Perspective from an anxious 2020

[We take a break from our running series of contemplations on the Apostles' Creed, which will be taken up again in due course.  This post is by a different member of our group.]

Not at the end, but in the middle:

The Universe will collapse into another big bang;

    but beforehand

Galaxies will collide;

    but beforehand

The Sun will overheat and expand, swallowing and burning up all its planets and planetary matter;

    but beforehand

The Moon’s orbit will continue to enlarge, causing it to depart the Earth, causing great changes on Earth;

    but beforehand

Tectonic plate activity will have swallowed up Earth's current land mass and will have formed new geological shapes in its crust;

    but beforehand

The supercaldera at Yellowstone Park will have exploded and thrown a dust mantle around the Earth, blocking out all sunlight;

    but beforehand

Life on Earth shall long ago have forgotten humankind and carry on in ways almost alien;

    but beforehand

Several ice ages will have come and gone;

    but beforehand

The human species will have come to an end, probably having made itself and its ecosystem of other life forms extinct;

    but beforehand

My family, and everyone I know, will die after a course lengthened by human knowledge of medicine and food production, having lived lives more or less exploitative of the Earth; our lives profligate, cruel and unthinking, or not so much

None of this can be fixed:  so what’s to worry about?

This worry is partly about whether I am doing it “right”

But there is no greater adult or adult substitute looking over my shoulder to see and judge what I am doing

So it’s tempting to think that I have to be my own judge and jury; except that there’s conscience

And where does conscience come from?

The operational rules of biophysics that confer evolutionary advantage are embodied in human conscience

But where do the operational rules of biophysics come from?

When the universe collapses into another big bang, expansion, subsequent collapse, and continuing process, the operational rules that govern that, where do they come from?

Well:

All there is      is the ground of being.

And everything.  In those terms.  Is all.  Alright.

In the conscience

Is there a Unitarian faith, and if there is, is it a religion in its own right, or does it just borrow from other faiths?”

What hard questions to answer.  The starting answer is that there is no single faith for all Unitarians, so it would be meaningless to ask, “What is THE Unitarian faith?”   But it would be meaningful to ask, “What is the faith of Unitarians?” despite the fact that there will be many answers.

So here you will find just one Unitarian’s answer to: “Is there a Unitarian faith, and if there is, is it a religion in its own right, or does it just borrow from other faiths?”

~~~~

Many Unitarians would agree that a person is a unique meeting point within the universe.  A meeting point in time and space of the universal laws, the randomness of chance, the biologically inherited characteristics, the cultural upbringing, the body and its skills, the senses and emotions, the memory and  intellect, and the conscience.

Most of all, the conscience.

For each meeting point that we call a person, there is what might be described as a “calling”.  I guess it would be common for Unitarians to accept that each different person has a different calling.

As a result of that, Unitarians long ago rejected the idea that there should be one statement of belief, called a creed, for everyone who is in search of a fulfilled inner life to sign up to, either freely or under coercion.  In more recent centuries Unitarians have also rejected the idea that any single philosophy or religion framework is supreme over all others.  Many Unitarians investigate the frameworks of faith of a number of world religions, and find much of value in them, that speaks to their current position.

Unitarians do not declare any of the traditional faith systems to trump any other.  We do not accept the assertion from any adherents of the traditional world faiths that it has to be “all, or nothing”; we do not agree that a successful spiritual search depends on adoption of a single religion, to the exclusion of others.  We agree with many, however, that the search has to be disciplined and on-going over a whole lifetime if it is to yield fruit.

Many Unitarians would assert that the prime point where Essential Truths operate, the place within which the “bigger than daily life” Pure Life is lived, experienced and acted upon, is the conscience of each person.  We assert that, whilst it is possible to get glimpses of God or the Ultimate through relentless and dedicated application of a range of faith practices (and also secular practices), the Redeeming Truth – which everyone seeks as a remedy for restlessness – transcends ALL religions.

So let us say that for a while I soak myself in the learned wisdom of traditional Christianity, and I gain much.  And then, while I am struggling to understand how to apply Christianity in my life, say I am impacted upon by the Tibetan form of Buddhism: then, I may suffer the breaking of my mental models, my expectations, my sense of direction.   I may experience confusion as the icons I was becoming used to, my windows on the divine, are called into question, or wrenched from me.  A modern therapist might call this a “cognitive dissonance”.

Would that mean that my Christianity had somehow been “wrong”?  That the set of ideas new to me, Tibetan Buddhism, should be rejected as “wrong”?  Or that Buddhism is “right” or “better” and I should reject my attempt at Christianity?  Have I been “doing it wrong”?

The answer is “none of the above”.  A genuine Unitarian calling might, in fact, provide the strength and motivation to struggle through this cognitive dissonance and come out the other side, stronger.  A Unitarian view might be that there is no competition between well developed faith systems.  Unitarians might say that for many people, the well-developed faith systems are perfect callings, and those people would do well to adhere to them.  For instance, it is conceivable that a Unitarian would advise a wavering Muslim to go back to Islam and study Islam further; or suggest to a lapsed Catholic that they go and have a chat with their priest and see if they can uncover what has caused them to drift away from their faith and faith community – with a view to returning to it.  Whereas, for themselves, Unitarians may have a different calling altogether.

The thing about the Unitarian calling is that it also tends to be universalist in outlook.  By which I mean that, at heart, Unitarians may feel it to be true that what applies to ONE human being applies in some way at some level to ALL human beings, without exception – just like gravity, or the tides, the rise of the sun, or the fact that we all breathe oxygen.  So we are curious about what different faiths say that can be applied everywhere, to everyone.

People who – it turns out – are genuinely called to be Unitarians may study a wide range of world faiths and may notice that in some places there are not necessarily direct “translations” from (say) traditional Christianity into Buddhism; or Hinduism into Judaism; or Classical Greek Stoicism into Sikhism or Islam.  There are GAPS between the frameworks.  Something is missing from the universalist point of view.   Yet a Unitarian outlook would assert that Universal Laws and Unassailable Truth must nonetheless exist in those gaps.  For the Ultimate to be the Ultimate it must apply NOT ONLY in all frameworks and knowledge systems, in all pictures and metaphors we are able to imagine, BUT ALSO in the gaps between and beyond all these human-made constructs.  For the Ultimate to be the Ultimate, it must actually be Ultimate; it must transcend all human experience of religion.

The place where we meet the Ultimate is in our conscience.  And that is where the Ultimate meets us, too.   The Ultimate, aka “The Way Life (And Everything Beyond It) Is Turning Out”, experiences for Itself new combinations in each person that It brings into existence.  We see that it is in the conscience of each person that the exact and unique experience is felt, which we were brought into being expressly to manifest.  So if one day I am led along a wisdom path derived from one faith and the next day out of the blue I am fed a new wisdom: well, that is because the exact juxtaposition of these two wisdoms is what I was required to experience at this point in the universe, with who I am, right now.  Neither faith system is wrong (or less true), and neither is right (or more true).  Neither is supreme and neither is final.  What is right, and wanted, is the nexus of the two at that point in me as I am at that moment, all things considered.

This sort of view can be pooh-poohed by more traditional religions, as a half-hearted “pick and mix” approach to faith.  But I’m telling you, it’s not a barrel of laughs to be caught by these cognitive dissonances – they rock your whole being and it can take a long period of trust and re-learning to recover from them.  But if you have experienced one, and found it thrilling, and haunting – if you have followed me in this – perhaps your calling is to be Unitarian. 

Happy and creative holidays 2014

In these summer months, some are in a position to be able to take a break from their usual routine and even go to a different place, for rest, refreshment and recuperation.  We call these breaks “holidays” and this could be spelt “whole-days” for they are a valuable tool in making us whole again.

The gift of becoming whole again after a period of being worn out, of splintering, alienation, tension, stress, and even injury has traditionally been seen as coming from the gods, and there is something in us as humans that feels grateful and even wants to say “thank you” for it.  Even for people to whom the words “god” or “gods” seem meaningless there often remains this sense of gratefulness, though it may be difficult to know to where it could be directed.  Let us just note that this floating gratefulness, which we all sense from time to time, is part of the mystery of being human, and that the word “mystery” originally meant “those things that it is impossible to speak of”.

For those people who can in some way associate a meaning with the word “god” it comes as no surprise to feel “mystery”.  For many people, the word “god” is merely a reverential synonym for the word “mystery”, and they use it to refer to the ultimate mystery, the whatever it is that is the absolute fabric or rule that arches over all the gaps in our knowledge, experience and sensation of living in the universe.

As we muse on the opportunity to take a break, and what it might mean to be grateful for that, let us also remember those who cannot get away from their usual routine.  Especially those for whom the usual routine means violence, oppression, incarceration, violation, lack of shelter, instability, disease, starvation, thirst.

May we in our gratefulness remain open to the humane task of helping where we can, for no other reasons firstly that we are able to do so and secondly that doing so seems very often to be creative and in fulfilment of who we as humans are.

Unitarian theology

There is nothing definitive, nothing formal, nothing official that can describe or encapsulate the mental models that Unitarians use to describe our world.  But there have been some good efforts at trying.

One of our favourite bloggers, whose blog you can link to at the bottom of this website, is Stephen Lingwood, and his latest version of what ties Unitarians together whilst setting us apart from non-religious types, is his blog entry of 17 July 2014, extracted below - cheekily, without his permission.

"Unitarianism is a theological tradition with commitments. This list could be improved, or put in different ways, but we really are committed to the following theological points:

1. There is a spiritual dimension to reality - though this should be understood as an existential claim rather than a metaphysical one. In other words there is a deeper, fuller, better, more mysterious, more alive way to live - and this is what the religions have been wrestling with for thousands of years.

2. Revelation is not sealed: the fullest truth about the nature of our lives and the universe has not once and for ever been revealed and codified at any point in the past. Instead we are part of our continuous process of seeking ever deeper, bigger and more complex understandings of this truth. We are part of a historical process of discovery.

3. The spiritual reality is imminently and fully present in the here and now. We do not look to the past for evidence of revelation or to the future for a time of fulfilment and completion. Neither should our attention be on the afterlife or some other place. Religion drives us deeper and deeper into this reality, not an escape from it.

4. Related to this is the affirmation that fundamentally reality, the universe, life is good. There is pain and tragedy, but ultimately "it was good" - it is good.

5. The human being (the human "soul" if you like) is a source and locus of spiritual reality. We are intimately involved in this: "the Highest dwells within us.... As there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens, so there is no bar or wall in the soul where we, the effect, cease, and God, the cause, begins." Emerson.

6. We are One - we are deeply intertwined with one another in an "interdependent web of all existence" or an "inescapable network of mutuality" (ML King). This may be point 5 above just described in a different way. The fundamental truth of our existence is that we are not separate but deeply connected with all that is.

7. Human beings have sacred inherent worth and value. For this sacredness not to be trampled human beings must be free. Therefore relations between people should be based on free consent and not coercion.

8. Related to this is the realisation that the human race is one. We have more in common than divides us. There is not one particular people who are superior. There is a foundational equality for all people.

9. We live in an non-optimal world where the oneness and equality of all is frustrated by various systems and forces. It is a moral obligation to seek to put this right and commit to justice. Or, to put it another way, love and spirituality cannot be separated. "You cannot love God without loving your sister." Religion must lead us to a greater compassion, and any religion that does not increase our capacity for compassion is a false religion.

10. Community is necessary. We cannot live out these truths in isolation, but must enter into the discipline of community-making to live out this calling in the world.

11. We are ultimately hopeful about this universe. Not immediately, "not without dust and heat" but eventually there is a reason for hope. "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well." "