'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.”

Re-orientating towards abundance – Unitarians in Ringwood muse on letting go of scarcity 15 September 2024

The challenge set before us today was to look behind our thought processes and see whether we are generally operating with a mindset of scarcity.  The mindset of scarcity lies at the heart of many fears to do with survival, and is a root cause of animosity, xenophobia and conflict, even war.  For, if we believe we only have just about enough to get by, we guard our resources jealously and are reluctant to share them with others.  We begin to make judgments about whom we are prepared to share with, and put up barriers to protect our resources from others who mean less to us than those we view as our own — in other words, we begin to ‘other’ certain people.  This is where tribalism begins.

The first reading in today’s gathering was from the book Seeking Paradise by Stephen Lingwood.  Having suggested that alienation from the Earth, our bodies, our neighbours, and the source of life itself, are all, in essence, the same problem, Stephen highlighted that early Christian teaching was that evil can only be resisted by becoming deeply attuned to the divine presence within and all around.  As an example, we then heard some ecstatic poetry written by Ephrem the Syrian (c. 306-373 CE).

The second reading was from the Bible Book of Mark chapter 8.  This is the story of Jesus feeding a large crowd with a very small amount of food, for the second time, and Jesus’ frustration afterwards with his students, who didn’t seem to understand what had just happened and what they were supposed to learn from it.

While we were chewing these readings over we had some hymns and songs about giving thanks, the harvest, rejoicing in the truth, counting our blessings etc and then we heard the president for the day present thoughts on the two readings.

Pointing out that we need to understand what abundance is and how we can enjoy abundance in a world affected by climate overheat and biodiversity crash, and the population flows that will naturally follow, she said, 

“Abundance is not defined by having more stuff........nor is it about being able to access more and more data, information, music and moving images at the click of a carbon-expensive button.......Abundance is about connection.  Connection between people, certainly, but also connection with our environment, connection with what makes and gives life...... A greater sense of connection comes first and foremost from stronger communal living........We need to re-orientate ourselves, so that a sense of abundance becomes the whole context of our lives, the grounding on which we then go about the other more usual activities.”

 

She explained that her understanding of the Bible reading was that Jesus was teaching exactly about this act of re-orientation towards a mindset of abundance:

“Traditional churches use the miracle stories about Jesus as evidence or proof that Jesus is actually God.  Unitarians have the luxury of skipping that entirely, treating it as not a matter of interest.  Unitarians can look at what is actually going on in the story.

“When Jesus rebukes his students he is frustrated with them.  They are not paying attention to what he’s trying to teach them at that moment.  Jesus and his friends live as Jews under the yoke of Rome and under the religious authorities intent on appeasing Rome.  The Jewish people live under a socio-economic and political yoke that makes it hard to find the still, quiet, clarity at heart that Jesus is entirely orientated towards and teaching about.  Jesus calls it the kingdom of God.

“In the boat he is trying to warn them about the insidious nature of the power of the religious authorities and of the king who is a vassal of the Roman imperial oppressors. But his students aren’t listening. 

“It’s not even that the students are distracted by trying to think through and understand the miracle that Jesus has just performed.  It’s rather that all they are worrying about is that they only have in their possession a single loaf of bread.  They are in a mindset of scarcity.  Scarcity is once again worrying them, and putting everything else out of their minds.

 

“Jesus can see they haven’t absorbed the teaching about the miracles of the feeding of the many. The four thousand people that had gathered to listen to Jesus seemed to be in a state of scarcity.  And there was only a little bit of food to be found between the students, and this food was presented to Jesus.  ‘Hey, Jesus, here’s the problem!’

“Before doing anything with the food, Jesus blessed it.  He gave thanks.  By doing this he brought to attention what wonder and a marvel it was to have this food at all.  Then he broke the food up.  He split it into even smaller pieces, and gave it away.  He told others to give it away too, to share it with everyone.  It was distributed widely.  And somehow, in seeing it as a gift, a wonder, a measure of abundance, and giving it away, it actually became an abundance.  

“And this was the second time Jesus had done this.  So Jesus is disappointed and cross that having done this — and not just once but twice — his students now on the boat still haven’t understood.  Those closest to him, those who claim allegiance to him and his teaching about living in the kingdom, are not even listening to him.

“He rebukes them, but even now he doesn’t explain it for them.  He leaves it for them to work out for themselves;  and so it is left for us to work out for ourselves, as well.  

“I think the story about the rebuke by Jesus holds this message :  Look, you live in paradise, a place of abundance.  You think you have almost nothing, just enough to maybe get by, and you worry about the future.  Whereas with gratefulness and wonder and thanksgiving and sharing you have everything you need, and much much more than you need.  All it takes is a re-orientation.  All it takes is a mindset of abundance.”

 

August 2024 gathering for reverence – The Great Unknowing – #Unitarians in Ringwood

The thing about faith of any type is that it is actually about not knowing.  Do you have faith in bus timetables?  Do you act as though the bus will come along at the time it says in the timetable, even though you will not be surprised if it doesn’t arrive as predicted?  

Faith is about acting ‘as if’, using some kind of mental model for how the world works, making some kind of decisions about how you can use what the world offers — even if that mental model, like the bus timetable, doesn’t completely represent what then takes place.

People who hold a religious faith are doing exactly the same.  They have in mind some sort of working model for how to get their lives together, some sort of feel for what the whole universe — what is in it, and what is beyond it — is grounded on.  And then they act in line with their model and make decisions about their actions, actions that show up in the real world.

But if any religious person claims to know, better than a non-religious person, what is actually going on, they are deceiving only themselves.

Designed by Freepik at freepik.com

And that’s what our gathering on 18th August was all about.

It was all about the great unknowing.  We don’t know, and we can’t know.  Nonetheless, we have to have some kind of picture that we work to.  Some kind of ‘as if’.

We started with a poem The People’s Anthem by Ebenezer Elliott, written in 1848, querying whether crime will endlessly support the powerful and whether the powerful will endlessly tread down the majority.  The poem cried out to God, in some form or other, to save the people from endless toil and bondage, asserting that people are all children of God.  In these troubled times it seemed particularly apt, even if we don’t know what type of God we are crying out to and what we mean when we say people are children of God.  But the poem was actually set to music and forms part of the musical Godspell — so it has become a memorable hum-along tune.  You can find it here on YouTube 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw1j8QvtZZc&list=RDg2RBaN3uWOY&index=8

Then we reminded ourselves that we were sitting in a sanctuary of peace, prompted by words by Rev Tony McNeile, closing with, “This is me.  This is who I am. Here I can open my arms and my soul to the divine and the sacred and be at one with them.”

You can find Tony and some of his words here  https://tonymcneile.wordpress.com/

John Denver helped us along our way next, with his song Looking for Space.  In this song he firstly identifies that looking within often provides a sense of clarity, and secondly he suggests  that in the final analysis, “If there’s an answer, it’s just that it’s just that way.”

You can listen here   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU-qwrK3i-c

Running alongside the service’s theme of unknowing, or not knowing, there was a repeated question that kept popping up.  Inspired by the American Zen Buddhist teacher Adyashanti,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adyashanti  we were asked this several times at key points:

Where are you going to operate from? What’s your intention? What do you really value? Do you value connectedness and deep truth, or do you value fear and survival?   Where you feel uncertain, where you don’t know the outcome, when acting from the deepest truth and love will cost you something, what are you going to do? What do you value the most? 

We had two readings.  One was the The Parable of the Sower, from the Bible, Book of Mark chapter 4 vv 1-9.  The second was a commentary by the same Adyashanti on a saying that is within the Gospel of Thomas. Adyashanti says, “In order to come into our full potential and to embody the truth and radiance of what we are, we must come vitally alive; we must lean once again into presence; we must pour ourselves forth into life, instead of trying to escape life and avoid its challenges.”

The atmospherics of the gathering were built up one more time by music, in the Gerry Rafferty  song The Right Moment, describing the temptation to put off change in one’s life, by spending life looking for a sign instead of just waking up to what’s real.  Hear it here  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ApL0lTQHE8

The heart of the service was an intense prayer contemplation inspired by John D. Caputo in his book Hoping Against Hope.  It started with the words, “How is it possible to pray without knowing if anyone is there to hear our prayer?  But how is it possible not to?”  It included the thought that we  would probably not be content to pray to any model of God that we can imagine.  And also the thought that if we knew to whom we are praying we would know everything and therefore not be in need of prayer.

It really did evoke the confusion of the state of unknowing, which most of us who hold faith find ourselves in, most of the time.  How can we pray?  But how can we not pray?

We then prayed for others who are in our hearts for now, in the faith that by focusing on them some remote action may yet take place, where they are, to improve their situation.  We don’t know if prayer works.  But we act as if it does.

A face to face gathering wouldn’t be the same without the chance to sing some hymns, so there were two.  One was a hymn of recognition (some traditions call such hymns 'hymns of praise') of the source of all being that is the centre of every physical dimension but also the closest presence there is at the heart of every human being.  The second was a hymn of thanksgiving for all who have brought our faith to where we are now, and whose work and actions before our own lives have provided what we need to survive today.