The unique persons we are, as we gather for reverence - January 2018 Ringwood #Unitarians

January 2018 marks the end of our fourth year and in February we will be four years old.  So this service was one of a couplet, and dealt with what we as unique persons bring with us when we come to the gathering.  The service in February will consider how we weave our personal, individual spiritual lives, like threads, together into one overall fabric of our spiritual community, as we start out on our fifth year together.  So January was about the personal and February will be about the corporate.

We started with a participative prayer, heavily adapted from a prayer from the Iona Community, reminding us of some of the many names and faces of the divine, and ending with the words:

 “Overarching power of bestowing, healing, uniting:

in these and all your many other names, in all your many faces,

in your many-ness which yet vibrates as one,

may these your characteristics be a pattern to us of community;

           hence may we bestow, heal and unite in our many-ness,

           while operating as one.”

We carried out our usual ritual of making the circle with flame, bread, water and a fourth element to represent air or spirit or nature (dependent on one’s point of view).  We lit candles of joy and concern.  We sang two hymns from the green hymn book and we also had a recorded song by Hayley Westenra “The Heart Worships”.

Our first reading was from the Hindu faith via Mohandas K. Gandhi, and the second from the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).  They both declared a firm trust that each person has direct access without mediation to spirit, inner voice, dictates of reason.  And both were clear that we each have a responsibility to do the work to listen carefully within, so as to discern truth and light.

Gandhi in particular suggested that there is no danger at all to the world if very many people find and give voice to what they find within, so we should be prepared to put up with doubtful claimants, for the sake of hearing from as many insightful people as possible.

The Quaker reading gave some practical advice for how one can go about laying oneself open to the leadings of spirit.

Our president for the day reiterated the Quaker instruction by referring to the founder of the Quakers, whose biography can be found here:  http://bcw-project.org/biography/george-fox

The president brought forward the famous George Fox challenge from the 1690s:  “You will say, ‘Christ said this, and the apostles say this;’ but what canst thou say?” and then asserted that we must, first and foremost, understand our own being.

The following questions and assertions were thrown out to the gathering:

·         What is the pattern of your life?

·         What qualities sing out from your life to any spectator who cared to watch?

·         What are the things that you didn’t seemingly choose but were just natural to you; repeated actions that you found yourself doing wherever you were?

·         What are the things you had to set in place when you arrived somewhere, in order for you to feel at home?

·         For these are the things of your personhood, your own unique, individuated way of living; your personal way of living and loving and believing and trusting.

·         These are the things that “thou canst say”.

·         We are prompted by wise teachings to make fewer decisions, to take less time in selecting one path over another, to make less fuss over being human.  We are prompted to observe “me”, rather than to create “me”.

We were reminded that the Unitarian cause includes a challenge:  the challenge to find – and live up to – what we are capable of believing, rather than what someone else says we should believe.

And having found what must be true for us, we are challenged to live up to it.  We are challenged as Unitarians to witness to what we believe and trust, challenged to not remain silent in the face of an unappreciative and unwelcoming world.  

We are challenged to be brave, and self-consistent, and focused on what really matters to us.

We are challenged, in short, to integrity; to a kind of one-through-ness; in which there are no compartments in our lives; in which our thoughts and words and actions all marry up with the beliefs that lie at the heart of our lives.

The Unitarian challenge involves both candles and debate!