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.

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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.

An evening prayer for #Ukraine posted by one of the Ringwood Unitarians

"My soul is sorrowful, even unto death, stay awake and keep watch with me." (The Bible, book of Mark, chapter 14 verse 34).

This is the call we answer tonight. 

There are people fearful and we would be with them.

There are people grieving and we would be there.

There are people who must make choices we are currently spared; and while we dare not counsel, we would they know they are not alone tonight. 

In the darkness and the quiet we will be with them,

We will seek strength for and with them,

We will seek comfort for and with them,

And we will hope that each of us may rise, to answer the call we alone can discern in our hearts.

Amen

Rescuers working among the rubble of private houses in Zhytomy

(Ukraine Emergency Ministry press service/AFP)

Wholeness is not the same as fullness - emptiness is also needed for becoming - Ringwood Unitarians gathering in August 2021

Still not ready to meet face to face in the prevailing pandemic conditions, in August 2021 we gathered once again on Zoom.  We started our meeting by holding silence, so that we could each do the equivalent of (silently) reciting our personal creed.

The theme of meeting for reverence was ‘wholeness’ in contrast with human brokenness, and it pivoted around some words by the American author Oriah Mountain Dreamer: “When we surrender, when we do not fight with life when she calls upon us, we are lifted, and the strength to do what needs to be done finds us, because we have remembered that we can choose to serve the only cause that matters: life herself.”

We heard readings from Taoism (from the Tao Teh Ching, contrasting emptiness and busy-ness), and Christianity (a story from the Desert Fathers and Mothers on becoming whole enough to see to the heart of things).  We heard that the Buddha’s original message seems to have been cast in positive form – as common sense would expect, his teaching was a call to the ‘more’ of life, not to the ending of it, and certainly not a call to run away from an imperfect world.

We had some prayers and meditations including a meditation by Richard S. Gilbert on a comment by Dåg Hammarskjold regarding our chalice of being (how each day we receive, we carry, we give back).  The reflection had also included an insight on the importance of space and silence if we are to be truly whole, rather than just ‘full’ or occupied.  One participant said, “It made me think of the constellations in the sky.  We think of them as pictures drawn in the stars and yet there is more darkness than light to them.  It is on the space between the stars that we see the shapes form.”

In the self-contained way that has to be used during online gatherings, we sang two hymns from our green hymn books, which focused on the Life that makes all things new and the ‘human becoming’ in oneness and sharing.  After our candles of joys and concerns which turned out to be focused on the darker side of living, it was good to watch a YouTube video in which many sorts of different animals greeted their human companions with what can only be described as hugs.

 

A #Unitarian prayer for Christmastide and the new year, recycled from 1944

From “A Service for Christmas Day” in Orders of Worship - for use in Unitarian and Free Christian congregations

The Lindsey Press, 1944

(language updated)

O You who have mercifully led us through the busy year, enriching our lives with countless gifts; give us at this Christmastide the grace which was in Jesus the anointed, of Nazareth.

Let the spirit of the little child, as it knocks today at the human heart, enter our life and bless it.  Let duty become touched with delight, and justice be forgotten in love.  May every selfish thought be driven from our minds.  Let our ears hear the cry of the needy, and our hearts be stirred to sympathy for the lonely and neglected.  

Give our hands strength, not to do great things, but rather to do small things graciously.  Heal the wounds of misunderstanding, jealousy, or regret, and let the gentler breath of the Christmas spirit touch our lives, as the cold of winter is touched by the milder air of spring.  As the old year ends and the new year begins, grant us peace with the world and peace in our own hearts, that those we love and those we can help may have sweet joy and rest.  Amen.

Ringwood acknowledges difficulties in the glitter of Christmas - Blue Christmas service led by #Unitarians

The idea of the Blue Christmas service is to acknowledge the darkness, and let it be dark.  We do not pretend that we can suddenly, magically, make it light. So we just let it be dark.  And see if we can sit with that, for a while.

We started by acknowledging some of the reasons for Christmas not necessarily being a fun and jolly time.  It might bring painful memories.  It might force us into situations we wouldn’t have chosen for ourselves.  Events elsewhere in our lives, to do with health, work, or relationships, might mean we are struggling.  And it’s always worse if everyone around us seems to be having a wonderfully time.

So there was a space for people to recognise what is troubling them, and to begin to let it go, before we moved onto the Christmas story.

We heard the traditional story again, but stripped of all its glitz, and re-humanised.  We started with a stripped down version of John, Chapter 1, in a translation not from traditional Church authorities, but by an independent translator, Andy Gaus, in The Unvarnished Gospels.  The story continued via two poems: Bethlehem, by Frances Thompson, and The Journey of the Magi by T.S. Eliot.  The first tells the story of the birth of Jesus from the point of view of the innkeeper’s wife.  The second tells the story of the travels of the Wise Men, in a retrospective by one of them, many years later.

We considered what Christmas might signify to people for whom Jesus is not the traditional Messiah or Saviour worshipped by other Churches.  We heard it suggested, through some words by Rowan Williams, that "perhaps it’s not guidance about how to greet everything with spiritual joy and excitement that we need.  Perhaps it’s more like guidance on how to preserve our motivation when the going gets tough and all we feel like doing is lying down and sleeping."

There were thoughts on hope, and renewal, and the divine as appearing in the innocence of every child.  In particular, in the words of Rev Cliff Reed:

“I believe that we must seek the heart of Christmas - 

its joyous love, its star-lit mystery, its peaceful

pleasures.  Find these and we find its power.

I believe this power can redeem us - open the

heart’s doors to divine innocence.”

Echoing Frances Thompson, we remembered that, whether we are feeling strong and at peace at the moment or not, it is within our power to give a blessing, in our own fashion.  And so there were prayers, including Psalm 30, and prayer poems, that made space for us to do that, as we sat together.

The readings, poems and prayers were interspersed with Christmas music not heard quite so often, and certainly not in the supermarkets: Vigilate by Byrd; God With Us Proclamation by John Tavener; Coventry Carol (a traditional carol about the slaughter of the innocents); and we also sang a very Unitarian hymn: It Came Upon the Midnight Clear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Came_Upon_the_Midnight_Clear.  And not a Christmas song, but a song of hope: we finished with a Paul McCartney track, One of These Days.

Harvest of the land and of our lives - #Unitarian gathering in Ringwood Oct 2019

We gathered on Sunday 13th October 2019 in the Meeting House while the rain fell and the wind blew outside to reflect on The Harvest, of the land and of our lives. The sounds outside and the chill in the air brought something poignant to our first reading's meditation on a ploughed, storm-washed field, after the harvest had been gathered.

"The ridge and round and raise before the Winter rain left bare,

The slow sodden flow of life through all the furrows of the ploughman’s fare...

...

From this fallow field, this field so fair, we do partake the bread of life."

 

"May their turning be the beauty

of my life’s accomplishment." (by Ceisiwr Serith)

We took account of how, even in the midst of gratitude and celebration for the fruits of labour, there is a preparing for the next cycle of growth and change.  The colourful leaves hanging onto the branches outside, or gusting into the corners, set the scene for the Pagan prayer we took as our second reading. With this, we thought of how our life choices colour our time of fading, and we also turned our minds to the awareness that we too shall come to know the gentle retreat of life in our own golden years.

Our candles of gratitude and our prayers for others were very much informed this week by these meditations. It was good to be together and look upon the fading light of the year with a shared openness to deeper truth.

Traditional Blessing from Carmina Gaedelica

May the blessing of light be on you - light without and light within.
May the blessed sunlight shine on you like a great peat fire,
so that stranger and friend may come and warm himself at it.
And may light shine out of the two eyes of you,
like a candle set in the window of a house,
bidding the wanderer come in out of the storm.
And may the blessing of the rain be on you,
may it beat upon your Spirit and wash it fair and clean,
and leave there a shining pool where the blue of Heaven shines,
and sometimes a star.
And may the blessing of the earth be on you,
soft under your feet as you pass along the roads,
soft under you as you lie out on it, tired at the end of day;
and may it rest easy over you when, at last, you lie out under it.
May it rest so lightly over you that your soul may be out from under it quickly; up and off and on its way to God.
And now may the Lord bless you, and bless you kindly. Amen.

Just what IS the Good News, which the Bible speaks of? - #Unitarian view based on Isaiah and Mark

At our gathering last Sunday we were led by the president for the day to consider change to be the source of our hope for the future.  This report is one response to what was presented.

After gathering words by Rev Dr Linda Hart, and prayer based on words from John D Caputo, we had two readings, a musical interlude, a time of silent meditation and a simple ritual for those who wanted it.  And we sang two hymns.

But for me, this time, it was the readings that made it a gathering to remember.

First, there was a short reading from the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, Book of Isaiah chapter 52 verses 7 to 15, starting with: ‘How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion: “Your God reigns!”’

And the second reading came from the New Testament of the Christian Bible, Book of Mark chapter 1 verses 1 to 15, ending with: ‘Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God.  “The time has come,” he said.  “The kingdom of God has come near.  Repent and believe the good news!”’

Now I was immediately engaged with this combination of readings. I have long been told that “gospel” means “good news”, but for me all sorts of churches have been very woolly about exactly what the good news is.  For the most part, churches seem to say that the arrival of Jesus himself was the good news.  But when reading the New Testament I feel short-changed on that.  Whilst Jesus speaks several times of the Good News, he did not ever say anything like that.  Verses in the New Testament are more along the lines of ‘Jesus and his disciples went around preaching the good news’, without actually saying what that good news is.  The closest I have ever got to understanding it is in the Book of Luke, chapter 10, in which Jesus gives instructions to his followers to go out and spread the message.  He says (verse 9) that they are to say to people that “the Kingdom of God has come near to you.”  And in a reinforcing teaching in Luke chapter 17 verses 20 and 21, Jesus says:

`20 Some Pharisees asked Jesus when the Kingdom of God would come. His answer was, “The Kingdom of God does not come in such a way as to be seen. 21 No one will say, ‘Look, here it is!' or, ‘There it is!'; because the Kingdom of God is within you.”’ 

What happened on Sunday was that at last someone was giving me a clear idea about what the good news actually is.  It felt to me that the idea being put to us was that the good news is about God, not about Jesus.  That Isaiah was saying that the good news is that God is in charge and will comfort ruined people and redeem the brokenness.  And that, moving forward in time, when Jesus was talking about spreading the good news, he was repeating the news of Isaiah - that God is in charge and will mend brokenness - but over and above what Isaiah said, what Jesus said was that actually there’s no special time nor place for that, because that action of God is available all the time, inside each person.

What our leader for the day has helpfully provided me, for this report, is this:

"Essentially: we are living in a world where bad things happen, unjust things, terrible things.  For all the good and the beauty that we see, there is a constant threat of it all coming to a sudden and sticky end. And that is all we have ever known.

Yet right there with that, there is a voice saying that this isn't the way it is meant to be. Right there with all the misery, there is that relentless call to make things better, to change ourselves and the world we live in.  Sometimes it is gentle and sometimes it roars in the thunder.

The Good News we are called to believe in, right here, right now, is that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, things can be better, we can be better; and that no matter how often we fall, how often we fail, we can get back up.

That call, to a place where the voice that demands better is heard and made real, is the Kingdom brought near.  

And experiencing change in ourselves, and believing in that Good News, is ‘that which we call God’ happening in us, and to us, and through us."

I’m really grateful for the connections of thought that we heard on Sunday.  Wisdom teachers through the ages have taught us that there is always a way back from knots and disorder, to order and peace.  And that the changes we may experience in ourselves as we travel that way back may often look and feel like behaviours of compassion, humility, renunciation and attentiveness; attentiveness to the needs of those around us as well as to our own.  But surely these come later: the first step is to act on what Jesus and others have said: to trust the Good News that “change is possible and that things can be made better.”

Abiding messages from a period of lectio divina focused on life, death and neighbours

I have just completed over two years reading the words written by Rowan Williams in Silence and Honey Cakes, using the ancient discipline known as lectio divina – ‘Divine Reading’.

What is lectio divina?

What we read is divine – we encounter a passage of scripture to see in it God’s word for us – and

How we read is divine – we read prayerfully, moved by Spirit – we let the text come to us, un-queried, unedited – seeking  to be addressed by what we read, and to respond to that interrogation.

There are four movements to lectio divina:

• We  read – slowly and unedited
• We meditate – we enter deeply into the meaning of the text
• We pray – we respond to God in the light of this meaning
• We contemplate – we simply rest in the presence of God without further words

Looking back over this long exercise, these rather random and not very coherent snippets (slightly adapted in places) will be the abiding messages for me:

“…. a person who is wholly self-consistent, whose identity is completely bound up with the calling to live in God…..”

“…..because of our baptism into life, we are bound to the patient, long-term discovery of what grace, life, will do with us…..”

“Do not take short cuts around the processes of real personal exchange.”

“Intimacy with God is both the fruit and the course of living together.”

“The goal is reconciliation with God by way of truth and mercy.”

“At the moment when we reveal a sibling’s fault, God reveals our own.”

“Withdraw from everything that helps imprison the neighbour.”

“The problem of myself will not just go away or solve itself or get solved by a new environment.”

“….. the temptation to think that going somewhere else will make things easier….”

“Becoming vulnerable before God is the heart of transformation, which we are by no means sure we want, if that is what it costs.”

“Without silence we shan’t get any closer to knowing who we are before God.”