows about the way the universe is established and run. 

Our president said, “God gives Job a glimpse of the extent of God’s action.  And in our reading today, we heard only a fraction of what is said.  Giving Job this glimpse, God declares that not all rain is for the sake of watering the crops of the upright, nor is every drought for the sake of punishing the wicked.  After all, it rains in places where no one lives — in the wilderness, which is empty of human life.  God proclaims from the whirlwind that not everything that happens is a reward or a punishment for human behaviour.  So God implies that creation is not only for the sake of human beings. The cosmos is bigger, and God's ways are more mysterious, than an anthropocentric picture suggests.  In doing so, God teaches Job a lesson in humility.  Faith in God means accepting the grandeur and mystery of creation, not expecting God to dispense rewards and punishments centred on humanity.”

In putting this all together, the president said : “We need to get over ourselves.  This is not just an Autumn thing, but we can especially notice it in Autumn.  It’s not all about us. 

– When we notice we are subliminally in our fearful survival mode, we can reject it and get over ourselves. This isn't about us.  

– Any time we feel our hearts closing in and shutting out, we can reject it and get over ourselves.  This isn't about us.  

–  We can discover and express our faith by opening our hearts again to the grandeur and mystery of creation.

To live in the love-ethic, to live in openness towards others and all creation, we need to have the trust and confidence to open our hearts up again.  Even as the days shorten and the dark bears down more on us, we too can have the simple faith of a flower that opens its petals each day to the sun.”

May it be so.

'Metaphor and Christianity' – #Unitarians associated with Ringwood gather in October 2024

In explaining why she had taken the topic ‘Metaphor’ as the topic for the gathering, our president for the day said, “When I was young I was chatting with my devout Church of England mother about Christianity.  ‘Well,’ my mother replied, ‘it's all metaphor, isn't it.’  There was no question mark at the end of her sentence.  This was a clear statement.  We were fairly open with each other about our respective religious beliefs, but for some reason we never followed up this snippet of conversation.  As the years have gone by I have often wondered about what she said, especially as now I seriously agree with her.”

The candle in our chalice was lit with these words, by Adyashanti :  "There’s only one guarantee that Jesus gave: if you can receive and awaken and embody what he is speaking about, then your life will never be the same again. Then you will realize that you’re already living in the Kin-dom of Heaven."

And then we were given a clear sense of what this fellowship in Ringwood is all about, using some words adapted from Stephen Lingwood :

"This is our delight:  We are in search.

We are in search of a coherent, whole set of stories, symbols, languages, and practices; that, taken together, offer a way of life.  A way of life that diagnoses a problem in the human condition  and offers a solution.

In other words, we are in search of something that gives coherence and meaning to human life.  We are in search of faith, a faith that could be experienced as good news.  We are trying to speak of paradise."

As this was a Zoom gathering, the hymns were able to be taken from a range of engaging video clips available publicly on YouTube.  Here are the links:

Lead Me, Guide Me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLpB-dE2DHM

Words and music by Doris M. Akers

Performed by Dr. Velma Willis and the Gospel Pioneer Reunion

Stand By Me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v24qf16zP58

Words and music by Rev. Charles A. Tindley

Performed by Wyeth Duncan

There’s a spirit of love in this place

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN7SEpcpkgg

Words and music by Mark A. Miller

Performed by Pine United Methodist Church, San Francisco CA

How like a Gentle Spirit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_0UGz1Ts-w

Words (1987) by C. Eric Lincoln

Music (1941) by Alfred Morton Smith

Performed by Rev. Bill Bloom 

We’ll understand it better by and by

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLzLJXETn0A

Words and music by Rev. Charles A. Tindley

Performed by Phillip Carter

There was also a poem made freely available online by the author:

Roger Robinson — Portable Paradise, read by the author.

https://poetryarchive.org/poem/a-portable-paradise/

The readings were firstly from the Bible, book of Mark chapter 7 verses 26-30 (in the translation version by Andy Gaus), and secondly, from the book by Howard Thurman Jesus and the Disinherited.

The readings both dealt with the incident, in the narrative about Jesus, in which Jesus is approached by a woman with different ancestral origins — from the region we would now name Syria.  Jesus initially declines to help her poorly child, but after an exchange with the woman, changes his mind.

Thurman points out that this incident is an occasion for a one-to-one encounter between Jesus and someone who has been racialised, in Jesus’ mind, as different from himself.  Potentially a test of Jesus' universal love-ethic which Thurman suggests, was, "A twofold demand upon him at all times: to love those of the household of Israel who became his enemies because they regarded him as a careless perverter of the truths of God; and to love those beyond the household of Israel — the Samaritan, the Gentile, and even the Roman oppressor…….

A person must love their neighbour directly, clearly, permitting no barriers between."

~~~~

Our president for the day reflected on these readings by firstly looking at the language in play and secondly generally agreeing with Howard Thurman, that Jesus was — as we would say these days — on a learning journey of his own.

The first point reflected upon was that the Syrophoenician woman cleverly uses language to shift Jesus’ point of view.  The woman plays on the difference between the feral street dogs who are really part of the town’s waste disposal system, and pet dogs that live closely with families.

“When Jesus first replies to the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7:27), he is repeating what he said elsewhere (Matthew 7:6):  “Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them underfoot”.  Jesus is initially rejecting her plea on grounds that she and he have different origins, different cultures, different ways of looking at things.  

“Where he starts from, is that he doesn’t want to give the deepest teaching to those who are undeserving — either because he thinks they won’t recognize it and will throw it away, or because he thinks they aren’t ready for it.  And in any case, he is entirely taken up with helping his own people.

“The woman’s reply is clever because, whilst holding onto the dog metaphor, she pivots it, to challenge him to look at things in a new way.  I have followed where others have been before, in reading that there is linguistic evidence of this.  At this exact point in the New Testament Greek there is used a linguistic diminutive.  

“Two words are used for dogs: Jesus uses one word, the usual, hard-nosed word, used for the feral scavenger dogs.  And the woman uses another, softer word, with a subtler meaning.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AncientGreek/comments/18uxhvq/larry_hurtado_vs_joel_marcus_on_the/?rdt=63838

"If the translator closely attends to this linguistic twist, and changes the emphasis to suit, the passage can be read:

“(Mark 7:27-28)

He said to her, “First let the children eat their fill, for it is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it out to the dogs.” But she answered him, “Sir, even the lapdogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.” 

“I think that what the woman is saying, is, “If you are going to categorise me and mine as different from you and yours, at least accept that our relationship can be more than you have declared.  We are neighbours.  Accepting we are different, we can still live closely together, like dog owners and their pets.  And in the same way, what is good for you is also good for us.  Just give us a little of it, won’t you?”

"I think Jesus is jolted by this appeal to reason, solidarity, and the love-ethic.  And so he acts to heal the child.”

And the reflection re-emphasised Thurman’s assertion that Jesus would need techniques he could use in extending his love-ethic across racialised divides.  Our president for the day repeated Thurman’s message: “The first step toward love is a common sharing of a sense of mutual worth and value.  This cannot be discovered in a vacuum or in a series of artificial or hypothetical relationships.  It has to be in a real situation, natural, free. …. What one discovers in even a single experience in which barriers have been removed may become useful in building an overall technique for loving one’s enemy.”