August 2024 gathering for reverence – The Great Unknowing – #Unitarians in Ringwood

The thing about faith of any type is that it is actually about not knowing.  Do you have faith in bus timetables?  Do you act as though the bus will come along at the time it says in the timetable, even though you will not be surprised if it doesn’t arrive as predicted?  

Faith is about acting ‘as if’, using some kind of mental model for how the world works, making some kind of decisions about how you can use what the world offers — even if that mental model, like the bus timetable, doesn’t completely represent what then takes place.

People who hold a religious faith are doing exactly the same.  They have in mind some sort of working model for how to get their lives together, some sort of feel for what the whole universe — what is in it, and what is beyond it — is grounded on.  And then they act in line with their model and make decisions about their actions, actions that show up in the real world.

But if any religious person claims to know, better than a non-religious person, what is actually going on, they are deceiving only themselves.

Designed by Freepik at freepik.com

And that’s what our gathering on 18th August was all about.

It was all about the great unknowing.  We don’t know, and we can’t know.  Nonetheless, we have to have some kind of picture that we work to.  Some kind of ‘as if’.

We started with a poem The People’s Anthem by Ebenezer Elliott, written in 1848, querying whether crime will endlessly support the powerful and whether the powerful will endlessly tread down the majority.  The poem cried out to God, in some form or other, to save the people from endless toil and bondage, asserting that people are all children of God.  In these troubled times it seemed particularly apt, even if we don’t know what type of God we are crying out to and what we mean when we say people are children of God.  But the poem was actually set to music and forms part of the musical Godspell — so it has become a memorable hum-along tune.  You can find it here on YouTube 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw1j8QvtZZc&list=RDg2RBaN3uWOY&index=8

Then we reminded ourselves that we were sitting in a sanctuary of peace, prompted by words by Rev Tony McNeile, closing with, “This is me.  This is who I am. Here I can open my arms and my soul to the divine and the sacred and be at one with them.”

You can find Tony and some of his words here  https://tonymcneile.wordpress.com/

John Denver helped us along our way next, with his song Looking for Space.  In this song he firstly identifies that looking within often provides a sense of clarity, and secondly he suggests  that in the final analysis, “If there’s an answer, it’s just that it’s just that way.”

You can listen here   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU-qwrK3i-c

Running alongside the service’s theme of unknowing, or not knowing, there was a repeated question that kept popping up.  Inspired by the American Zen Buddhist teacher Adyashanti,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adyashanti  we were asked this several times at key points:

Where are you going to operate from? What’s your intention? What do you really value? Do you value connectedness and deep truth, or do you value fear and survival?   Where you feel uncertain, where you don’t know the outcome, when acting from the deepest truth and love will cost you something, what are you going to do? What do you value the most? 

We had two readings.  One was the The Parable of the Sower, from the Bible, Book of Mark chapter 4 vv 1-9.  The second was a commentary by the same Adyashanti on a saying that is within the Gospel of Thomas. Adyashanti says, “In order to come into our full potential and to embody the truth and radiance of what we are, we must come vitally alive; we must lean once again into presence; we must pour ourselves forth into life, instead of trying to escape life and avoid its challenges.”

The atmospherics of the gathering were built up one more time by music, in the Gerry Rafferty  song The Right Moment, describing the temptation to put off change in one’s life, by spending life looking for a sign instead of just waking up to what’s real.  Hear it here  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ApL0lTQHE8

The heart of the service was an intense prayer contemplation inspired by John D. Caputo in his book Hoping Against Hope.  It started with the words, “How is it possible to pray without knowing if anyone is there to hear our prayer?  But how is it possible not to?”  It included the thought that we  would probably not be content to pray to any model of God that we can imagine.  And also the thought that if we knew to whom we are praying we would know everything and therefore not be in need of prayer.

It really did evoke the confusion of the state of unknowing, which most of us who hold faith find ourselves in, most of the time.  How can we pray?  But how can we not pray?

We then prayed for others who are in our hearts for now, in the faith that by focusing on them some remote action may yet take place, where they are, to improve their situation.  We don’t know if prayer works.  But we act as if it does.

A face to face gathering wouldn’t be the same without the chance to sing some hymns, so there were two.  One was a hymn of recognition (some traditions call such hymns 'hymns of praise') of the source of all being that is the centre of every physical dimension but also the closest presence there is at the heart of every human being.  The second was a hymn of thanksgiving for all who have brought our faith to where we are now, and whose work and actions before our own lives have provided what we need to survive today.

#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).

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.”

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.