Who do you think you are? Who do you say I am? Two questions whose answers are always shifting - Unitarians in Ringwood gather again in May 2022

It’s such a different experience — being there, compared with being told about what it was like to be there.

Reading a blogpost about our gatherings, whether online or in person, is always likely to leave the impression that our gatherings are like lectures, webinars, study classes.  They are never like that.  In the subtlest ways, everyone in the room participates and changes what transpires, changing it into a woven, group activity.  And as our gatherings take place explicitly to allow a space for reverence to emerge, whether that reverence is in regard to a special circumstance of life, a personal deity, or, as most would probably suggest, the biggest mystery of all (life, in its fullest), the woven, group activity evokes what cannot be conveyed in a written report.

Our gathering on Zoom on 8 May 2022 included singing along to videos, silence for personal reflection, two readings from the Christian Bible, and a period for sharing joys and concerns in our minds at the time.  On Zoom, other rituals are more difficult to arrange, and we will be considering that as we move back to meeting in person, in July.  We have no intention of meeting in person merely to listen to someone’s words about somebody else’s written words that have been read out loud.  There has to be more to the act of gathering, than that.

This is representative - it's a gathering of Unitarians in the
 Ringwood Meeting House, but this is an old picture.

Nonetheless, you’re reading this because you want to know what theme was covered in our gathering, so here goes, as usual.

We opened with a recollection that, though it has to some extent worn off to people in the UK, in Ukraine there is no escaping the continuing shock of the invasion.  We lit our chalice candle while hearing words prompting us to keep watch with those suffering: 

'My soul is sorrowful, even unto death: stay awake and keep watch with me.' (Book of Mark, chapter 14 verse 34)

The first reading was from the Bible, book of Job, chapter 38, verses 4-21.  God confronts Job, saying, 

‘Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?

    Tell me, if you have understanding.’

We heard a second reading from the Bible, book of Mark, chapter 8 verses 27-30.  In this reading, the teacher Jesus is asking his followers who people think he is.  And Peter answered Jesus, ‘You are the Messiah.’

The president of the day reflected on the two readings.

“In our first reading we are given the fictional speech where God turns the tables on Job and all his wise friends.  Job has been asking the hard questions, and his various friends have trotted out the ‘right answers’; but none of it has been satisfying.  Finally, it is God who speaks.

“God unfurls the wonder of the cosmos and the passing of aeons, and in essence poses the question, ‘Just who do you think you are?!’  The wonder is not that Job does not know all the answers, or that he is left with so many questions.  The wonder is that anyone should ever have thought they knew it all !

“Whilst there is a nobility and vitality in wanting to know more and to understand better, it is foolishness and arrogance to think that any of us has ever got it all worked out.  That is not to say our insights, our thoughts, and our experiences are worthless.  It is not to say that there is no difference in value between one way of seeing and doing, and another.   But it is to say that there is always more to know, more to ask, more to do. 

“This confrontation, staged between God and Job and all the wise friends, is a call not to lose heart in the face of questions and doubts, and not to become rigid in our ideas, in our ways of doing and saying.  After all: who do we think we are?

“In our second reading we find a similar question posed.  The main protagonist of the Gospel of Mark is asking his friends and followers who the crowds think he is. They have a mix of answers: maybe John, the fiery preacher who was apparently recently executed.  Maybe Elijah, the returned ancient figure of power from the past. Or maybe, just one of the many insightful people who have something important to say.  There’s conspiracy theories in there, there’s fanaticism, and there’s perhaps more balanced respect and interest, too. 

“Then Jesus asks them who they themselves think he is. You can almost imagine an awkward pause. Would we have a ready made answer to this, if asked by someone important to us? 

“It is Peter who finally breaks the silence, by saying, “You are the Anointed One.” And that’s all the author of Mark has Peter say.  We’re not told what that means, or what that implies. We get that it marks Jesus out as special, but in what way?  Early readers of Mark would have immediately known that priests are anointed, prophets are anointed, kings are anointed, and, of course, the dead are anointed for burial too.  Mark doesn’t have Peter explain himself in his Gospel, and Mark doesn’t give us a narrator’s answer either.  The Jesus we read about in the book of Mark is said to be many things by the different people who meet him.  And, depending on their varying encounters with him, what they say of him and their actions towards him vary too. 

“Mark places Jesus into situations that were recognizable then and, with a bit of imagination, are recognizable now; but then has the man doing and saying the unexpected.  Mark is setting out a protagonist who is challenging to those around him as well as to us the readers: Jesus won’t let things be just as they are.

“If those crowding around Jesus want things to carry on unchanged, as they expected them to go, well then Jesus needs to go.  If, on the other hand, those following him want to keep hold of this figure who intrigues and inspires them, then it is other things that need to change or be jettisoned. 

“We know how this went.  Every character in Mark had to decide for themselves about this Jesus, and every reader of Mark has to as well.

“In a lot of ways, the book of Mark is a Unitarian Gospel. It challenges, and it asks the question, but it is left open to us to rise to it and to answer.  I offer you these two questions today — not as a test and not because I have the answers, but because the questions themselves are at the heart of our shared Unitarian practice.

“Firstly, who do you think you are?!  And secondly, when you think about the story Mark weaves around his strange protagonist Jesus, and the odd things Jesus does and says, who do you say he is?"

We finished with this blessing, based on Repose in The Sun Dances – Prayers and Blessings from the Gaelic, collected and translated by Alexander Carmichael.

Thou of Wonders

Shield us with might

Oh thou of natures laws and all its stars

Compass us this night

Body and soul

Compass us aright

Between earth and sky

Tonight 

Between the allness of thy mystery

And the blindness of our sight

Compass us this night

And every night

Oh thou of Wonders 

Compass us aright.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnlMktJTHTA

#Unitarians encouraged to challenge and speak out during a heart-warming gathering in Ringwood

On 11th August we gathered as Unitarians and friends in the Meeting House in Ringwood, built in 1727, as we usually do on the second Sunday of each month.

Unitarians together in 2014 - in a setting similar to our gatherings

As we don’t have a Minister, all our services are led by one of us, who takes the lead without having had any special training.  We have found it very helpful to adopt a framework for our gatherings that originated at the Kensington congregation, and it is known as the “heart & soul” style service.

There’s a format provided - and with about an hour’s preparation, searching on the www for suitable prayers and words, and some more time with our green hymn book, finding hymns that we can sing because we know them, our leaders manage to curate very satisfactory experiences when we meet.  There’s an emphasis on collaborative engagement and participation to make the gathering work, so the format works well for small congregations that don’t have Ministers.

The theme on Sunday was the presenting of Unitarianism as the challenging of the accepted narrative and the daring to speak out when that narrative is found wanting.

The research by our president for the day had brought to light the story of St Oran, who was a follower of St Columba.  Oran had volunteered to be buried alive under the foundations of a new church being built by Columba, because it seemed that some form of sacrifice was required to stabilise the ground (the new building kept tumbling down while under construction).  But for some reason - perhaps this sacrifice was too much for Columba’s conscience - some days later, Columba ordered that Oran should be uncovered again.  And when he was uncovered, Oran shocked everyone by speaking, saying that there is no such great wonder in death, and that the descriptions of Heaven and Hell did not measure up.  He finished with a whisper to Columba, “The way you think it is may not be the way it is at all.”  At which point, Columba backtracked yet again and ordered Oran to be re-buried.  There’s still a saying in the Gaelic-speaking world which is used to silence uncomfortable subjects of conversation: “Throw mud in the mouth of St Oran.”

The children’s story that was read as the second reading was The Emperor’s New Clothes by Hans Christian Anderson.

The words of our second hymn included the words, “From honest doubt we shall not flee / Nor fetter the inquiring mind / For where the hearts of all are free / A truer faith we there shall find,” written by John Andrew Storey.

We had a secondary emphasis in our gathering of being committed to each other in community.  This was developed through a combination of music and words.  The music included our first hymn, which said, “ O let us live with humankind / As sisters, brothers, true / We’ll share our joys, our sorrows share / Becoming as we do,” written by Doris Jeanine Stevens. And there was a wonderfully relevant musical interlude in the form of a song by Ben Platt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDeNQNtW1f8  Grow As We Go

On the same theme of growing and committing in community, and sourced from the www, were the opening words from Rev Dr Linda Hart and chalice lighting words from Rev David Usher.

Everyone is welcome for the next gathering, which is on 8th September at 10 a.m.

(Early notice: there will be no gathering in November).

The #Unitarian demand for personal responsibility in matters of spirit requires maturity - the Ringwood gathering in March 2018 looked at Letting Go

Familiar faces were gathered there together on 11th March when we met to focus on the topic of “When I was a Child” – Letting Go.

We are vulnerable when young, when inexperienced, and in many other circumstances when we are reliant on the guidance and words from others, rather than on what we have found for ourselves.

We each have a ragged journey towards maturity.  We progress slower in some aspects than in others, and it is common for us to go to our graves immature in some way or other, with friends posthumously describing us as having had an incurable blind spot (or two) that were part of our unique charm.

For the most part we aim to become adult across the broad sweep of human activity, and to keep growing up throughout our life, but we forget that some ideas or rules that we take for granted are those we inherited as a child.  Unexamined, these can cause problems instead.

It is particularly important that we mature in our spiritual life, which is to say in those values and beliefs that, though hidden, drive our deepest and most instinctive behaviour. 

Instructions meant to help us in our early years need to be let go when we have moved on from the help they can give.  The choice and challenge are our own.  We have to take responsibility for our own becoming, our own knowing, our own doing, and our own relating to the world.

If we don’t let leftover, irrelevant knowings diffuse away, or transform into something more appropriate, we are the authors of our own continued knottedness.  It’s not always easy to do, especially since – inevitably – those instructions were given to us when young by people whose authority we trusted, often within the family or placeholders for family.

The readings we heard were by the apostle Paul (1 Corinthians 13), William Shakespeare (Romeo & Juliet, Act 2 Scene 2) and Dennis Lee/Jim Henson/Terry Jones (Sarah’s closing speech from the film Labyrinth).  We also enjoyed learning some new chants, some trickier than others.

Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered,

I have fought my way here

To the castle beyond the Goblin City,

To take back the child that you have stolen,

For my will is as strong as yours,

And my kingdom is as great.

You have no power over me.

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

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

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

 “Overarching power of bestowing, healing, uniting:

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

in your many-ness which yet vibrates as one,

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

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

           while operating as one.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

·         What is the pattern of your life?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Unitarian challenge involves both candles and debate!

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.

May 2017 meeting for reverence - how to DO religion #unitarians

For much of the 20th century, the watchwords of Unitarians were “Freedom, Reason, Tolerance.”  We opened our meeting on 14 May with a striking revamp of these words – which now become “Liberation, Inspiration, Compassion”, thus avoiding some of the sub-texts that the words ‘freedom’ and ‘tolerance’ now come freighted with; and ‘inspiration’ now integrating intuition and spirit with the logic of reason. (Our thanks to Jo James of Mill Hill Chapel, Leeds).

It is sometimes said of Unitarians that we are a church without creed.  But that’s not so – we are a church that does not state a SOLE creed.  Instead, we challenge ourselves to uncover our own underpinning belief system, a model that we ourselves are unable to deny, a personal idea of what is the most important in life.  We each are to believe what we CAN believe, rather than what someone else asserts we ought to believe.  So in Ringwood, after our chalice lighting, we privately spend a minute or two remembering our personal creed, whereas in another church we might be asked to recite out loud a set of words that may or may not hold meaning for us.

We then had the following prayer, written by Tony McNeile:

 After this, our meeting for reverence included all our usual ingredients of ritual, silence and singing.  But as always, there was a linking theme.

We spent the meeting looking at different ways of doing religion.  We listened to a song about John Ball, who was an English Lollard priest who took a prominent part in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.  John Ball’s concept was that God had set us all to be equal in Christian love – no room in religion for the for power hierarchies of church and noblemen , and that

“All shall be ruled

By fellowship I say,

All shall be ruled

By the love of one another,

All shall be ruled

By fellowship I say,

In the light that is coming 

In the morning.”

Our first reading came from the Sikh tradition.  In contrast to John Ball’s prescription, this reading suggested that “God has created the creations in countless ways and of countless kinds, colours, and sorts,” and it prescribed continuous meditation on the Name of God as the way to salvation.  “The Name of God resides within all hearts, but the true saints actually see Him residing within them.  All kinds of gifts will be bestowed by God, if we continuously repeat with affection the Name of God.  God, who pervades everywhere and owns all powers, must be ever remembered.  This will give complete protection and salvation,” (a translation of part of the Sukhmani Sahib).

Paul McCartney helped us out next, with a song he wrote after he had had long discussions with George Harrison, whom I believe to have been a devotee of Krishna, in the Hindu tradition.  Paul’s song is called One of These Days, and it is a sort of hymn to mindfulness.

And then we took a reading from our own tradition, from recent essays by our own Rev Bill Darlison, from The Penultimate Truth and Other Incitements.  Bill argued against “seek[ing] to hear the voice of God either in the words of some guru, in the teachings of a church or in the scriptures.  Some people will follow all three.  All three are, in my opinion, problematic and, increasingly anachronistic. ....  Where, then, can we hope to hear the voice of God in all its freshness in this contemporary world? – In that very source which is itself the source of all bibles, religions, gurus and deities – the human soul, the creative human mind, the genius of the human spirit.....

Dogma divides us, stories unite us.  When people ask, ‘You Unitarians, what is your ideology?  What is your theology?’ I would like us to say: “We don’t have an ideology.  We don’t have a theology.  We tell our stories to one another.”

In our meetings, instead of a sermon we invite the president of the meeting to speak in a personal capacity.  Our president for the day spoke of the trap in religion to do with DOING religion.  She said that we forget that what suits “me” and teaches “me” is not appropriate to people in other life situations or with different experience.  Scripturally-based as he was, and looking for Christian salvation of society, John Ball conveniently forgot that even having a king, under God and above the people, was a hierarchy not mentioned in the Bible (the Peasants’ Revolt was not about getting rid of the king; it was about releasing the king from the power of the establishment and returning to the level playing field of the Garden of Eden).  So being ruled by fellowship alone was never going to be a successful prescription.

We were reminded that in human history, every time a mystic teacher gives some gift to the world, their students try to systematise the teaching and turn it into a practice that will allow the rest of us to have the same experience as the original mystic.  But it doesn’t work that way.

The Sikh advice to keep repeating the thought “God” was offered as a help for focus and humility.  But much of the day we are in conversation with other people or animals.  And when in conversation, repeating the word “God” interiorly can make one rather inattentive to the other person.  Yet the other person also lives steeped in divinity, so our president suggested that not attending to the other person for the sake of saying “God” is rather missing the point.

The contemporary view we were given from Bill’s writings is a humanist view.  His idea is that the sharing of stories is just as holy as focusing on a rule, no matter who the rule-maker was, nor how insightful they were.  Bill says the holy is between PEOPLE, too.  Apparently, Rowan Williams says the same thing albeit slightly differently: he says we cannot have a satisfactory relationship with the divine unless AND UNTIL we have a satisfactory relationship with Tom, Dick and Harriet.

Summing up, the president called to mind a model from the Jewish tradition: we humans are holy by being linked together by our neighbourly relations, like people standing shoulder to shoulder in a ring; noting that a ring, a circle, necessarily has a centre.

Nothing is SEEN at the centre of a ring of people – we can only see the people in the circle; those next to us, those opposite us, those across from us.  But the circle only exists because there IS a centre; something we are all facing, whether we see it or not.  And we each have our own tie, our own relationship, linking us to the unseen, silent, empty centre.

So finally it was suggested that that ‘remembering we are a ring of people, linked together, tied to an unseen centre’, is a contemporary model of how we might best DO religion.

How do we befriend death: reflecting on assisted dying #unitarians

This was the Didymus Day lecture for 2016, on Saturday 2 July, and the address was given by Revd Canon Dr James Woodward, Principal of Sarum College, Salisbury.  We are grateful to the Montgomery Trust for making this lecture possible. www.montgomerytrust.org.uk

James spoke first about the composition of the parliamentary Commission on Assisted Dying; what was commissioned (the question to be answered), who was on the panel, how the Commission worked, and what it did.  He displayed the report that came out, which was a volume of many pages.  James then set out the argument against assisted dying, followed by the arguments in favour of assisted dying.  After that he was frank about his own views based on his experiences, and why it was that he had felt it necessary to dissent from the findings of the Commission, a matter which unfortunately overshadowed the media announcement of the completion of the Commission.

The arguments fall into these categories, and there are unresolved questions in each of them:

Arguments against assisted dying:
1.    The sanctity of life.
2.    Medical ethics.
3.    Protecting vulnerable groups.
4.    The slippery slope (or paradigm shift).

Arguments in favour of assisted dying:
1.    Personal autonomy.
2.    Compassion.
3.    Medical ethics.

The discussion was frank, varied and respectful.  A difficult topic, and many different views and questions were aired.  The issues and questions James left us with, to take away and think about, were these:

There is a need for us to work together to put our spiritual outlook on life to work in regard to this important matter.  In this we need to find space to talk about death.

• What is an ideal death?
• Can any of us ever have a pain-free existence?
• Are we worried about becoming a burden on others?
• What are most people afraid of when they die?
• What does "quality of life" mean?
• Does medicine strive to keep us alive for too long?
• What choices do we have?
• What are our fears of assisted dying?
• When suffering becomes unbearable do we have a duty to release the sufferer rather than prolong it?
• Can we befriend death and help others to do so?

We were also pointed to the websites
www.wellbeingindying.org.uk

www.commissiononassisteddying.co.uk