Whereas in May our worship service had looked at “compassion”, and how that must translate into practical, outward action in the world, on 14 June our service focused on an interior aspect of a life of faith.
One of the defining features of Unitarian thought is its
focus on the “one‑ness” of the divine.
This was one of the ideas that caused a schism between ministers of
religion in the 18th century. There were
those who – in the best tradition of Protestantism – read the Bible for
themselves, deeply and carefully, yet could not find any authentic reference from
the earliest time to the Holy Trinity of God the Father, God the Son and God
the Holy Spirit. They saw all the
teachings of ancient Judaism and the more recent teachings of Jesus as consistently
pointing to a holy One.
In our service we started with a reading from Hinduism, which
also points to the holy One. Hinduism struggles
with the different ways in which God is felt by people, and this results in Hindu
people choosing – from among many faces or names for God – the aspect of God
that resonates best for them. But God is
still seen as whole and one. Hinduism
contrasts with the faiths of classical Christianity, Judaism, Islam and even
the Baha’is, in all of which God is seen as quite separate from creation. But Hinduism is in tune with Paganism and the
more liberal branches of Christianity – in these the one‑ness of God is seen as
extending right into the created universe and into we ourselves as humans. The word for this is panentheism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panentheism
.
We then silently shared a flame (light), bread, water, smoke
(air), each placing our own private construction on the simple ritual.
Next we heard a reading from a Unitarian scholar and
minister, Dr David Doel, who has written about what he sees as the nature of
salvation. He sees salvation (true peace)
not as the reward for holding certain beliefs but as the fruit of an experience
– the experiential recognition and acceptance of the love that lies at the
heart of the universe and at the core of what it means to be human.
But this took us to the heart of our service. The word “love” drives us to use the words “of”,
“from”, “to”, “towards” or “between”; or else the name of what is loved. The idea of love requires there to be two identities, with love as a draw or
pull or flow between them. So now we
have ideas that apparently contradict.
The “one‑ness” of Unitarian panentheism
and the “two‑ness” that the Unitarian experience of love points at.
We did not attempt to solve this problem. But it was suggested that perhaps to make it
possible to live with this contradiction would be to use the word “relatedness”. Religion – a life of the spirit searching
towards the divine that lies undiscoverable beyond existence – is perhaps about
relatedness and mutual invitation. And
perhaps, at heart, this is what the idea of the Holy Trinity, with God playing
as both parent and child and the flow between the two, was also trying to get
at.
After hearing all this, we then used our customary seven‑minute
silence as a time for our own private practice.
After candles of joy and concern we finished the service and made ourselves
cups of tea.
During our service we had sung hymns about the different ways
to view God (Hymns for Living no. 35)
and how the church is a place of trust and searching (Hymns for Living no. 174). We
enjoyed the hymns tremendously; so much so, that after the service was over we
carried on singing some more, using our hymn books and the recordings of the Unitarian
Music Society.
