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Just in case a passing viewer is wondering - there is not a national Unitarian church. What there is, is a national association of local, independent and self-governing churches and fellowships (although it is allowed for individual persons to also affiliate as Associates to the association). The association is called the "General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches", and it is therefore a 'community of communities'.
The gathering opened with a roll call of the Ringwood Meeting House worshippers who were killed in military service during the First World War. This was not an act using the memory, but an act using the imagination, and invoking emotion.
Then, in the light of the COP 26 climate emergency conference of the nations, the president of the day (Lucy) offered a deeper perspective on the relationship between imagination, emotion and memory. She considered the future, reminding us all that the climate emergency is ‘only’ about accelerating the extinction of the human species and not about the end of life as we know it on Earth, nor even about the destruction of the planet itself. That event will come much later, and will be caused by the explosion of the Sun.
In imagining the future explosive death of the Sun, which will obliterate the Earth, we may experience the emotion of sorrow for loss as we imagine the ending, ending of our personal era, and indeed the whole Earth. We respond like this because we have experienced loss in our own lives; our sorrow is based on our personal memory of previous loss. But of course this is hugely ironic as, when that future destruction of the Earth occurs, there will long since have ceased to be any humans, so there will be no sense of loss.
Lucy then looked to the Bible for thoughts that might assist us when we are experiencing loss. The loss, the overwhelming loss, featuring in the Christian consciousness is the loss of the personage of the poet and teacher Yeshua who is also known as Jesus. Early followers of Jesus had imagined and eagerly awaited a new everlasting era with Jesus recognisably holding sway over the entire course of human events, and they must have been devastated in the face of losing him. Thus it was suggested that the New Testament is, in essence, an anthology attempting to help successive generations of disciples come to terms with the loss of Jesus, and helping them to remember him.
She said: “As Christianity crystallised, very early on Jesus became seen as supernatural. Then Jesus could not be equated with other humans and the loss of Jesus could not then be equated with the loss of other humans. In the form that the New Testament finally took, the reader is almost throughout the compilation being encouraged to seek their comfort in their faith in Jesus as the Risen Christ. And it’s quite hard work to read the New Testament in any other than the traditional way. So, if as Unitarians we do not accept the traditional views of the supernatural nature of Jesus, then it can be hard to find much help in the New Testament for our everyday and oh so ordinary experience of loss.”
So it was to the Old Testament that Lucy turned. The OT focuses on Jewish life and traditions before the emergence of Jesus, so the loss themes in the OT are those experienced as a community by Jewish people throughout the centuries. In it, perhaps the most basic loss, the most continuously noted loss, is the loss of the homeland and its sacred spaces and places. So this loss, and other calamities that befell individuals and kingly Jewish states, are more akin to social and personal problems of today, and may speak to us with more relevance. The inspiration we may get from the OT comes from the record of the Jewish struggle to understand how they came to be exiled and oppressed, with a basic loss of control over their lives, and how to retrieve the situation.
The OT books of the prophets and the wisdom books help us by supplying a range of different responses to loss and sorrow. The prophetic books include a sense, described by mystics as having been given by God, that loss will be washed away by God, no demands made. To illustrate this there was a reading from Isaiah (Isaiah 44:21-26 (New English Bible)). This was a radical approach when it was experienced and recorded by the Arameans/Hebrews/Jews, as it denotes a loving God, a merciful God. A God who did not need the ritual human or animal sacrifice of older belief systems.
In contrast with the prophetic books, the wisdom books of the OT rely less on an interventionist God to help through loss, and more on a human, personal, internal change of attitude in the face of loss. An example was the second reading was from the book of Ecclesiastes (edited from Ecclesiastes by A World Religions Bible (page 282)). The teacher and poet Jesus would have been living and working against the backdrop of these and other Jewish scriptures.
Lucy reflected: “We each deal with loss on perhaps a daily basis — loss of people, loss of opportunity, loss of resources, loss of self-esteem, loss of memory, loss even of basic forms of trust. With a Unitarian heritage coming from the Christian culture, we may be able to find insights, from examining certain Bible passages and letting our imaginations roam freely, that will help us to cope with loss. The culture and governance systems of our land are steeped in traditions and systems coming out of Christianity. So we might imagine we no longer need the Christian sources, now that our society has mainstreamed ideas from Christianity, in particular in relation to justice, and support for those least able to cope with life’s demands. But a German academic, Dr Isolde Karle, once said at a conference:
“The Christian cultural memory cannot be taken for granted. It is completely imaginable that one day the story of the Good Samaritan will no longer be known or understood. Solidarity with the powerless, deliberate care of the marginalised, of the sick and of people in need are not self-evident.”"
Lucy suggested that we live in times when common standards of integrity and moral behaviour are being shunted out the door and the public expectation of what counts as acceptable behaviour is in danger of being re-normalized to a new low. And worse: there seems to be no visible, widespread public outrage at how our representatives are behaving, and no recognition of the danger that we risk, if we do not return to ‘word being bond’, general trustworthiness, and the courage to maintain and insist on truth.
Under these circumstances the possibility exists that anything or everything can be lost, even the Christian cultural memory. So it is surely important to us who inherit the culture to keep alive the compassionate standpoint of the Jewish poet, teacher and leader Jesus, and all who followed after him, even if we no longer hold the beliefs in a supernatural Jesus that drove most of those followers on?
At the end of our gathering, after the readings, and hymns, and lighting of candles, and contemplation in silence, this was our witness, the closing words we all said while muted on Zoom:
"We are aware, and we affirm that we do not find our peace
in the certainty of what we confess,
but in wonder of what befalls us and what we are given;
that we do not find our destination in indifference and greed,
but in vigilance and in connection with all that lives;
that our existence is not fulfilled by who we are and what we possess,
but by what is infinitely greater than we can contain.”
Extract from 2006 Confession of Faith of the Dutch Remonstrant Church
Our gathering on 10 October 2021 was again held on Zoom. In the background to the gathering was an awareness of Black History Month and World Mental Health Day.
The chalice lighting words were by W. E. B. DuBois (1868-1963), African American Educator and Civil Rights Activist.
"Give us grace, … to dare to do the deed which we well know cries to be done. Let us not hesitate because of ease, or the words of men’s mouths, or our own lives. Mighty causes are calling us—the freeing of women, the training of children, the putting down of hate and murder and poverty—all these and more. But they call with voices that mean work and sacrifices and death. …
Grant us … the spirit of Esther, that we say: I will go unto the King and if I perish, I perish."
DuBois was himself an agnostic, in fact some of his biographers have described him as virtually atheist.
His later life was a far cry from his Congregationalist background. He went so far as to decline to lead public prayer when so invited. He was ardently opposed to religion being taught in public schools.
In his work he wrote beautifully and with genuine passion, and yet when he wrote he drew on the images of his childhood and a shared cultural story, a shared spiritual history, despite having left certain aspects of faith behind.
How we understand shared story and tradition needn’t be a barrier between us, nor cut us off from something that has meant a great deal to many over the years. W. E. B. DuBois still found meaning in the tale of Esther, possibly because he identified with her having being racialised as a member of a group regarded as second-class citizens but also who, through good fortune, had been put in a position of influence and safety, despite living with her people in exile. And DuBois was still touched by the drama of the Crucifixion.
As he wrote, and spoke in public, that shared tradition of stories and imagery crossed the chasm between his beliefs and the beliefs of many he was addressing.
This may ring true for many of us in Unitarianism. We who come together with our different and often changing beliefs can share stories and imagery; we can share inspiration and consolation; we can share the passion of our faith. The historical tradition in which we find ourselves need not be a barrier: it can be a bridge.
As well as music and silence, as usual we had two readings, but for once they comprised one long passage split into two. The passage was taken from the Bible, the First Book of Kings, chapter 19 verses 3-16.
In the first section of the reading (up to verse 9), we find Elijah on the run from the authorities. He has just worked an incredible miracle, one of those truly ‘glory days’ moments. But how quickly the tide turned again, and now is he alone, in fear for his life, and weary unto death with it all.
This short reading brings other moments in the Bible to mind. Moses leading the people in the desert, Jonah under the tree hiding from his ministry, Jesus going into the wilderness and later in the olive garden. And running through all these moments, these narratives and images, there is a yearning for better days, days when not feeling so alone, so burdened, so overwhelmed. All of us, and all communities, think back to times where the seats around us were fuller and people did more together, agreed on more; when that call to make things better was something we seemed to share. This sense of dejection and of currently living in poorer times is something perhaps many of us will be able to relate to, to some degree.
Yet can we not all recall those balm-filled moments where just for a time we have felt refreshed, revived, lightened? Perhaps it was a sunset after a long day; perhaps the wind in the trees when our thoughts were far away; or a phrase in a book we were reading; the scent of incense in an old church we had stopped in; or the half-smile of someone, just when we needed it.
In the second part of the passage we find God asking,
“What are you doing here, Elijah?”
Twice God says this to our protagonist, and the words are filled with warmth and with a little sorrow. They are like the words of a parent finding their adult child weeping in the kitchen of their marriage home; or on visiting them in the big city, where they went for a new high-powered job, and finding them on edge and lacking sleep. There is no accusation in the tone, there is no sense of disappointment, nor of surprise. What is asked here is not a question looking for an answer, not really. It is a gentle reminder, a being one-with-the-other, and showing them again who they are.
In times of sadness, of weariness, of disheartenment, our vision can narrow to only what we don’t have, what we can’t do, what we are not and wish that we were. It can be as if our whole being becomes defined by our lack, by our loss, by our sorrow, by our pain. It is not easy, nor always possible, to pull ourselves out of this.
May there always be someone to hand at times like this to ask us:
“What are you doing here?”
May there be a friend, a ‘still, small voice’, to reach out to us and remind us of who we are, to help us look up and beyond where we find ourselves.
May we ask ourselves often and without accusation or disappointment:
“What are you doing here?”
And may we be watchful in those around us, and those we meet along the way, for when we can be that ‘still, small voice’ that asks:
“What are you doing here?”
Today is only a moment in our stories, perhaps not even a chapter. What are we doing here? Perhaps it’s time to turn the page?
( Bible story illustrations courtesy of http://breadsite.org )
After opening prayer, and the lighting of the chalice, we had a pause to reflect on what matters to us and how we have lived up to that. In other churches this activity is usually the action involved in the reciting of a creed.
Then there were two readings from the Bible, both from the New International Version: 1 Kings 17:10-22 and Mark 12:41-44.
The reading from 1 Kings told the story of a widow from Zarephath who was part of a community, or even region, that was starving to death through drought; who nonetheless assisted the prophet Elijah with water and bread.
Jesus’ observation, recorded in the reading from Mark, was of another widow who donated from among her last few coins to the alms collected at the temple.
Our president for the day then reflected on these readings as follows.
“Two widows in the same small area of the middle east, almost a thousand years apart, and yet — depressingly — both still subject to the same vulnerability and financial uncertainty, both still recognizable as epitomizing a social and economic group much wider than their individual back stories.
“You may well know the two readings I have chosen, either as stories you were told, or texts you perhaps studied. They may awake in you feelings of nostalgia, or they may provoke old arguments you’d rather leave behind. On the other hand, you may not have heard them before today.
“I’ll wager, though, that every one of us approaches these stories through a cloud of unknowing. We make racial, class, intellectual, and, yes, theological assumptions about them. Assumptions that, for the most part, say more about our personal journeys than they say about the journeys these stories have travelled to reach us today.
“As Unitarians, we approach the Bible aware of the journey it has been on, and, in our better moments, aware of the journey we as individuals and as communities have been on. We do not look to the Bible to ‘prove’ anything — it is a tradition we share in and can draw inspiration from. We do not end discussions with the Bible; rather, it is a place we can begin them.
“When I lived in Rome I remember a Sister, a Roman Catholic nun, at my university. She had an infectious laugh, a smile that could light up a room, and a kind word for everyone. I didn’t know her well, but one year the Christmas break was approaching and we got to casually talking. I asked her if she was going home to see her family. She wasn’t: her family were gone, her home was gone, everything was gone: all lost in the Rwandan genocide. She had survived only because she had been in Rome.
“I can’t imagine that kind of sorrow, that kind of darkness. And yet there she was and there was her smile that lit up the room.
“I have no idea how much she had left to share or how little she kept for herself, but it shamed me. How often do I not spare a smile, even for a loved one, on a day that is not going to my plan? How often have I ignored that person who wanted to talk because I was too tired to give them the ten minutes I was probably going to spend scrolling on social media? Have I lashed out, enjoyed micro aggressions, to share the pain or frustration I am feeling, rather than looked to whatever scrap of hope I have instead?
“I do not make you wild promises of the cupboard never going bare, of the tank never hitting empty, and I do not say that we should give away all that we have to live on, as Jesus mentions in the second reading. Jesus does so love to push his point! But rather I ask you to think of that ‘little bit’ you can still share, like the widow of Zarephath, that little bit you can still contribute to the community, like the widow in the temple.
“Something that stands out for me in that short second reading is the way we are invited to watch this second widow from without. Jesus does not share with us her backstory, so we do not have a context to empathize with. We are simply presented with a view of someone and asked to consider what being there that day has cost them.
“Ooh but now look — we are not faced with the virtue of this person: instead we are confronted with how our view, the view we share in and help build as a society, is wrong-headed. Society values the money that the ‘comfortably off’ spend on luxury above what the average person has to spend day-to-day. Society values the leisure time of the economically secure over the family time of the hourly worker. Do not we too, as communities of belief, often value the time of those able to attend multiple services and talks over that of those whose lives allow only for briefer times given over to spiritual reflection? Do we not value the experience of those who have had the opportunity and leisure to read widely, over those for whom such is not common place? Do we ask ourselves what it ‘costs’ to be with us when we gather in community? Not in terms of cash alone, but in terms of time, in terms of what demands we make on each other, in terms of the expectations we communicate? I don’t have answers to that, and I don’t think Jesus is offering any answers in this second reading either.
“Just as in the first reading the widow of Zarephath inspires us to give a ‘little bit’ of what little we have, so in the second reading the widow in the temple challenges us to see that ‘little bit’ that we often overlook, that we often undervalue.
“We all fall short of our highest ideals, and we are all products of the world view we grew up in. Perhaps everything I have said here is pie in the sky, but if striving even for a pipe dream can make things a little bit better I’m game for that. I don’t ask you to accept everything I’ve said here, you might not like how I’ve said it, but think about it …. Just a ‘little bit’.”
Still not ready to meet face to face in the prevailing pandemic conditions, in August 2021 we gathered once again on Zoom. We started our meeting by holding silence, so that we could each do the equivalent of (silently) reciting our personal creed.
The theme of meeting for reverence was ‘wholeness’ in contrast with human brokenness, 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 heard readings from Taoism (from the Tao Teh Ching, contrasting emptiness and busy-ness), and Christianity (a story from the Desert Fathers and Mothers on becoming whole enough to see to the heart of things). 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 certainly not a call to run away from an imperfect world.
We had some prayers and meditations including a meditation by Richard S. Gilbert on a comment by Dåg Hammarskjold regarding our chalice of being (how each day we receive, we carry, we give back). The reflection had also included an insight on the importance of space and silence if we are to be truly whole, rather than just ‘full’ or occupied. One participant said, “It made me think of the constellations in the sky. We think of them as pictures drawn in the stars and yet there is more darkness than light to them. It is on the space between the stars that we see the shapes form.”
In the self-contained way that has to be used during online gatherings, 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. After our candles of joys and concerns which turned out to be focused on the darker side of living, it was good to watch a YouTube video in which many sorts of different animals greeted their human companions with what can only be described as hugs.
The July gathering was an interesting confluence of ancient and bang-up-to-date streams of thought. It was held on 11 July, which has traditionally been marked as the feast of Benedict of Nursia, whose organised rules for living monastically, written in the sixth century, have been handed down and continue to influence monastic living today. Benedict’s insights on living in community today also influence thought-streams in the spheres of business management and personal improvement. That was the ancient bit. And the up-to-the-minute bit was: raising the topic of what it means to live in community is particularly appropriate in these days of hybrid living — part face-to-face and part online, and trying to sustain long-distance relationships.
We had some singing together in the way we all do on Zoom: all muted, but each hearing the lead musicians; we listened to some recordings by musicians on YouTube; we used this month’s chalice lighting words from the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists; we held our seven minutes of silence; and we spoke together the version of words of shared affirmation that are becoming a regular feature of our gathered time together.
YouTube music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oBFBW7zQn8
There were two readings, one from Bill Houff, a Unitarian Universalist in the USA, and the second from what would normally be called the book of James, in the New Testament of the Bible, but which ought to be known as the letter of Jacob.
Bill Houff spoke of the discipline needed for spiritual growth but also of the ordinariness of the spiritual life, and cited the following well-known story from Zen Buddhism:
A particularly eager spiritual novice went to the master of a monastery and said, “I am ready for every sacrifice; please teach me the way.”
“Have you eaten your rice porridge?” asked the master.
“Yes,” replied the student, “I have eaten.”
“Then you had better wash your bowl,” said the master.
The reflection by the president of the day wandered through the 'family tree' of western Christian monasticism, starting with the apostles Paul and James (who as mentioned above, might better be known in the English-speaking world as Jacob) living in a rural region outside Jerusalem, moving through the Desert Fathers and Mothers in Egypt, John Cassian of Romania, and finishing up with Benedict of Nursia. Much use was made of the following reference sources, which are not associated with any religious institution but instead are academic historical researches:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Apostle
https://www.biblestudytools.com/gnt/james/
https://www.bibleodyssey.org/people/related-articles/james-and-paul
The reflection also looked at the message of James/Jacob, as it eventually emerged through the Benedictine order in western Europe. It was suggested that the most important point carried down through the generations is why the church places such importance on long-lived relationships and commitments, and how that is related to the ordinariness of spiritual growth in community — the need to wash the rice bowl. It was summed up in some words from Rowan Williams:
“The church celebrates fidelity....it lives by the regular round of worship — the daily prayer of believers...meeting the same potentially difficult or unexciting people time after time, because they are the soil of growth.”
The president concluded: “It’s hard in UK to be a Unitarian. Our communities are so small and so thinly scattered, we all have to travel such distances. But it’s even harder to be a Unitarian completely on your own. That’s because the mark of a Unitarian is they are someone who has seen that it’s not enough to be a solo seeker. A Unitarian may start on their own but, if my experience is anything to go by, they get lonely, and they see and yearn for the gifts of learning and sustaining inner growth through the company of others.
"Learning and sustaining requires trust. Trust is only built via travelling a bumpy road together, with persistence, humour, humility and generosity. It takes time. And these days, thankfully we have an online space that allows us to continue along our bumpy road, no matter how far apart we physically live. The mark of Unitarians is living in community, and today we celebrate the life of Benedict, who had a great deal to say on the subject.”
The influences on the theme of the gathering for reverence in June 2021 were the season (Midsummer), the traditional Bible reading for the season, and the celebration of Pride that happens globally around this time. Our leader for the gathering was Darren, and Darren’s reflection drew these strands together into a wider look at how Unitarians build community, not just alliances. And in so doing, Darren set our movement a profound challenge.
Pride is celebrated in the month of June, as that was the month when the Stonewall riots took place.
The chalice lighting words were by Linda Lee Franson (here) specifically for Pride-tide; and the readings were from Everyman’s Book of English Folk Tales (Seeing is Believing - Reflections of a Sussex Labourer), and the Bible book of Luke (chapter 1 verses 57 to 80). We also heard a line from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a reminder that we were entirely within our rights to dismiss everything we heard during our gathering:
“If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream.”
The first reading was a folk tale, the impact of which hinged around the fact that in Sussex the word Pharisee was synonymous, for generations, with the words faerie or Fae. It started with:
“They tell me as some folk don’t believe in the little people, as we call Pharisees, no more than they do in dragons. The reason is that they never set eyes on the one nor the other. They believe in the angels, though, and they believe in God, but I don’t suppose any of ‘em ‘as ever seen Him. ‘Ah’, they say, ‘but God and the angels are in the Bible, so they must be true.’ Well, ain’t the Pharisees in the Bible, likewise?”
It’s clear, almost shockingly, that the speaker has woven together a new understanding of the world from two quite different sources.
Darren said: “What really hit me was discovering that there were people out there who, when they heard the stories of Jesus debating with the Pharisees in the Bible, were hearing not a historical narrative, as some see it, but rather a continuation of the folk tales where the hero has to outsmart the tricksy Fae. Let that sink in. After over a thousand years of Christianity on these shores the story being heard was still something older. And more than that: while this labourer from Sussex was hearing the old story of the Fae which he had grown up with, he also was clearly hearing the ‘new’ (if a thousand years and more can still be called ‘new’). A new look at what Jesus was doing. The one did not preclude the other. Both could be heard at the same time. Not because they are identical, but because each added to the other.”
The second reading was the Bible story of the birth of John the Baptist, which is traditionally read at Midsummer in the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, and perhaps more widely. There is a line in the Gospel of John that is used as the basis for the seasonal link. John the Baptist says, regarding Jesus: ‘He must increase; I must diminish’ (John chapter 3 verse 30). It appears that as the longest day is reached, when the days will grow shorter while the nights grow longer, that this single verse was enough to link this character and this time of year. Darren chose the reading from Luke because: “The reading, which is used on John the Baptist’s feast day, contains powerful and beautiful imagery of female empowerment, of hope for change, and a message that can unite and enliven communities as disparate as the Jewish and Gentile communities were seen to be at that time.” Explaining that over the centuries there there was a planned and deliberate adoption of Pagan festivals for the cycle of Christian beliefs, Darren went on: “John and Jesus are often represented as the end of the old and the beginning of the new. Jesus’ own birth is celebrated at the opposite point of the year, Midwinter. A clear solar journey is mapped onto these moments in the Bible. Moreover, the ritual of the communities, who take that text as central, now reflect the practices of pre-Christian people in the Northern Hemisphere, who would never have known about Jesus or John. But the Bible narratives of Jesus weren’t recorded with the seasons and rituals of Europe and North America in mind. It took hundreds of years for the celebrations we know today to evolve, long after those first Christians had died. There are multiple stories being told here, multiple voices being heard, and the one should not preclude the other.”
Darren then set out the proposition that it ought to be possible for the Unitarian movement to be more than a collection of separate identities doing the bare minimum to live alongside each other under the single umbrella of the movement. He declared,
“I firmly believe that we can be more than Earth Spirit and Christian under one roof, more than gay and straight sat side by side. I believe that our many diverse identities do not preclude a shared one, an identity in common. I believe we can be one community. Perhaps this is a dream, but I believe we can. The question is how?”
Suggesting that the answer to that question lies in accommodation rather than appropriation, in synchronization rather than colonization, we understood what Darren was driving at as he explained what was in his mind about the readings:
“Think about this for a moment: when the stone crosses were carved in the north of England, and the motifs of Loki being bound, or the snake being beaten, were used to show the Devil being overthrown by Christ victorious, Christians were taking the art and literature of a people and using it to tell a different story. They weren’t translating their message into the local language; rather they were telling the locals what those local symbols now meant.
“But in our first reading, the fairy faith of our Sussex labourer finds a place it can co-exist in the Christian community. It finds a home; and in so doing sheds a fresh light onto the narratives for the whole community. How different from a Christian purloining of a tradition of storytelling as a nice style for the telling of the ‘historical’ narratives of the gospels! I suggest that giving a home to a way of seeing things, and the expressions of such, is Accommodation, whereas taking the outward form or expression of something and using it for one’s own way of seeing is Appropriation. If Accommodation can be seen as taking in a stranger, Appropriation is just stealing their clothes.
“In the second reading, we saw how wider ways of celebrating and experiencing the divine could coincide. On the one hand we could try to say that the Christian practices are ‘just’ copies of older Pagan ones — such as Christmas in relation to both Sol Invictus (in Rome) and a northern ritual at the turning of the year — or we could claim that the Pagans ‘really’ mean what the Bible does but don’t understand it yet. Both claims have been, and continue to be, made.
"And at the very heart of Christianity, those traditions with ritual rely heavily on rituals brought in from Judaism, such as baptism, and a form of shared meal which now forms the heart of the Mass. But trying to replace the content of something with one’s own interpretation is to Colonize it, to invade and take over, no matter how much is left untouched outwardly. Whereas, recognizing similarities, points of contact, while respecting the fact that each has its own right to be — well, that opens the way to Synchronize, to align, and ultimately to share and grow together.”
Then we heard Darren’s challenge to the wider UK Unitarian movement:
“The application of this to the Earth Spirit and the Christian leanings in our UK Unitarian community are apparent, but in this month of Pride I would like to suggest two things.
"We Appropriate, each time that we value talking about inclusivity as a means to grow our numbers over actually making a community in which people with diverse sexual and gender identities are at home.
We Colonize, each time we hold that those with different ways of expressing their love are ‘really’ ‘just’ wanting to do the same thing we are.
"This isn’t about 'just squeezing over to make room for'. It’s about 'giving a home to'.
Let’s learn to give a home to ways of seeing things differently to maybe the mainstream.
Let’s find the similarities and points of contact that allow us to share and grow together, making something new to hold in common.
Let’s not be a tolerant church grumpily sat with each other, waiting for the next argument. We can be more than that, and we can be better than that.
"Let’s Accommodate not Appropriate.
Let’s Synchronize not Colonize.”
 |
| Let's do more than 'squeeze over to make space for'. Let's 'make a home with'. |
On 9 May 2021 we held our second gathering for reverence on Zoom, which took the topic “Seek ye first the kingdom of God”. After the welcome words, and the lighting of the chalice candle as usual, we were given some minutes of silence to privately focus in on what matters most to us and how we have lived up to that recently.
There were two readings from the book of the Hebrew prophet Samuel.
In the first reading the Hebrew peoples ask Samuel to institute a kingship and appoint them a king. In the second reading we heard about the dilemma of Jonathan (servant to the king Saul and friend to David, of Goliath fame) when he was asked by David for protection against Saul.
Then there was a reflection on the two texts, and why they had been chosen to address the theme. There was a time for silent meditation; and then the opportunity to share intentions, concerns and hopes — during which tea lights and other candles were lit.
In the absence of any physical ritual that could be carried out together, Zoom allowed us to speak aloud together one of the formal set of words becoming traditional for the end of our gatherings:
We are aware, and we affirm, that we do not find our peace in the certainty of what we confess,
but in the wonder of what befalls us and what we are given;
that we do not find our destination in indifference and greed,
but in vigilance and in connection with all that lives;
that our existence is not fulfilled by who we are and what we possess,
but by what is infinitely greater than we can contain.
(Extract from 2006 Confession of Faith of the Dutch Remonstrant Church)
The reflection on the two texts against the theme “Seek ye first the kingdom of God” follows.
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“Seek ye first the kingdom of God”
Jesus of Nazareth speaks often of this kingdom, and for some of us that resonates or intrigues enough that it warrants some reflection. But I haven’t chosen a single reading where these words are said by Jesus. Why?
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| A gathering of ordinary Unitarians (some years ago) |
Secondly, the readings from Samuel place the words “Seek ye first the kingdom of God” which are reported to be words of Jesus (in the books of Matthew and Luke), within the context, within the tradition, in which Jesus was raised and lived. Traditions are important to Unitarians, because Unitarians set great store on ideas being tested for meaningfulness in a succession of lives, in lived experience within a group. Unitarians don’t generally ascribe to the idea of a revelation arriving as a form of words, some divinely dictated prose or poetry, containing unworldly secrets no one could otherwise know. Even mainstream Christian groups recognise that words and ideas, the very language that forms the basis of all inspiring scripture, exists within a context, within a tradition.
Thirdly, I have chosen these readings because just as “seeking first the kingdom of God” was spoken within the context of a tradition, so too that is how we hear it. We too stand within a tradition, both as Unitarians and as people growing up in the West. Our tradition is one of the Bible, its stories, its sayings, parables and psalms and associated hymns and carols, cribs and crosses; but also a tradition of Paganism and science (some of which rubbed off into Europe from the Islamic knowledge-base of the Moors), myths, pan-European history, art, architecture, customs, certain ways of doing things — even our political system. Traditions aren’t ‘pure’; they’re not closed off. In the Bible itself we find Canaanite, Babylonian, Greek, Egyptian, and Roman influences, images, and ideas. These were the cultures and worlds — the traditions — that the people of the Bible, including Jesus, moved in.
We shouldn’t be surprised, then, that our Unitarian tradition is open to Hindu, Earth Spirit, Buddhist, Taoist, Muslim, Jewish, Humanist, and many many other influences. What makes a tradition isn’t its ‘purity’, or its single source: a tradition is made by having a living thread of continuity. We are not adrift, we are not unfocused scavengers here and there: we have our tradition. And the choice of readings helps reflect that. |
| Just the everyday life in which we are asked to seek the kingdom |
