December meeting for reverence

Our meeting on 13 December was led by Lewis Connolly who came from quite a distance to be with us.  It was lovely to meet him and his wife, who played the keyboard for us so that we were able to sing together.

Lewis picked a theme around authenticity and the yearning for real meaning in life.  He took a reading from J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and spoke aloud his insights centred on that novel.  In his homily Lewis said,

“Pictures and film of what’s “really happening” stream into our homes twenty-four hours a day. And yet this hyper-reality ... plays into a false narrative which perpetually keeps us sedated in an illusion of the unreal ... as we orientate ourselves in favour or against ... narrowly defined narratives of convenience... of good versus evil. But when we strip away these illusions of allegiance, which we so often define ourselves by, the sheer weight of our isolated aloneness becomes all the more apparent.”

When punctuated by the singing of “We shall not be moved”, among other things, it made for a very moving meeting and the conversation carried on over refreshments afterwards.

You can read Lewis’ whole text on his blog at his website http://www.lewisconnolly.com/blog/2015/12/6/searching-in-the-rye

 

November 2015 meeting for reverence

It is both an advantage and a disadvantage of being a small group that sometimes, with few participants turning up, the meetings can be quite intimate.  This allows for lots of close listening, and the freedom to spend more time developing ideas and voicing them out loud – perhaps for the first time.  But we never forget that a very small group could feel quite daunting to a first time visitor to our meetings.  Normally, though, we have enough participants to allow anyone who wishes to stay quiet to do just that.  And in any case, the various leaders of the meeting are able to adapt their prepared material to suit the people who come.

Few of us were able to be at our meeting on 8 November and that allowed close inspection and discussion of the chosen texts.  And what an eclectic mix they were: Epicurus, Tolkien, and Pratchett, all on the theme of death. The reflection was around not fearing it, whatever our ideas of what may be after it.  For once we didn't stop for coffee as people had to get off to other commitments.

We enjoy the flexibility that we build into our practice.  We are aware that in 21st century Britain the fixed and predictable format associated with more traditional faith-based gatherings may not appeal to the interior search many people are embarked upon.  We are all on a search; and in Ringwood, we Unitarians welcome insight from many sources, as we cross many boundaries and move in interlocking circles.  We expect people to have many irons in the fire, even – or perhaps, especially – when it comes to their interior explorations.  We have chosen the timing of our monthly meeting so that there is time to do something else before Sunday lunch, and would never be surprised or disappointed to hear that participants were going on to other places of worship, in other traditions, after having been with us.  Instead, what we would hope is that when people come to practise reverence with us, they contribute to our meeting by bringing the insights they have gathered from their other sources.  In a Unitarian internet forum, some years ago, it was said that some had brought to their Unitarian congregational practice a lot of insight gained from their “Twelve Steps” programme, run by Alcoholics Anonymous.  The models adopted by organised religions are different from each other, but bundled together they remain only one way of articulating the human experience.

Whatever your experience, whatever your path, if your model of how it all works, and the way you live, bring you to us in openness to other views and respect for personal lives linked in community, you will find us doing our best to welcome you.

October 2015 meeting for reverence

Our meeting for reverence on 11 October was a lovely service with a fruit and symbols of harvest sharing element, led by a Unitarian from Southampton.

Everyone remembered to bring something to share!!  The singing was all in fine voice and the readings were taken from a mix of traditions ranging from Christian to native American.

A visitor was brought to the meeting by some of our previous participants. This promises a further enrichment of our gatherings, and we look forward to seeing them again.  One of us was away, but despite that the number present was towards the top end of our attendance so the signs are that we really are growing.  What an optimistic time!

Looking for action 2015

We have been reading various posts on social media about how younger people today with a religious outlook firstly won't commit long-term to anything and secondly are looking for signs that churches and religious groups are doing something meaningful to change the world, rather than just voicing their concerns.

When you are a very small group it is hard to discern the actions to take that will make a difference around you.  In Ringwood we think we have spotted one.  We are forming a group of all sorts of people who next January will do something new for Ringwood.  This group will be standing up in the street on a cold winter's day saying that we here in Ringwood remember the millions of people killed in the Holocaust, Nazi Persecution and in subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur.  We honour the survivors of these regimes of hatred and challenge ourselves to use the lessons of their experience to inform our lives today.

27 January marks the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp, and is now designated as Holocaust Memorial Day.  HMD is a time when we seek to learn the lessons of the past and to recognise that genocide does not just take place on its own.  Genocide is a steady process which can begin if discrimination, racism and hatred are not checked and prevented. We’re fortunate here in the UK; we are not at risk of genocide. However, discrimination has not ended, nor has the use of the language of hatred or exclusion. There is still much to do to create a safer future.

Perhaps the group of people in Ringwood who will stand together on 27 January will succeed only in reminding others about the ghastly possibilities in humanity - let's face it, we won't be able to mend it.  But the biblical story in the book of Genesis - the story of Adam, Eve and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil - though a legend, reminds us that once you know about right and wrong, it changes everything for you.  We know now about the Holocaust, and others may be reminded about it through us.  So that will change something in the world.

If you want to join us in Ringwood in January email us at lucyunbox.ringwood@btinternet.com

The Pope shares a prayer with everyone with faith in God the Creator

ENCYCLICAL LETTER LAUDATO SI’ OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS ON CARE FOR OUR COMMON HOME

Pope Francis, of the Roman Catholic faith community, invites and urges everyone - individuals, families, local communities, nations and the international community - to an "ecological conversion"; to change direction by taking on the beauty and responsibility of the task of caring for our common home.

In his letter given in Rome at Saint Peter’s on 24 May 2015, he reflects as follows:

"Nature cannot be regarded as something separate from ourselves or as a mere setting in which we live......If everything is related then the health of a society's institutions affects the environment and the quality of human life.....Human ecology is inseparable from the notion of the common good.....injustices abound and growing numbers of people are deprived of basic human rights and considered expendable....The acceptance of our bodies as God's gift is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift from the Father and our common home, whereas thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation."

Pope Francis offers this prayer that we can share with people of all faiths who believe in God who is the all-powerful Creator.

A prayer for our earth

All-powerful God, you are present in the whole universe
and in the smallest of your creatures.

 You embrace with your tenderness all that exists.
Pour out upon us the power of your love,
that we may protect life and beauty.

 Fill us with peace, that we may live
as brothers and sisters, harming no one.
O God of the poor,
help us to rescue the abandoned and forgotten of this earth,
so precious in your eyes.

 Bring healing to our lives,
that we may protect the world and not prey on it,
that we may sow beauty, not pollution and destruction.

 Touch the hearts
of those who look only for gain
at the expense of the poor and the earth.
Teach us to discover the worth of each thing,
to be filled with awe and contemplation,
to recognize that we are profoundly united
with every creature
as we journey towards your infinite light.

 We thank you for being with us each day.
Encourage us, we pray, in our struggle
for justice, love and peace.

(Ringwood Unitarians are grateful to Ringwood and Fordingbridge Catholics at Sacred Heart and St Therese of Lisieux, Ringwood for their precis "map" of the Pope's Encyclical.  Their website can be found at  https://www.shandolos.org.uk/drupal/ )

Southern Unitarian Association

Newport Unitarian Church, 9a High St, Newport, Isle of Wight

Ringwood Unitarians count as a group in contact with the General Assembly of Free Christian and Unitarian Churches of UK, but as yet we are too new for any official status.

We are headed in a direction that will allow us to affiliate in time - we just need to grow a little more before we can join.

But unity and oneness is important to us - in our view, to take a separative stance in the spiritual life is to limit your spiritual life - so we are acting in the supposition that we belong in GA right now.  So we take to heart all that is asked of us by GA, as well as all the opportunities offered to us by GA.

One of the most important offers is to form relationships with the constituent congregations nearby, who meet together as a district association - the Southern Unitarian Association.  We're glad to have done this, and over the past year or so we have participated in the quarterly meetings and indeed have hosted one of them.

We cannot be at the next couple of meetings, but we wish all our SUA friends well, as they meet on 19 September, in Newport, Isle of Wight.

September 2015 meeting for reverence

The meeting for reverence followed our usual format.  We do not have a minister associated with our congregation; instead one of us as a lay person presides for each meeting.  It’s rather lovely to be able to use an apposite but rarely used word for this role: we use the word “president” with a lower case “p”.

The president for the day devised the service using texts from the Northern Pagan Tradition, and chants.  The first text was a reflection on the nine worlds, and how each brings its imperfection to make the perfection of the whole. The perfection of the whole is represented by the cosmic ash tree, Yggdrasil, whose roots reach into each of the levels of the nine worlds.

The second text was on the idea of wergild, where we navigate the victories and failures of ourselves and others in a spirit of mutual recompense, knowing we will be either side of it at different times throughout our life.

A lovely coffee morning followed.

August meeting for reverence

We started our meeting by holding silence, so that we could each do the equivalent of (silently) reciting our personal creed.  And we followed that with our usual ritual of passing fire, bread, water, and – a new tool for us in the form of a fan of ravens’ and pigeons’ feathers – air, around our circle of fellowship.  After partaking, these four signifiers are placed on the table between us.

The theme of meeting for reverence was “wholeness”, and it pivoted around some words by the American author Oriah Mountain Dreamer: “When we surrender, when we do not fight with life when she calls upon us, we are lifted, and the strength to do what needs to be done finds us, because we have remembered that we can choose to serve the only cause that matters: life herself.”

We had some prayers and meditations including a meditation by Richard S. Gilbert on our chalice of being, and we heard readings from Taoism (from the Tao Teh Ching) and Christianity (a story from the Desert Fathers and Mothers).  We heard that the Buddha’s original message seems to have been cast in positive form – as common sense would expect, his teaching was a call to the “more” of life, not to the ending of it, and not to the running away from an imperfect world.

We sang two hymns from our green hymn books, which focused on the Life that makes all things new and the “human becoming” in oneness and sharing.  We also heard a contemporary take on revivalist music – very uplifting after our candles of joys and concerns which turned out to be focused on the darker side of living.

Unitarians lead children's holidays

It was barely two and a half hours that I spent with Uni-Kids last night but I came back refreshed in spirit, though tired.  Uni-Kids is an annual adventure holiday for children largely from the south of UK, arranged and run by Unitarians.  This year, like last, the holiday is taking place centred on Burley Youth Hostel in the New Forest.  As this is only six miles from Ringwood, the opportunity to go and meet everyone and take part in a few activities was too good to pass up.  I’m not much good at children’s ages, but I would say that there wasn’t anyone over 13 in the group of ten children.

Burley Youth Hostel, New Forest, 28 July 2015

I turned up after dinner at the end of their first full day and heard tales of beach art and canoeing, blisters and getting wet.  Plans for the lido and a fusty museum tomorrow.  I was assigned to the Jumping Jellyfish team for the last two rounds of the evening quiz, which balanced things out a bit as several other teams also included an adult.  A hard fought competition ended in a four way tie-break; victory was underplayed by the children and the disappointment of the losers very slight.  All low key stuff.

Next we wrapped up warm, ready for a dusk walk in the Forest, and before we set out we played the old “Post It note on the forehead” game.  We each had an identity assigned through a picture of a Forest animal and by asking other people questions we had to work out what our animal was – or perhaps, who we were.  Funnily enough, I had seen this game often enough but had never before been a player.  I quickly found how hard it could be to think of fruitful questions to ask about “myself” out of the blue, and how much easier it became once I learnt to look at other “animals” and ask questions about “myself” through reference to other animals’ characteristics (am I stripey? – I asked the “badger”).  Hmm.  Serious learning point for me there, I think.  Can I easily learn about myself in isolation?

A shortish walk in the deepening dusk led us to a clearing where two mature oaks and two beech trees had been felled by some winter storm or other.  The Moon is about three quarters now and she was a beautiful sight above the tree line.  We carried out an exercise in mindfulness, paying full attention to all the noises we could hear.  For me, and for another as it turned out, it was a bit of a struggle to welcome the raucous throb of the tuned-pipe Harley Davidson motorbikes asserting themselves rather unnecessarily as they passed quite close by.  Much easier to welcome the alarm calls of the blackbirds and robins settling down for the night.  We didn’t hear any of the badgers, deer, sheep, donkeys, hedgehogs, squirrels etc that we had been earlier on, but we were able (after completing the mindfulness practice) to catch sight of a small bat.

When we got back to the Youth Hostel we had a reflective session over hot chocolate and biscuits, where we were each invited to say how we were feeling and name it in animal form, how that had changed since yesterday, what we had most enjoyed today and what we were looking forward to the next day.  And what would be tomorrow’s biggest challenge.

I felt like a heron or an ibis, poised, concentrating, watching, learning, picking out nuggets of food.  For I don’t have children of my own and I could recognise the skill it takes to make a learning programme seem like a holiday, or a holiday seem like a learning programme, without slip, without forcing, without pressure, without winners and losers.  I salute all those who carry out work like this to build the health and wholeness of the next generation.

For wholeness was what they were learning.  Working in groups and sharing the tasks and the responsibilities.  Walking quietly with intent, learning to listen.  Practical techniques for de-stressing and reconnection with the body.  Connection with the Earth.  Use of metaphor as a powerful tool of thought.  Listening to each other and self-awareness and self-examination.  A habit of active reflection and closure at the end of the day.  No wonder I felt refreshed as I drove home across the New Forest.



Holocaust Memorial Day Wednesday 27 January 2016

http://hmd.org.uk/genocides/nazi-persecution

We have started the early planning work to hold a witness event in Ringwood to mark International Holocaust Memorial Day on Wednesday 27th January 2016.  The Assistant Priest at the parish church has agreed to be involved and we hope other churches and the Quakers will, too.  But this will not be a religious event and there are many more groups of people, and individuals, who would want to show their commitment to this event so we will be seeking other participants from all sectors of Ringwood.

July meeting

On Sunday 12 July the theme of the day was religious freedom.  Two hundred and two years ago, in July 1813, the Unitarian Relief Act was passed, which meant that it was no longer punishable to deny the Church's doctrine of the Holy Trinity.  This is an important commemoration for anyone who thinks that in the 21st century freedom of religion is as important as other human freedoms.

We listened to how Jesus had asserted that some of the religious rules of his day restricted people’s freedom – and hence he rejected them.  We heard about a chain of heroes throughout the ages who stood witness to freedom to religion by rejecting certain restrictions of their own day, and how they suffered for it.  Included were heroes local to Ringwood, such as Dame Alice Lisle, buried at Ellingham church.   And we heard how some Unitarians today feel that the word “tolerance” is outdated because it sounds grudging; and how they prefer the word “respect.”  Tolerance avoids engagement with others; respect welcomes it.

Included in our service were our usual ritual of sharing flame (light), bread, water, and smoke (air), all with due deference to participants’ respective needs; a couple of hymns from the green hymn book; and our seven minutes’ silence in which we had the chance to bring it all together.  Not that it was very silent with the busy footpath outside and the beautiful sounds of the bells ringing out from the parish church – and goodness knows how silent we were able to be within our own selves !

It was lovely to be able to welcome two new people to our service and we enjoyed our conversation afterwards.

Bourne Free - Bournemouth's Pride and how we were there

Only one of us was able to make the date for the Bourne Free parade, but it was really good to be able to take part in this, only our second year.
Bourne Free
has been building up over the past thirteen years and it felt like a really exuberant event.  They have placed a video of the parade on the Bourne Free Facebook page 

https://www.facebook.com/playwivjay/posts/868638186524888

 

 The Bourne Free Parade organisers had arranged for Ringwood Unitarians to walk alongside the only other faith group taking part, the Metropolitan Community Church  from Pokesdown (Dorset Humanists, some of whom might also want to be mentioned at this point, were also there in strength).  This was wonderful.  What a welcome MCC gave!  And also all eyes were on them – so as a by-product, also on Ringwood Unitarians – because the MCC had co-opted their friends from Liberty Church  in Blackpool who brought their huge mannequin of Jesus.  The children in particular were mesmerized.  “Big Jesus” certainly captured everyone’s imagination, and there were many smiles at “Big Jesus” and about him, too.  Sadly there were also some jeers and boos when the parade passed one place so it just shows that not everyone is content with the idea that Jesus is there for, and welcomes, everyone. “Big Jesus” was carried on the shoulders of one person continuously from 10.30 a.m. to after 1 p.m., and he danced from one part of the crowd to the next, shaking hands, blowing kisses, and waving his rainbow balloons.  Up till now no photos of the Ringwood Unitarian rep have been sent in but here is a picture of MCC, Liberty Church and “Big Jesus”.

It was great fun and wonderful to make some new friends at MCC who, being in Pokesdown, are almost next door neighbours for Ringwood Unitarians.  We hope to build on this by meeting with them again very soon.

The 3 July lecture looking at atheism and Christianity

getting ready for the lecture

We enjoyed presenting a lecture for the people of Ringwood and district on 3 July.  It was given with the support of the Montgomery Trust, a charity which provides speakers of national repute on topics relating to Christianity.  Our speaker for the evening was Michael Poole, author of a number of different books dealing with his research area of the interplay between science and religion, and who is Visiting Research Fellow in Science and Religion at King’s College, London.

 

Michael made reference to what is sometimes known as “New Atheism”, explaining that he had had academic correspondence and meetings with Prof Richard Dawkins.  He was saddened by the fact that the language employed in the media and in books by certain commentators has become more strident and pejorative than in past times; otherwise he argued that there is nothing new about the arguments for atheism that are proving so popular with the public today.

 

What he then spent his talk doing, was trying to get us thinking more exactly about what we understood to be the relationship between atheism and a religious view.

 

Michael introduced a number of definitions and logical arguments to show us how we mix up ideas and categories of thought.  He showed that there are usually many different narratives about why any circumstance should be the way it is, and these different narratives do not trump, invalidate or generate conflict between each other.  For instance, it can be explained why a light is on in a room in two ways: (a) because someone wanted it to be on and (b) because the electrons in the electrical supply are flowing through the light bulb.  Similarly, two friends run across each other in the street – it turns out that one person was seeking to make the meeting happen, whilst the other had no thought of it but is always there at that time during the week.  One experienced it as random, but is only able to say this through ignorance of the hidden motive of the other.

 

Science and religion are different narratives about how the world works and it is a mistake to think that one has to be explained in terms of the other.  Michael particularly rejected the model of “God in the gaps”, in which people imagine that contemporary science can only describe the universe so far and then everything that science has not so far described can be put down to God.  He argued that, instead, to sort out what is in the gaps people have to become better scientists – rather than turn God into a leftover bit of the scientific model.

 

He suggested that the words “faith” and “belief” are identical in meaning and they both mean “non-evidenced trust”, that is to say a trust you have of, or in, something despite having no evidence on which to base your trust.  Talking about evidence, Michael showed us that jurisprudence can be used as a useful model for belief.  In court cases, evidence can either be direct, such as the eye-witness accounts, or indirect, where inferences can be drawn from scientific measurements.  In jurisprudence also there is the idea of the “weight” of evidence, where we accept the idea that an accumulation of small pieces of evidence can build up to provide substantial evidence on which we convict.  Science also operates like this.  Yet people are very willing to reject a religious view of life, built upon direct experience or revelation, or indirect evidence from others, and supported by a great body of personal experience over many centuries.

 

In amongst much more that Michael spoke about, we heard that there are problems with some very commonly accepted comments heard today.  “There is no absolute truth” – if this statement is deemed false then it may be ignored, whereas if deemed to be true then it destroys itself (because it says that 'the truth needed for it to be said' does not exist).  Michael also showed that changes in language cause us problems.  “Truth” used to mean a correspondence between a thing and a statement about a thing – something we understand better when we hear phrases similar to “she was being true to herself.”  However, in current usage, “truth” often is used as a synonym for the word “acceptable”.  So: “what is true for you is not true for me” would be more accurately phrased as “what is acceptable to you is not acceptable to me.” Similarly, “to prove something” used to mean “to test or probe something,” whereas now we tend to use it where we might better say “to place this matter beyond any possible doubt.”

 

There was a lively questions session after the talk and of course no overall agreement was found between participants.  But it was agreed that the evening had been enjoyable and stimulating and worth the effort of coming along to.  We look forward to perhaps putting on a similar style of event in Ringwood next year.

June meeting

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.

Joining up with our Unitarian neighbours

The prime things in the UK Unitarian movement are arranged around autonomous congregations.  But it only works because they keep closely in touch with each other.

Congregations first group together in district associations, before gathering together on the national scene.  For Ringwood, our district association is the Southern Unitarian Association, which operates over the central south of England and currently comprises Southampton, Portsmouth, Newport (Isle of Wight) and ourselves.

Delegates from these congregations got together for a business meeting on 6 June, and afterwards paid a happy visit to the Meeting House which long ago was owned by the first Unitarian congregation in Ringwood.  It's now owned by a civic charity, but we are able to hire it for our worship meetings.  The photo shows some of the people who were there.

Three in One God as experienced universally?

The name "Unitarian" was first used as an insult but was gradually adopted and worn with pride. The insult was originally thrown at people who had read the Bible closely for themselves and couldn't find any reference in it to the Holy Trinity that had become (and remains) part of the doctrine of the traditional Christian Church. They were being insulted for using their own powers of intellect and analysis, and for coming up with an answer that accorded with their own consciences but which other people didn't understand or like. We can all understand that, can't we, because we are all wary of people who use different assumptions from our own.

So with tomorrow being celebrated by Christians in the west as Trinity Sunday, it is refreshing to find, on a website aiming for universal appeal, a new take on the Trinity, that might well be acceptable to people who now call themselves Unitarian:

".......creative Source that pours itself out in loving self-giving ('Father')... experience [of] ourselves ('Son') and all there is, as gift flowing from that Source ...... experience [of] life and love as a sacred mystery ('Spirit')...." 

 http://www.gratefulness.org/calendar/detail.cfm?id=50

A Pagan view of compassion

With compassion very much at the forefront of our minds at the moment, we are pleased to read this personal view from a Pagan, though all the conclusions may not fit with our own views.  Do please follow the link - there's much food for thought.

Yvonne Aburrow says in it:

"But recently I have become aware that my “bubble of complacency” may actually be a bubble of white privilege. Part of white privilege is the ability to walk down the street without being suspected of a crime, to get a job based on one’s qualifications, to get a house without being discriminated against by the seller, the estate agent, or the person renting it to you. In short, these are actually rights that everybody should have access to. White privilege is also the inheritance of wealth and resources stolen from colonised countries and enslaved people – again, something that the descendants of those people should be entitled to, but are still denied, due to the lack of a will to offer or even discuss reparations."

A bubble of complacency

May 2015 meeting

Our meeting for reverence and worship this month had a look at the Buddhist logic for compassion, and led onto some practical actions that we can take to develop our power of compassion.  These include actively responding, inwardly, when we notice the feeling of compassion arising in ourselves; focusing on that feeling and allowing it to develop, and not just ignoring it or fending it off.  Then the Tibetan Buddhist source reading reminded us that there are all sorts of excuses to not outwardly act on our feeling of compassion, but excuses are self-defeating – because one of the best ways to develop ourselves as humans is to work in the world for the well-being of other beings.  We were encouraged to appeal to our inner Buddha-nature, the archetype of the perfect human being within us, by using a little prayer, easy to remember and to repeat during our daily round: “Bless me into usefulness.”

We remembered that it’s not just professionally religious or theological people who teach us about becoming all of a piece with the universe: we heard some words spoken by Albert Einstein about the whole that is the universe, which includes us as parts, lost in our own delusions.  And we listened to a fresh, simple song by Paul McCartney, saying “it’s there, it’s round, it’s to be found in you, in me – it’s all we ever wanted to be.”

We sang two hymns, one about compassion; and the second, which may yet become the anthem for small Unitarian congregations, about how even the tiniest action makes a difference.  We had a period of silent personal practice, and we lit candles and spoke about our concerns and connections. It was good to hold in mind our neighbouring Unitarian congregations at Southampton and Bridport, whom we have visited relatively recently.

In our coffee discussion afterwards we started talking about an additional meeting format we might introduce in 2016.  Something at a different time, when buses are running in the district, and when there are lots of people around – perhaps coming out of work.  With conversation, and candles, and coffee/tea.  Perhaps based on pre-announced topics or perhaps just people bringing their own inspiration on the day.  We would want to hire the Meeting House for this.  We would need a catchy name for it, though – albeit utterly honest, “After Work Candles, Coffee and Conversation” might be just a bit too cumbersome !  We will be thinking about this new initiative over the next few months.

After the meeting we set up a collection point for Christian Aid to boost the Ringwood awareness of Christian Aid Week, and to build on our involvement with the sponsored swim that started on the evening of Saturday 9 May  https://www.justgiving.com/CTIR/   It was good to collect some more donations for this amazing effort organized by Churches Together in Ringwood, which went on right into the small hours of Sunday morning, and by the end was the equivalent of a cross-Channel relay swim.

A Unitarian view on meditation

A Unitarian introduction to meditation - this has just been added to YouTube. https://youtu.be/9NXbsp13exU

April 2015 meeting

Our group mixes people whose paths include influences ranging from a liberal interpretation of the teachings of Jesus and western Christian practice, also from Paganism, through classical philosophy, to Tibetan Buddhism.  Our worship on 10 April took the form of a simple ritual in silence, some readings, and some chanting.  The theme was “Sacred Fools” and the readings from “Apology” by Plato (pictured left) and “The Devils Picture Book” by Paul Husson were well received.  After that we heard the meeting leader’s personal reflections on the readings – why Socrates knowing that he did not know made him the wisest, and a reflection on The Fool  (Le Fou in French, pictured right) in the tarot deck respectively.  We enjoyed our chants very much and also our conversation over a long coffee afterwards.

We look forward to the next service when we know there will be more people.  And we welcome anyone with a curiosity about what we say, what we do, and how we manage to worship together when we have such different paths of faith.

A personal view of Maundy Thursday

 

Bear in mind, dear reader, that this post, like all the posts on this blog, has been supplied by one of the Ringwood Unitarians - and not necessarily always the same one.  It should not be assumed that any other Ringwood Unitarian, or any Unitarian from anywhere, thinks or feels the same as this. Or that the rest of our Ringwood group are even interested in this train of thought.  That’s the beauty of any Unitarian community – we worship and we connect, but we don’t expect each other to think about the same things or to think or feel in the same way.

It’s Maundy Thursday today.  That’s the day of the Jewish Passover.  The rabbi Jesus and his friends had gone to Jerusalem for the Passover festival, for the celebratory worship of the just and merciful God, who allowed the Hebrew slaves in Egypt to escape the deaths overnight of the first-born, which God inflicted on the then unresponsive and cruel slave masters, the Egyptians.  It is the festival that recognises that God, or Life, will act kindly towards people who act in accordance with the edicts that God, or Life, demands.  This recognition is portable from Judaism right through all the faiths, right across the spectrum of faiths, even to an oriental belief system that shies a long way away from the Jewish idea of a “personal God”, by which I mean Taoism.  Passover, or pesach, is a festival for all those who have had a good experience of their faith.

So Jesus and his friends and family sat down to the Passover meal, the seder meal, to quietly await the arrival of the next day, the commemoration of the day when Hebrews woke up to find that God’s word had been carried out – so the Egyptians were shocked and frightened to find their first-borns had died and the Hebrews now had to get out of Egypt very quickly.

And over that seder meal Jesus seemed to be very sure that his time was coming to an end.  Perhaps he too was shocked and frightened; or perhaps he thought that within a day or two it would be his followers who would be shocked and frightened.  You see, he had been in Jerusalem since the previous Sunday and he was aware that all sorts of people had all sorts of expectations of him that he would not necessarily fulfil. Some people wanted him to renounce some of the things he had said about his relationship to God.  Others wanted him to lead a zealous and possibly armed rebellion against the Roman occupying forces.  A few others seemed to think he was bigging up his part as a wise man with a following, at the cost of wasting money that could better have been spent on supporting the poor.  Jesus got the vibes.  He knew the show-down was coming.  So he spent some time that evening over the meal reflecting back to his followers what it was that he stood for, and asking them to remember his words always – by tying them inextricably with the bread and wine of the seder meal, which he knew they would celebrate year after year, so they would have no excuse to forget them.

And in my reading of it, the message of Jesus was this.  We are in a covenant with God – which was an old Jewish message.  We are in a relationship, said Jesus, a relationship we cannot own or control – it’s a connection we can enter.  We are loved into being, we are all sustained by love throughout our lives, and we are received in love at our ending.  Jesus lived as if it were both task and gift to strive to echo that love, right up until his life's end. 

The kingdom of God, said Jesus, this relationship, the way to lasting life lived true to our best selves, lies within; and it is accessible to all.  But to find that kingdom, to enter into that ultimate relationship with the just and loving God, you have to be prepared to let go of yourself and act in all humility.  As though you and your wants and desires were all just by-the-bye, scarcely relevant at all.  Jesus demonstrated that he thought everyone, including the most acclaimed ones amongst us, need to see ourselves as fit for the most unpleasant and menial jobs; like taking off the sandals and washing the dusty, smelly feet of our companions after a day on the Galilean plains; like taking without comment an unwarranted slap across the face; like carrying the load of someone who chose to press us into service against our plans and expectations – and not just the mile they demand of us, but an extra mile too.

My message, said Jesus, is that we have to try to mirror God – who is in all people, including the most disadvantaged and disregarded, the ones cast out by the establishment, and the ones who self-injure by getting knotted up in their pain and difficulty.  The kingdom really is there to be experienced, but you have to work very hard to put yourself last, to put yourself gracefully out of everyone else’s way, and to be prepared – despite your fear – to relinquish your own comfort and control over what is happening to you.  Look, said Jesus, I mean we have to relinquish our own safety and comfort right up to the most painful and bitter end.  Right when it hurts most, right when we don’t think we can go on, we have to stand quietly in trust, and surrender ourselves in all humility to Life, to God – both in his direct presence as we feel it, and as we feel it coming to us through other people.  Love the very people who cause you grief and pain because God is in them too – it’s the only way to be fully human.

I can’t imagine the power of the inspiration Jesus had experienced.  But I can see what a strong man he was.  What serenity and peace and fulfilment he found in his love for God and others.  How disregarding he was of himself.  And, though at the end even Jesus felt abandoned, I can see that that didn’t prevent him from offering himself to God.  What a model.

So this Maundy Thursday I celebrate the life and message of the rabbi Jesus with the unleavened bread and the wine of the thanksgiving seder meal.