Remembrance and Lamenting – online gathering for reverence November 2023

An eclectic selection of music was worked into the mix of this online gathering for reverence : a chant from the Taizé community, tracks from Johnny Cash and Billy Joel, a poem song from the musical Godspell and a hymn from one of the UK Unitarian hymnbooks, which together might appear to lend this service a cheerful sort of feel.  But actually this was a service about remembrance and lamenting, making reference to loss, anger and injustice along the way.

link to the Taizé chant, sung by the UUSM

The thrust of the gathering was about the repertoire of religious motifs we have, around which to organize our thoughts and emotions, our pain and our healing, when confronted with the griefs that have been around forever, and with the new catastrophes we are now newly beginning to suffer, as a result of our over-population and over-exploitation of the planet, and its peoples, over the last centuries.

Different religious motifs may be relevant to us at different phases of our lives, and in changing circumstances we may find those motifs changing.  

Our president for the day described how for many years Christianity had had little to say to her; but that was when she had perceived the world to be in stasis, with perhaps a general, gentle drift towards reduction in injustice and improved living conditions for all.  Having experienced a sudden change of perspective — which she described with reference to Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, in the biblical creation story — she reported how her previously comfortable and even complacent life had been exchanged for interior discomfort with the occasional sleepless night.  And she sees no prospect of any return to the previous complacency : like Adam and Eve, she feels she has left paradise for ever.  And that has changed her interior landscape with regard to Christianity.

The themes of remembering the war dead associated with the Meeting House in Ringwood, which until 1976 housed a Unitarian congregation; prophetic rage at injustice and wrongdoing; and personal complicity in both evil in general and environmental destruction in particular, were all wrapped in to what was a highly personal view on how to cope when lamenting seems to be the only rational response.

"O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and You will not listen?......Why do You make me see wrongdoing and make me look at trouble?  Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise......In Your wrath may You also remember mercy." (from the Bible prophet, Habakkuk)

Specific motifs that seemed to help our speaker were that of Shiva the Destroyer of Worlds (Shiva Nataraja) from Hinduism, and the crucified Jesus from Christianity.  Reminding us that one does not have to have a top-down theory, or theology, in order to enter contemplation via a religious motif, or to experience the love of God first-hand, she said:

“Shiva the Destroyer of Worlds is a very handy motif when reconciling my panentheism with the scientific, astronomical perspective, though it can also help when my interior world is demolished.  

This Destroyer motif points at a dancing, humorous transformation — a transmogrification — rather than an annihilation....But one limitation is that this motif doesn’t show me in the picture.  It heals through its logic, but not through the deep emotion of belonging.  

It offers a logic but no hope.”

Our president for the day then apologized that she needed the words of someone else to present her own position regarding the crucified Jesus.  She then quoted at length from Richard Rohr, a Franciscan monk, in his book Things Hidden — Scripture as Spirituality. 

To help with this report, our speaker reviewed the quoted passage from Rohr, and has highlighted three points crucial to her, when she contemplates the crucified Jesus, and the healing this motif offers in those wee small hours of sleeplessness :

"Firstly, in the Cross, we can explicitly feel ourselves being pulled in two directions; towards God’s goodness, and towards our own complicity in evil. This could tear us apart, which is a common suffering in daily living.

Next, contemplating the Cross, we are immediately in a state of ‘not alone’-ness.  We do not get onto our cross by ourselves, and on our own we cannot pull ourselves in two directions.

Finally, hanging without resolution, in the paradox of goodness and evil, on our own cross — holding the contradictions, sharing and participating in the redemption of the world, forgiving reality for being what it is — is a way of gift : the gift that, at least in us, everything belongs."

 

Pentecost and church-building : Three necessary elements for a sustainable Unitarian congregation June 2022

(Postscript dated 9 Jun 2022:  This crosses over very neatly with a blogpost from last year by Francis Elliot Wright, which challenges us to think about what being "a successful Church" means.  You can find it here

https://unitarianchristianark.blogspot.com/2021/09/why-are-we-here.html?fbclid=IwAR2BZnIKuUldg7WKup2NKfSv1MlfCrM7ZuqnnuWN0_qxqVYsd7QqarG5k1s  )

On 5th June 2022, after a super online UCA service about Pentecost by Rev Sheena Gabriel, there was also a rich conversation.

I was asked by others to record a contribution I made, which is my personal assessment regarding the arc that may be experienced by someone coming to Unitarianism, and its link with securing the ongoing life of a congregation.  So, with thanks to Sheena, Ruth and Rob who were in the conversation with me, here goes.

It seems to me that it will be a very rare thing indeed for someone who has not in some prior way experienced a life of wondering about faith, someone who has not already been infused with some style of self-awareness or moral living or both, someone who has not had at least a little exposure to formal faith practice through their upbringing, to try out any kind of spiritual or church movement from scratch.  I know the marketing industry works on the basis that you can make people want something they previously didn’t know existed, merely through clever advertising — that a demand can be constructed from scratch — but we know how much money is involved in the marketing industry.  So let’s set aside the idea of trying to reach people who never previously considered spiritual or religious exploration.

Thus, in my view, a person trying out the Unitarian setting is initially looking for a new setting for their past experience of faith and spirituality — they are looking for something for themself.  A safer space.  A more welcoming space.  Perhaps a place to heal or even mend.

And what the congregation must offer them at that stage is just that : a something for themself.   A place where they can, perhaps for the first time, be openly honest.  A place where they don’t have to define themself in terms of specific doctrines.  A place where they can try out different versions of themself at different times.  A place where they are heard and seen but on their own terms.  A place where they can ground themself again.  Rest.  Space.  Air.  Light.  Warmth.  Time.  As Rob put it yesterday, a place where they can find the holiness of their own person.

The arc progresses.  After the time of healing and grounding, some (if not many or even most) will then find they reach a stage where that motion begins to reverse — where instead of absolutely needing something for themself, they have sufficient resources to want to start to give back.  This is where — perhaps for the first time, or for the first time in a long time — the community as a body assumes importance for our ‘newcomer’.  The co-creation starts.  The holiness of community begins.  The exploration about humility, about service to the community itself and to the neighbours in which the community sits, assumes importance.  The personal needs are met, now what’s next ? — the needs of the group.  At this point the congregation must offer someone a way to be integrated into the life of the community — but again, as on first arrival, it must be on their own terms.  And the community must show that the contribution of the ‘new’ person immediately changes the group : the group is now different and may need to look afresh at how it operates, and respond positively to queries about its aims and activities.  “Ohh!  Now we need a new plan!” should be a happy commonplace, not a negative shock to the system.  To use very old language, if we are to see the spark of the divine, the Christ, in each person, then the opportunity is there to “become new in Christ” each time someone new integrates*.

Then the arc matures.  The ‘newcomer’ may no longer feel that instinctive, emotional giving back is enough.  In my experience, most will want to understand the motives of the group for being a group at all.  What is this congregation actually about?  This is the bit where in my experience congregations can fail, and failure can be most drastic.  The Unitarian movement is not about peak experiences, whether that be in art, music, literature, intellectual study, science, logic and rationalism, meditation, prayer, humility, one-ness, social service, justice making, or self sacrifice.  It’s not about diversity for diversity’s sake.  It’s not even about inclusivity for inclusivity’s sake.  All of these things are essential, are absolutely necessary, but are not sufficient. What are they all for?  Why are we doing this?  Why are we doing what we do?

For me, the only satisfactory answer I have found lies in the book by Stephen Lingwood: Seeking Paradise - A Unitarian Mission For Our Times.  After long and careful thought, Stephen argues (and I agree) that we are seeking to build paradise on earth.  The word ‘paradise' wraps up all those necessary things previously mentioned, and more, but in itself is much bigger; too big to be contained in our minds.  We are looking beyond ourselves, beyond our concepts, beyond our self-image, beyond our own terms of explaining ourselves, indeed, beyond what we are capable of imagining.  We are not worrying about achieving results or about realism.  We are seeking to build regardless of our chances of success.  We are not worried about whether we survive the attempt.  We are seeking to build paradise because that is the only clean motive that makes sense to us.  We are here because of the holiness of the beyond.

And because we are Unitarians, and not inheritors of tradition from the Indian sub-continent or the Arabian peninsula, not direct inheritors of land-based, spirit-filled cosmology (Africa, North America, Australia and other places) nor of political philosophies and wisdom (China); because we are Unitarians, our myths and narratives in common come out of Christianity and sit in the context of western law and culture infused with the demands of the Jewish Ten Commandments and the directive attributed to the teacher Jesus — to love God and our neighbour as we love ourselves.  Because we are Unitarians, the paradise stories and images we come back to again and again are related to the wisdom that we inherit in the Bible.  Spiced up, of course, by fusion with other thought streams : we are truly people of our global times.

To be able to show that line of thought, that anchoring, to someone asking why we do what we do; to be able to point at that, our history; in my view that is the third necessary element that a congregation must be able to provide, for a satisfactory arc of growth of both a person approaching a Unitarian group, and that Unitarian group itself.

~~~~

So, if you ask me, the three elements that a sustainable congregation needs to provide are a safe space for healing (holiness of the person); a living, growing community working together (the holiness of community); and the ‘paradise-building’ purpose beyond itself, anchored in history (the holiness of the beyond).

* 2 Corinthians 5:17 (NRS) So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!

Addressing power and joy on Palm Sunday 10th Apr 2022 - gathering of #Unitarians and friends associated with Ringwood

Our gathering on 10th April this year coincidentally fell on Palm Sunday for the western Church, which may not feature strongly in the landscape for many Unitarians, even among our group.  

But the president for the day had this to say: “We have been open that, in the past two years, some of us have become much more interested in the classical Unitarian heritage endowed to our denomination, and in the shared language of Bible stories.  But we maintain that these are to be considered inspirational, and the stuff of legend; myths underpinned by world views we may not adhere to.  We see Bible stories and biblical language as kinds of short-cut to forming an understanding in common, and not in any way a legalistic or definitive framework.”

We use stories in all sorts of ways in our gatherings.  At this April gathering, at the lighting of the candle in our chalice, instead of hearing a short maxim or proverb, or a dedication, we heard a folk tale:

An elderly grandfather says to his grandson: ‘There’s a fight going on inside me.  It’s a terrible fight between two wolves.  One is evil — greedy, fearful, arrogant, jealous, cowardly, deceitful, divisive, closed in on himself.  The other is good — humble, trusting, modest, generous, courageous, honest, peaceful, loving.  These two wolves are also fighting within you, and inside every other person too.’

After a moment, the boy asks, ‘Which wolf will win?’

The old man smiles.  ‘The one you feed.’

Regular readers of this blog will know that it is important to us to include wordless activities, which we can take part in together without nailing down what they mean to each of us privately.  And so it was with this gathering, which included a short period of personal reflection rounded off by the words, ‘This is what the Sacred asks of you; that you act justly, that you love tenderly, and that you walk humbly in its presence’ (Micah chp 6 verse 8).  We also included a longer period of silence for personal practice; perhaps meditation, prayer, contemplation, mindfulness, intercession.  And yes, still on Zoom this time, we included the by now familiar muted singing, of Unitarian hymns, for those who get benefit from the activity.

The readings were both taken from the Christian tradition.  The first was Jesus’ teaching regarding the need for leaders, for those in authority, to act and be as servants; as set out in ‘The Good Word of Jesus’ under the authorship of Mark, in the Bible.  The second was from a book by a Franciscan monk living and working today in the USA, namely Richard Rohr ("Things Hidden — Scripture as Spirituality”, Richard Rohr 2016, pub. SPCK).

The president for the day then gave quite a personal reflection, starting by saying how angry she has been for several years now, regarding the climate and biodiversity catastrophe threshold at which we stand, and the parlous state of democracy and world politics — at the very point when concerted, joint action is needed, if we are to undo the damage that humans have done.  The invasion of Ukraine was referenced, as was the outwash yet to be fully realised from the COVID19 pandemic, and the deliberate plans by the UK Government to drive away migrants, treating some migrants as more worthy than others.  She said the basis of her anger was misuse of power, and that anger is necessary to drive change, on occasion; but also that prolonged anger always comes with the risks of wearing a person down, of making them hard to live with, of risking their health and relationships close to home.

She said: “I am getting bored with my own anger.  I want to return to joy.  I recall a story from a church worker in among Salvadoran refugees in Honduras:

‘Every time the refugees in Honduras were displaced and had to build a new camp, they immediately formed three committees: a construction committee, an education committee, and the comité de alegría — “the committee of joy.” Celebration was as basic to the life of the refugees as was digging latrines and teaching their children to read.’  (Joyce Hollyday, published in 'Resources for Preaching and Worship: Year B' compiled by Hannah Ward and Jennifer Wild p20). 

As much as we need to fix the things that are wrong, we need to find and celebrate sources of joy.

“In the wider Western church, today they will be celebrating Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, a story extolling a new sense of joy and power.  Not so much, in this church.  ‘But the thing about stories is that they are not just stories.  Few ideas have as much power to shape the world as our view of other people.  And we get and develop our view of other people through stories. It matters what stories we tell.’ (Rutger Bregman, in his book “Humankind — a hopeful history")  The Bible is a work of literature which is concerned with stories of a people trying to live together.  Though we may not personally share the worldview of the various authors of the Bible, surely a collection of books that has inspired for 2000 years or more has something to teach us?”

The reading from Richard Rohr had looked at dominative power, that is to say political power, and how hard it is for people in positions of power to stay honest and humble, no matter how honest they thought they were, as they secured their position.  Rohr’s view is that the more you focus on your positional power, your power to make change through external threat of some kind, the less you look inside yourself to see where real, kind, generous, gentle power lies, and how to access it interiorly.

And so the president said: “I find it a source of hope and joy that, from the beginning, the Bible teaches a different kind of power.  We may not imagine an interventionist God.  We may not imagine God at all.  We may prefer to think of good emerging in the world, rather than God breaking into the world.  Nonetheless, we do recognise the difficulties in living with other people, with getting appropriate political structures, in promoting the health of all.  The God of the Bible undercuts the sort of power that is coercive, the power that relies upon external threat.”

She went on to explain that the story we had heard from the book of Mark, and most other stories from the Bible, such as the story of Hannah, who unexpectedly becomes able to bear a child (the prophet Samuel), and the protection God offers to the Israelites as they escape the Egyptians by way of the reed sea of the Nile delta, are all stories about people on the edge, about people at the bottom being supported and elevated, most often at the cost of those already in power.  If it is read like this, the Bible is definitively and distinctively anti-establishment.  The Bible challenges those in power, and promises their overthrow in favour of a more inclusive agenda that also includes those from the margins.  In fact, the theme is that the more inclusive agenda can only be introduced by people driven to the margins by those in power, because marginalisation is the only way to experience the faults in the status quo.

She finished by saying: “So although my source of joy is not actually in this character Jesus riding into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, it may lie in the subversive message repeated in the stories attached to his name, reflecting the Bible culture  — it may lie in the words attributed to Jesus, words that "the last will be first and the first will be last, and that every mother's son is sent to ensure the life of the many."

This might be a dark spell in politics and behaviours both for society, and for the survival of humankind itself.  But there are things we can do to collaborate with good, to enable good to emerge in the world.

We can feed the right wolf !

We can read the right literature, and read it in the right way.

We can tell ourselves stories that inspire us to live better and to think differently of others.”

 

Memory, imagination, loss - and where to find comfort for loss in the Bible -- Ringwood Unitarians' gathering in November 2021

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

Wholeness is not the same as fullness - emptiness is also needed for becoming - Ringwood Unitarians gathering in August 2021

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.

 

Colonizing or synthesizing? Accommodation or appropriation? Ways to form a #Unitarian community of practice - June 2021 gathering for reverence in Ringwood

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'.