Christmas gathering 15 December 2024 – an informal bring and share of matters to do with Christmas and hope

For our Christmas gathering this year we chose a less formal format.  After we had done the most important thing — switching on the heating of the Meeting House — we got our hot drinks to start with, instead of doing that at the end.

Then, settling down with our drinks and the chalice candle lit, Christmas music playing quietly in the background, in a circle we sat down to catch up and chat about what Christmas holds for us and our families.  As the session went on we gradually lit candles for issues on our minds and hearts.

We heard the pleasure in the voice of one of our number who is currently reading The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, of which it has been said that "It is a better world for having a book in it that chronicles so many tragedies in a tone that never deviates from hope.”  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Covenant_of_Water

After a while it seemed to be the time to play Do You Hear What I Hear?, sung by Bing Crosby.  Usually played at Christmas, Do You Hear What I Hear? was written in October 1962 by Gloria Shayne and Noël Regney during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States and the Soviet Union confronted each other over the placement of Soviet missiles in newly Communist Cuba. Do You Hear What I Hear? was written by Shayne and Regney as a plea for peace.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Shayne_Baker  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs9FPx3_Slk

Then we had an intriguing discussion about the theodical teasers — philosophical puzzles about the nature of God given the presence of evil— set out by Lance Morrow.  In 1976, Morrow became a regular writer of Time magazine's back page essay. He won the National Magazine Award for his Time essays in 1981, and was a finalist for that award in 1991 (for that essay on the subject of evil).  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lance_Morrow. The three proposals that Morrow examines together in that essay on evil were remembered today as being “That God is all goodness”, “That God is all powerful”, and “Terrible things happen to people (both good and bad)”.  If our blog reader manages to work out a world view that makes sense of these three propositions and can hold them all at once together, perhaps they could write in to us and explain — because like elders before us, we were not able to make them all work at once.

Next we had a request for the poem by Emily Dickinson Hope is the thing with feathers which we heard read out first, before hearing it also set to music by Christopher Tin   https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42889/hope-is-the-thing-with-feathers-314

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGrLL3T0ozE

Following this we began to home in on what Christmas is all about.  To challenge our thinking, we heard a reading by Unitarian Universalist Minister Richard M Woodman (1930-2020) https://www.uua.org/files/2021-06/memorial_book_slt_ga_2021.pdf  The key to Christmas as described by Woodman was new to us, yet seemed to resonate strongly with us.

We beg the pardon of anyone imposed upon, as we set out in full below the Woodman piece that we heard.  (For full apology and an edit of this blogpost for rectification purposes, please email lucyunbox.ringwood@btinternet.com) 

“It is that season of the year again. That eminently impossible yet joyously wonderful season of Christmas. “Christmas impossible?” you ask. The supreme truth and message of Christmas is indeed its seeming objective impossibility.

“We live in a world gone mad. Each hour compiles new proof of strife and tension; of crime and misery; of wars seemingly inevitable; of hunger and cold; of hate and fear. 

“The living reality of our days is not peace on earth, goodwill to all. It is, rather, strife around us and everywhere despair. Such is the world we know too well. Yet it is wise for us to remember that such also is the world our forebears knew before us. Into such a world Christmas comes — as it has come for 2000 years — and into such a world the same spirit, by different names, has come to those of other faiths.

“We who view the Christmas story from a naturalistic perspective easily read the impossible into the attendant notice of miraculous events: chorus of angels, virgin birth and the strange star.  Yet isn’t the miracle only embroidered with these tales?  The impossible event is that in times of deepest despair, visions and inspirations of hope, of peace, of love come to all.

“The real Christmas is the message and miracle that people still hope! 

It is that they still keep alive the poetry of love and peace and goodwill, even when life seems to dim all prospect of such a vision. 

“The impossibility of Christmas is that it comes. 

“Its coming is more than an event on the calendar. Its coming is a revitalisation of the spirit – where people still hope, still see the visions of peace, love, and fellowship. The impossible becomes plausible and life takes on a dimension richer than the obvious.   

“Come, Christmas! 

“Let us warm our spirits by its eternal light. Let us live again in the hope better than we know. Perhaps in living awhile by that faith, we can more fully be what we would be, and can erase the darkness that seems to be.”

We then heard that wonderful metaphor for the spiritual journey and the pain that accompanies the acquiring of a whole new outlook — the poem The Journey of the Magi by T. S. Eliot https://poetryarchive.org/poem/journey-magi/ was read beautifully.  It never fails to impress.

Our last music was sing-along to a Unitarian poem by Rev Edmund Sears set to the tune Noël by Arthur Sullivan, It Came Upon the Midnight Clear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Came_Upon_the_Midnight_Clear  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U_Dzovu1XA  So many traditional Christians sing this carol year after year without knowing it comes from a minister to a dissenting congregation.

Coming to the end of our happy time together, we closed with an energetic, pulpit-style reading of Christmas Credo by Rev Cliff Reed, which sets out several points of belief in free verse (for full version see  https://www.unitarian.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/2002_Spirit_Time_Place.pdf  and scroll down to the image of page 68). We remembered the generations of Unitarians who had sat in that selfsame Meeting House since 1727 at the Christmas time of year, whom we hope might have shared Cliff Reed's viewpoint:

“I believe that there is light in darkness.

I believe there is truth in myth.

I believe that there is divinity in every birth........

“I believe we must admit that Herod is real ....... and can be defeated, that Scrooge can be healed .... that this is the meaning of Christmas.”

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.

21 July 2024 – Unitarians in Ringwood connect in hope with Unitarians nationally

On 21 July we were delighted to welcome Mary Jones, Lay Leader in Training with Portsmouth Unitarians, and to have Mary lead our gathering.

Mary had been commissioned to go to the Annual Meetings of the General Assembly of Unitarians and Free Christians in Northampton in April, as the delegate for the Southern Unitarian Association.  And in leading our gathering on 21 July, Mary brought back the messages from the Annual Meetings, and specifically from the Anniversary Service, which is always the high point of the whole event.

The theme of our gathering was “The Ring of Hope”, and it included a story adapted from Jewish tradition regarding the strength of belief and how it can warp our vision; a poem from climate activist and author Claire Rousell, “Being Good Ancestors”; a blessing from Maori tradition; and a discussion in the round regarding what we can see of the future facing our grandchildren and their children.  We also had a number of hymns from our purple hymnbooks (thanks to the Portsmouth congregation for the loan of them), and a beautiful rendition of a song by Sir Elton John, taken from the film Moulin Rouge.

It was Mary’s optimistic view that when we see good change in our own lives, we can have hope for good change in other’s lives, and she took great pleasure in taking much inspiration from the Address given by Rev Ant Howe at the Anniversary service.  It was a rich homily and hard to précis, but if you are prepared to do a little work (and make a small donation, if you like?) you can download a magazine that includes a brilliant write up of Ant’s Address, at Issue 8081 of The Inquirer, here https://www.inquirer.org.uk/pages/samples  (cover shown in image below).

The take home point was : for those who crave a space to contend with life’s big problems, a way to connect with their spirituality, and a community with which to do that, they can still find that with us.  Within our Unitarian faith, there is a way of being religious and a community to share the journey with, that can be thing some souls are searching for — and we are not dead yet.  The task now is to wake up, strengthen what remains, and move forward, because people do need our faith.

And with that in mind it was lovely, afterwards, to recall that the next regional gathering of Unitarians and their friends will be on Saturday 7 September 2024, at the Unitarian Meeting House, High St, Newport (Isle of Wight).  Everyone is welcome (email lucyunbox.ringwood@btinternet.com for further information).

Advent and Christmas readings and music – #Unitarians gather again in Ringwood December 2023

As previously announced, the band of faithfuls making up the fellowship of Didymus in Ringwood gathered together for a combined Advent and Christmas service, on 10th December.

The darkness of the tradition of Advent is supposed to be a suitable preparation for the bright light and joy of Christmas, and our gathering attempted to include elements of both.

There was surprising range of recorded music.  There was Paul McCartney singing a song inspired by the Hare Krishna faith of George Harrison, “One of these Days”.  Bing Crosby sang a song by a Unitarian Universalist, Noël Regny, “Do you hear what I hear?”.  A Wiltshire church congregation allowed us to sing along with them the 1849 Unitarian hymn by Edmund Sears, “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear”.  The Unitarian Musical Society helped us out with a hymn from the purple UK Unitarian hymnbook, “Come, Sing a Song with Me”.  Lastly, Voces8 floated us away by singing a setting by Christopher Tin of a poem “Hope is the thing with feathers” by Emily Dickinson, who had a Unitarian upbringing.

We had a reading from Isaiah chapter 40 (vv 3-5, 21-24, & 28-31) with its traditional cry for Advent: 

A voice cries out:

‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,

    make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Every valley shall be lifted up,

    and every mountain and hill be made low;

the uneven ground shall become level,

    and the rough places a plain.’

Our second reading was "The Journey of the Magi" by T. S. Eliot.  

Our third reading was a personal view by Rev Arek Maleck, as published in "The Inquirer" (issue 8073 Dec 2023), regarding how Unitarians are able to celebrate Christmas even without the traditional views about Jesus.  Its main message was: “The motivations for embracing traditional lyrics, speaking of miracles, virgin birth, and God incarnate, vary.  Some may do it simply for the pleasure of familiarity.  But I'd like to think that many of us turn to them out of a realisation of the immense value of metaphor and paradox.  This appreciation allows us to immerse ourselves in the Christmas story fully — including submerging our heads in it.....Carl Gustav Jung taught that, oddly enough, the paradox is one of our most valuable spiritual possessions, while uniformity of meaning is a sign of weakness.  Hence a religion becomes inwardly impoverished when it loses or waters down its paradoxes; whereas their multiplication enriches, because only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the the fullness of life.”

The personal contribution of the president for the day was as follows.

“Not everyone finds this season a season of cheer and goodwill.  If you are finding it difficult preparing for Christmas this year, you are not the only one. This can be for all kinds of reasons.

May we know that we fill a particular hole in the fabric of the universe, and that we are known, better than we know ourselves.

A way of thinking about Christmas is as a time of hope.

If one is not a traditional Christian, or feeling no connection to Jesus at all, then hope for what?

Hope for change — things can’t go on as they are

Hope for company — for the security and warmth that being with others can bring

Hope for peace — for rest from troubles

Hope for clarity and order — that there is some sense to be made of this life

In short, hope for renewal.

The reason the story has stuck so well is that most people love the idea of a new baby.

Many can’t help smiling about such news — seeing a new baby as a sign of the possibility of a fresh start.  This chimes neatly with hope for renewal.

This season is not necessarily the season of gold and red and green.  There are many reasons why our mood might be coloured midnight blue. Yet the candles of Christmas remind us that goodness overcomes darkness, and that hope is stronger than despair. 

It is said that it is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.  But just as no one curses our darkness for us, no one can light a light for us. This is something we need to do for ourselves.  As Nick Bains says, self-pity can become an idol, making it all too easy to not hear the whispered language of newness, freedom and vocation.

This season of the potential for abundance is the time to be gentle with ourselves and each other.

If we allow it to, and by the breaking in of grace, what happens at Christmas allows us to believe that opposites can be reconciled.  That change will come.  That there is a peace that can be found, that there are people who will love us, that there can be a new beginning.

All this comes announced and reflected in the painful, messy, disregarded birth of a human babe, born in discomfort, but full of innocence and potential.  In the darkness, but surrounded by light.”