Why #Unitarians meeting in Ringwood include ritual in our gatherings

“I have come to feel that [rituals] have another purpose — to end, for a time, our sense of human alienation from nature and from each other…….Rituals have the power to reset the terms of our universe until we find ourselves suddenly and truly at home.”

Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon

“Any ritual is an opportunity for transformation.  To do ritual, you must be willing to be transformed in some way.  That inner willingness is what makes the ritual come alive and have power.  If you aren’t willing to be changed by the ritual, don’t do it.”

Starhawk, Truth or Dare

To that last quote, we would add: if you aren't willing to be changed by the ritual, you are not, in fact, doing the ritual (no matter if it looks as though you are).

#Unitarians look at Roman legend and Norse tradition to consider the moral imperative regarding conflicting demands

On 9 June a smaller group than usual met at Ringwood Meeting House, for what turned out to be, nevertheless, a heartfelt gathering.

Our hymns for the day were “Morning Has Broken” and “Joy to the World” - a rousing hymn to end on and we decided that it is too good to be kept for Christmas!

After opening words from Rev David Usher we lit the chalice candle to words by Greg Ward, notably including , "Though each of us carries forth in this world a small flame, we know that the ability of that light to brighten the world depends upon the many others who learn to walk with it in their hearts.”

Our two readings were intriguingly diverse.  The first was from Northern Tradition for the Solitary Practitioner by Krasskova & Kaldera, and it spoke of the concept of wergild.  At first glance this may look a little like the Roman Catholic idea of restitutions.  But wergild rests not on the idea of justice but of balance. The distinction is that for justice there is a person in the right and a person in the wrong and the latter has to pay the former in order to be made right again, but the idea of balance does not begin with one being in the right and the other in the wrong.  Wergild assumes that in the world, where there are conflicts of interest, some will come off better than others; and if one has come off better there is a moral duty to be aware of that and to find a way to recompense those who came off worse. The Roman Catholic restitutions concept is a making of amends; the wergild concept aims at preventing one conflict leading to another and another and another, ad infinitum.

By Hermitage Museum - http://www.arthermitage.org/Baldassare-Peruzzi/Androcles-and-the-Lion.html, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34591039

The second reading, which was our children’s story, was the legend of Androcles and the Lion, as told by Aesop.  Androcles the runaway slave is brave enough to pull a thorn from a lion’s paw, saving the lion from painful suffering and, perhaps, death through infection; and is later saved from the punishment of death in the Roman arena, because the lion he faces there turns out to be the same lion, who refuses to kill him.

After the readings we participated in our usual circle ritual, where we each offer up in our own minds, according to our personal beliefs.

We had then the opportunity

• to name what we had been grateful for in the past month;
• to spend time reflecting on our recent or past actions for the purposes of general or personal reconciliation, in silence or out loud as desired;
• to sit in stillness for our usual period of seven minutes for meditation or contemplation; and
• to offer prayers for others, including the lighting of candles.

After a musical interlude and some reflections on the theme highlighted by the two readings, our closing words were by Rev Andy Pakula.

What happened at the Blue Christmas #Unitarian service at Ringwood for those who have a heavy heart at Christmastide

The Blue Christmas service on 16 December was a departure for both Ringwood town and the Unitarians who meet in Ringwood.

Prior to the event the people we asked thought that holding a service for those for whom Christmas is a hard time was a very good idea.  And so it turned out.  People came to the service who had not been to one of the regular monthly services, and among them were people who - it turns out - are suffering under some considerable strain at present.

The service began with a quiet time in which, in general terms, we were reminded the sorts of reasons why Christmas can be a painful season.  And then the narrative of the Christmas story was unfolded, interspersed with musical interludes.

Each of the readings had been chosen to be an unconventional perspective on the stages of the nativity.  A poem Bethlehem by Frances Thompson gave the perspective of the innkeeper’s wife, focused on caring for the young mother in the face of a very male world.  T. S. Eliot’s speculative poem, from the view from one of the wise men (The Journey of the Magi) suggested that death as well as birth was intrinsic to Christmas.

Unitarians are not certain about Jesus in the way that other churches are, and so space was left for participants to consider their own view of Jesus.  But the message of hope for renewal, signified by the birth of this baby, and indeed every human baby, and the possibility that Christmas is about reconciliation of difficulties, were explored.

Having cleared our minds we were invited to some minutes of silence, in the trust that in the silence the messages we most needed to hear would be born in us.

In amongst the more unusual pieces of Christmas music that we heard, we did sing one traditional carol: It came upon the midnight clear whose lyrics were written by Edmund Sears in 1849, who was pastor to the Unitarian Church in Wayland, Massachusetts at the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Came_Upon_the_Midnight_Clear

We closed with an unusual piece of music for a Christmas service, which was a song by Paul McCartney, which includes the hopeful lines:  “One of these days, when my feet are on the ground, I’m gonna look around and see, See what’s right, see what’s there, And breathe fresh air ever after.  It’s there, it’s round, it’s to be found, by you, by me: It’s all we ever wanted to be.”

July 2017 our gathering for reverence on "Love" #unitarians

The theme of the day was “Love”.  Our president for the day brought us a reading from Hinduism, a reading and a prayer from Christianity, and a prayer from Buddhism.  We included our usual silent ritual in which a flame, some bread, some water and an item for fanning oneself are passed around the whole circle of participants.  We do not specify what these elements are to signify to participants.  We prefer to act in silence so that people can derive their own meanings and satisfaction from the ritual.  We also lit candles and spoke of our joys and concerns, which has become a deeply moving part of our meeting for reverence, and which allows us to develop our mutual understanding as the months go by.

Our first reading was from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, and is the famous passage often used at weddings (1 Corinthians Chapter 13 verses 4 to 8).  We were invited to consider which of its well-known clauses we personally would find hard to live up to.  It was a challenge for this Unitarian to narrow it down to only one!  As one would expect at a Unitarian gathering, there were as many different views as there were people present.

Not everyone present felt able to study the reading from Paul in a detached way, as it was felt to come freighted within a very strong context.  I for one was grateful for the frankness that was spoken aloud about that.  Unitarians find it is important that people feel able to be honest about such matters.  Personal integrity matters a great deal to us and we would not be content for someone to feel they had to pretend, or to conceal their honest dissatisfaction or discomfort.  My own view is that many religious groups of all faiths have a tacit convention that disagreements and discomforts are hidden for the sake of conformity and stability.  This diminishes the richness of the whole experience and can cause individuals to feel rejected in the very place where they most seek – and most need to find – the feeling of being included, and of being at home.

Our second reading was translated from the Sanskrit, said to have been written by the poet Kalidasa, and may not be quite so well known:

Look to this day:

For it is life, the very life of life.

In its brief course

Lie all the verities and realities of your existence.

The bliss of growth,

The glory of action,

The splendour of achievement

Are but experiences of time.

For yesterday is but a dream

And tomorrow is only a vision;

And today well-lived, makes

Yesterday a dream of happiness

And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well therefore to this day.....

Our music was a Unitarian hymn with words by June Boyce-Tillman (We sing a love) and a rendition by Joe Cocker of Up Where We Belong:

Who knows what tomorrow brings

In a world few hearts survive

All I know is the way I feel

When it's real, I keep it alive

The road is long

There are mountains in our way

But we climb a step every day

Love lift us up where we belong

Where the eagles cry

On a mountain high

Love lift us up where we belong

Far from the world below

Up where the clear winds blow

And we finished with some famous words by Mother Teresa, before staying to chat over hot drinks.  If you haven't tried our gatherings for reverence yet, do consider giving them a go.  We look forward to hearing YOUR take on what life, the universe and everything is all about.

June 2016 meeting for reverence

Something in the air?  Last weekend was the weekend of national celebrations for the Queen’s 90th birthday – some sense of rootedness, perhaps, to balance out the national turmoil over the pending decision to remain in or to leave the European Union – and lo! our gathering for reverence took the theme “Maintaining a grateful balance”.

Or perhaps the theme reflected events and experiences closer to home, as members of our small community have been providing mutual support through some personally taxing, unforeseen life events recently.

Our readings came from Dan Millman and Kristi Nelson, taking two different perspectives on what is required in order to live in balance; and why it is necessary to say “no” to some things in order to be able to say “yes” to others.  The perfect balance of the egret when fishing, and the need to thin out crowded, green peaches were the two abiding images from the readings. The meeting leader mused on the intersection of the divine with the messy experience of life as it is lived, and suggested that the insight in common from the two readings was mindfulness, attentiveness, intentionality.

Our opening prayer came from Aelin – a Pagan Catechism by Darren Canning and our closing prayer from Spirit of Time and Place by Cliff Reed, and we sang two hymns from Sing Your Faith, about seeking faith and life being a gift.  We also heard The Island by Hollie Sue   http://www.holliesheard.co.uk/songs.html

Our candles as usual drew out matters of concern to us, joys as well as sadnesses, and we had a frank yet gentle conversation on our theological perspectives over refreshments.  It was generally felt that as we grow our group we must do what it takes to retain the respectful and occasionally intimate context we have achieved so far.

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.

November meeting

Last Sunday the theme of the Unitarian worship in Ringwood was in tune with the commemorative mood sweeping the nation at this time – it was taking time, taking our time to reflect.  A quiet service with candles.

September meeting

Our September meeting was led by Lucy and it recognised the general anxiety, doubt and uncertainty of the times.  Some words to help us through such times were taken from two sources - the New Testament of the Bible and an ancient Chinese tale.  Both of these challenged us to change our perceptions of what is happening to us and around us and so to open our minds to the opportunities and freedoms we do actually already have.

We contrasted our own uncertainties with how we react to and feel about people whose beliefs deal only in certainties.  We found we may not be dissimilar after all.  We lit many candles of intent remembering issues and people that matter deeply to us and we also shared the humour on some fridge magnets !  The music we listened to reflected the joy of living, and how when we work towards fellowship we will find that humans are their own masters and will not have to look beyond their own experience and insight for guidance.