The flame of ritual is re-lit for #Unitarians in Ringwood at Easter 2023

Like an empty cross

Stands the lone cold wick.

Like a cold bare tomb

The fire’s grate.

The flame recalled, in hope no doubt,

Rising from the ashes of the light snuffed out.

(Words for lighting the candle in the chalice)

Last Sunday, Easter Sunday, we included physical ritual in our gathering for the first time since the COVID19 pandemic, and it’s a sign that we in Ringwood are at last throwing off the mental shackles associated with the pandemic, and getting back to how we were before it all started.

In a reflective and meditative service, we built on our overall approach to the Gospel — and, in particular, the book attributed to Mark — as ‘shared story’ for personal reflection.  In this service, the ‘shared story’ vehicle for the reflection and meditation was not a Bible reading, but instead a version of the 'Stations of the Cross' meditation, used for hundreds of years in various Christian traditions. 

There were only a few words offered as content, those being the words used at lighting the candle in the chalice, and the words used as the response for the prayer at each station.

Leader: "With compassion we gaze on thy story.

Response: "Because in it we see something of the world."

Rather than being a wordy service, there was much time for personal quiet.  Participants were invited to picture the moment at each station, and let our reflection go where it will.  Recorded chants from the Taizé-style of worship were also played during the ritual.  Traditionally, inside a church building the Stations of the Cross would be carried out by walking to a series of physical locations in the church.  But with all our participants seated in a circle, our president for the day decided to mark each of the fourteen stations by passing a candle round the full circle, hand to hand.

"I have come to feel that [rituals] have another purpose — to end, for a time, our sense of human alienation from nature and from each other…….Rituals have the power to reset the terms of our universe until we find ourselves suddenly and truly at home."

Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon

"Any ritual is an opportunity for transformation.  To do ritual, you must be willing to be transformed in some way.  That inner willingness is what makes the ritual come alive and have power.  If you aren’t willing to be changed by the ritual, don’t do it."

Starhawk, Truth or Dare

To this last quote, we would add: if you aren't willing to be changed by the ritual, you are not, in fact, doing the ritual (no matter that it looks like you are).

Stations of the Cross (source: Wikipedia, adapted)

The Stations of the Cross or the Way of the Cross, also known as the Way of Sorrows or the Via Crucis, refers to a series of images depicting Jesus on the day of his crucifixion, and accompanying prayers. 

The Stations of the Cross ritual has existed in one form or another for at least five hundred years.  The earliest use of the word "stations", as applied to the accustomed halting-places along the Via Sacra at Jerusalem, occurs in the narrative of an English pilgrim, William Wey, who visited the Holy Land in the mid-15th century and described pilgrims following the footsteps of Jesus to Golgotha. It has become one of the most popular devotions and the stations can be found in many Western Christian churches, including those in the Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, and Methodist traditions.

Out of the fourteen traditional Stations of the Cross, only eight have a clear scriptural foundation.  To provide a version of this devotion more closely aligned with the biblical accounts, Pope John Paul II introduced a new form of devotion, called the Scriptural Way of the Cross, on Good Friday 1991. 

Why #Unitarians meeting in Ringwood include ritual in our gatherings

“I have come to feel that [rituals] have another purpose — to end, for a time, our sense of human alienation from nature and from each other…….Rituals have the power to reset the terms of our universe until we find ourselves suddenly and truly at home.”

Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon

“Any ritual is an opportunity for transformation.  To do ritual, you must be willing to be transformed in some way.  That inner willingness is what makes the ritual come alive and have power.  If you aren’t willing to be changed by the ritual, don’t do it.”

Starhawk, Truth or Dare

To that last quote, we would add: if you aren't willing to be changed by the ritual, you are not, in fact, doing the ritual (no matter if it looks as though you are).

Ringwood #Unitarians use a motto discarded by the United States of America - what we did at our February gathering for reverence

Our theme on 11th February 2018 used the first motto taken by the United States of America – e pluribus unum, meaning “out of the many, one.”

We lit the chalice with the words of the ICUU Global Chalice Lighting for February 2018 and then spent time in silence, each remembering their personal creed.  Despite what you may sometimes hear said of the Unitarian church, it is not a creedless church.  Rather, it is a church where every person is invited, and indeed challenged, to find their own creed, the creed demanded of them by their own experience, study, and insight regarding the divine.  Many people, many creeds.  Yet, one church.

We prayed some prayers written by people known to us, including a former Unitarian Minister from Edmund Kell Unitarian Church in Southampton, and then we sang a couple of hymns and carried out our usual ritual of building our circle.  We do this by passing between us a flame, bread, water and a musical device representing air, then placing them in the centre of our circle next to our chalice.  It’s a simple ritual and no spoken interpretation is given.  In silence we each seek and find our own purpose and meaning in it.  The conversations we have later about our ritual are often surprising!

We had three readings today, rather than two.  The first by John Andrew Storey included the words, “We cannot all think the same way.  No words can be found which adequately express the true depth and range of what each one of us believes.”

The second, by Rowan Williams, reminded us that whereas we may imagine we can deal with our spiritual life as if it were a separate compartment, in fact it is bound up completely with our relations with the people around us.

And the third reading, from Christopher Jamison, included these words: “Community is sacramental – that is to say, the material realities of community are the means by which hidden grace is given to the members.  There are qualities that we experience through faithfully persevering in community life.  That is what a community is for: to foster the experience of these qualities through its very structures.”

After a rousing but profound song from The Fisherman’s Friends – The Union of Different Kinds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JMuEE_Zd7Q&ab_channel=SueHendriks

we spent some quiet time pondering some questions about our community and our place within it.

How should persons behave in a community?

What do our responses to otherness tell us about ourselves?

What is different about us, as a result of our coming here and sitting with others?

Would another person recognise a difference in us because we come?

What does it mean to be a community of diverse persons?

What does it demand of us, when we commit to meeting and engaging with people whose views and paths we already know are different from our own?

What does it mean to make a safe space for each other?

Is a community more than the sum of its parts?

What is the relationship between the community and the members who comprise it?

How are the needs of the community and the persons within it balanced?

When we sit together, do we look at each other or do we look at something that lies beyond us all?  Or both?  How do we do that?

Is there a centre of gravity, a pulling force at the heart of our group, which energises and refreshes us?

 After a period of silent meditation we carried out our muster, our annual roll call, in which those who wished were able to declare themselves as members of the group for the coming year, our fifth year together.

We finished with some more prayers, including a Buddhist litany invoking wellness in ourselves, in the person next to us, and in all humanity.

Nov 2017 - how Truth is like love #unitarians

Our gathering was, of course, on Remembrance Sunday.  We opened lighting our chalice candle to the words of Dulce et Decorum est by Wilfred Owen, followed by a moment of silence.   Later, while we lit our candles of concern and intent, we would recall those individuals in our own lives who had served during such difficult times.

Our silent ritual of sharing led into our theme of the day.  The president for the day had chosen the theme “The Journey of Truth”.  We heard a reading from John Henry Newman's Grammar of Assent, a seminal work on the philosophy of faith, and William Shakespeare's Sonnet 116.  The president drew out reflective thoughts from all present on how Truth is like Love.   And the summing up was that we can grow closer together or grow further apart. But staying still is not an option.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar_of_Assent

SONNET 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 

http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/116.html

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.

January 2017 meeting for reverence speaks about grace #unitarians

Once again we remembered absent friends going through a difficult set of circumstances. 

The service theme was “Making space for grace.”

The president for the day had chosen poetry for the set pieces for the meeting.  Having come across a poet by the name of Leopard at the Spirit Festival last summer, the president's first reading was a poem from Leopard’s publication Leaves for the Trees.

The second reading was a longer poem called Sometimes a Wild God by Tom Hirons.

We carried out our usual silent sharing of four elements, passing them round the circle of those present so that each person had touched and held each element, and connected with the others by doing so.  After that the elements were placed on the table at our centre, next to our Unitarian chalice.
 

The elements today were bread, water, incense and flame (a candle).  The water had been brought deliberately from Glastonbury.

We always include this ritual and it is always slow and silent, which allows each person present to interpret, revere and sanctify the ritual in a private way, aligned with their own current faith and beliefs.

Hard won personal struggles over the years have convinced us that a sure way to divide people from each other is to try to insist that particular rituals and sensations must hold a particular  meaning (with the tacit and sinister sub-text of “or else you don’t belong”).   We have found that, without words, together we can carry out an activity that holds a different meaning for each of us, and those meanings can change over time.  What holds us together is the unified carrying out of the ritual.  Just like going to a wedding or a funeral: everyone at those ceremonies takes away with them something different, but they all know that they were there, at the same event.

So although you may see references to Unitarians as “creedless faith groups”, this is inaccurate.  We each have our own creed.  But emphatically, we do not wish or expect that the person next to us in our worship holds to the same faith or belief as we do.  It is enough that they show up and join in, however that makes sense to them.

This is because we consider life to be more than humdrum.  We have glimpsed different perspectives, perhaps in rare and expanded moments; perspectives that lead us to hunt for the spiritual refreshment we know exists, if only we can find the way to it.  The refreshment that brings calm unearned; or an unexpected detachment, like pearls on silk, during the bruising torrents of uncontrollable life; or which – paradoxically – demands not a “giving up” and asking for help, but a “giving up of self” meaning the need for help diffuses into the abyss, the dance.  The abyss, the dance, the voice that can be heard by everyone, says Gandhi: “Every one who wills can hear the Voice.  It is within every one.  But like everything else, it requires pre­vious and definite preparation.”

Our heritage is the Christian tradition and so we use the Christian label for this spiritual refreshment, that is to say: “grace”.  And so as part of our meeting for reverence we reflected on making opportunities in our lives for grace to break in undeserved and unearned; and also on our unhelpful tendency to behave so as to keep grace out.

October meeting on letting go of worry, with a rousing chorus from Port Isaac’s Fisherman’s Friends #unitarians

We had a lovely meeting on Sunday 9 October, with the theme “Don’t worry!  Be happy!”  Using our Unitarian freedom, the order of our service was changed, with our usual sharing ritual near the end instead of the beginning, as a means of cementing what had gone before.

As usual, at the start, we had a space in which participants were invited to silently centre themselves and go through in their own minds why they had chosen to be there.  For myself, I usually use that space to recite my personal creed or to remind myself of the insights or intuitions I had most recently received through my personal lectio divina activity.

We then had an opening prayer (or reading) from Kalidasa, an ancient Hindu writer, reminding us to look to this day so that all our yesterdays become a dream of happiness and all our tomorrows comprise a vision of hope.

After a hymn including the words of Sydney Henry Knight: “We do not seek a shallow faith, A God to set us free from trial and error, harm and death....But strength that we may cope...[and] trust the Life invincible within”, we lit our candles of concerns and joys.  This was a cherished time, during which we spoke in the safe space we had managed to establish.

We then had our scripture readings.  We heard words attributed to Jesus from the lost gospel known as “Q”, in which he challenged his followers to stop worrying, as worrying cannot add a single moment to their lives.

We next heard the Buddha’s teaching on causation and circumstances.

We sang another hymn reminding us not to grieve though life be full of sadness, and then we heard the president’s reasons for choosing the two readings from Jesus and the Buddha.

“Jesus deals in emotive pictures, touching the heartstrings.  The Buddha provides a cool, detached, theoretical and intellectual explanation.  Putting these two readings in different language, the first reading says that God has already dealt with what we dread, with the actions we have taken in our lives and the dreaded consequences (though Jesus doesn’t say how).  The second reading says that what has happened, and what will happen, are all included in the natural order of things.  Sometimes the emotional answer is what we need to hear, and sometimes the logical theory gives us more.”

To get down to the nitty-gritty, we then heard a few examples of hints and tips about “not worrying, and being happy.”  One particularly striking one had been derived from Aldous Huxley: we all crave separateness and then as soon as we have grown into separateness we crave peace.  But we can’t have both peace and separateness, so if we want peace more than we want separateness we have to learn to undo our separateness again.

After our seven minute period of silent meditation we heard the prayer poem by George Herbert, “Come my way” and we finished off with a rousing song from Port Isaac’s Fisherman’s Friends “Come all you no hopers, you jokers and rogues.” Hear and watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYA_0R7Vw1s

Come, all you no hopers,
you jokers and rogues
we're on the road to nowhere,
let's find out where it goes
It might be a ladder to the stars, who knows
Come, all you no hopers,
you jokers and rogues.

Leave all your furrows in the fields where they lie
Your factories and offices;
kiss them all goodbye
Have a little faith in the dream maker in the sky
There's glory in believing him
and it's all in the beholder's eye.

Turn off your engines and slow down your wheels
Suddenly your master plan loses its appeal
Everybody knows that this reality's not real
So raise a glass to all things past and celebrate how good it feels.

Awash on the sea of our own vanity
We should rejoice in our individuality
Though it's gale force, let's steer a course for sanity

March 2016 meeting for reverence

On Sunday our meeting for reverence was led by a visitor – the Unitarian District Minister for London and the South East of England, Rev Martin Whitell.  Martin had already conducted two Unitarian weddings at the Ringwood Meeting House but this was the first time he had come to lead our regular meeting for reverence.

He took as his theme “The Sounds of Silence.”

Our gathering followed our usual format, starting with a simple ritual.  Our silent ritual can be interpreted in a variety of ways, since we each place meaning on it privately.  For instance, one interpretation might be that it honours the four fundamental elements fire, earth, water, air.  Another interpretation might see the same ritual as reminding us of “light of spirit or soul connecting us”, “bread of life given for us”, “water of life moving through us”, “breath of life inspiring us”.  But there are as many different meanings as there are people taking part, because as Unitarians we do not impose doctrine (religious theory or explanations) on anyone.

Included in the meeting were a mixture of readings, silence and music, both for listening to and for joining in with.  There was “Songs without Words” (Op 38 no 6) by Felix Mendelssohn.  There was also a piece performed by the Dunblane Cathedral handbell ringers.  Two hymns from the most recent Unitarian hymnbook were sung and then Martin reflected on the role of quietness in our finding our way in life.  The Simon and Garfunkel song “Sounds of Silence” gave more food for thought.  The texts of the hymns and readings explored the religious experience of realising in quiet times things that are not easy to put into words but that underpin life choices and changes.

Also as usual, we lit candles as we shared our current joys and concerns.  This part of the meeting sometimes has many words out loud, and sometimes almost none at all.  Yet it is always one of the most moving parts of our time together.

These are some of the words that were used during our meeting:

We listen too much to the telephone and we listen too little to nature.  The wind is one of my sounds.  A lonely sound, perhaps, but soothing….

As a matter of fact, one of the greatest sounds of them all — and to me it is a sound — is utter, complete silence. 

André Kostelanetz (1901–1980) Russian conductor

And the people bowed and prayed

To the neon god they made

And the sign flashed out its warning

In the words that it was forming

And the sign said “The words of the prophets

Are written on subway walls

And tenement halls

And whispered in the sounds of silence.”

© 1964 Words by Paul Simon

True silence is the rest of the mind;

it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body – nourishment and refreshment. 

William Penn (1644–1718)

  

You can hear the footsteps of God

when silence reigns in the mind. 

Sri Sathya Sai Baba (1926–2011)

Indian guru and philanthropist

Let us be silent,

that we may hear the whispers of the gods.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) Transcendentalist

June meeting

Whereas in May our worship service had looked at “compassion”, and how that must translate into practical, outward action in the world, on 14 June our service focused on an interior aspect of a life of faith.

One of the defining features of Unitarian thought is its focus on the “one‑ness” of the divine.  This was one of the ideas that caused a schism between ministers of religion in the 18th century.  There were those who – in the best tradition of Protestantism – read the Bible for themselves, deeply and carefully, yet could not find any authentic reference from the earliest time to the Holy Trinity of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.  They saw all the teachings of ancient Judaism and the more recent teachings of Jesus as consistently pointing to a holy One.

In our service we started with a reading from Hinduism, which also points to the holy One.  Hinduism struggles with the different ways in which God is felt by people, and this results in Hindu people choosing – from among many faces or names for God – the aspect of God that resonates best for them.  But God is still seen as whole and one.  Hinduism contrasts with the faiths of classical Christianity, Judaism, Islam and even the Baha’is, in all of which God is seen as quite separate from creation.  But Hinduism is in tune with Paganism and the more liberal branches of Christianity – in these the one‑ness of God is seen as extending right into the created universe and into we ourselves as humans.  The word for this is panentheism  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panentheism .

We then silently shared a flame (light), bread, water, smoke (air), each placing our own private construction on the simple ritual.

Next we heard a reading from a Unitarian scholar and minister, Dr David Doel, who has written about what he sees as the nature of salvation.  He sees salvation (true peace) not as the reward for holding certain beliefs but as the fruit of an experience – the experiential recognition and acceptance of the love that lies at the heart of the universe and at the core of what it means to be human.

But this took us to the heart of our service.  The word “love” drives us to use the words “of”, “from”, “to”, “towards” or “between”; or else the name of what is loved.  The idea of love requires there to be two identities, with love as a draw or pull or flow between them.  So now we have ideas that apparently contradict.  The “one‑ness” of Unitarian panentheism and the “two‑ness” that the Unitarian experience of love points at.

We did not attempt to solve this problem.  But it was suggested that perhaps to make it possible to live with this contradiction would be to use the word “relatedness”.  Religion – a life of the spirit searching towards the divine that lies undiscoverable beyond existence – is perhaps about relatedness and mutual invitation.  And perhaps, at heart, this is what the idea of the Holy Trinity, with God playing as both parent and child and the flow between the two, was also trying to get at.

After hearing all this, we then used our customary seven‑minute silence as a time for our own private practice.  After candles of joy and concern we finished the service and made ourselves cups of tea.

During our service we had sung hymns about the different ways to view God (Hymns for Living no. 35) and how the church is a place of trust and searching (Hymns for Living no. 174).  We enjoyed the hymns tremendously; so much so, that after the service was over we carried on singing some more, using our hymn books and the recordings of the Unitarian Music Society.