The #Unitarian Offer

(These words were recently delivered at a Unitarian service, by Daniel Costley, Unitarian Minister to congregations in Kent, and published on his blog BENGE, a link to which is at the bottom of our own blog.)

"Robbie Walsh caught my eye with the phrase:  ‘if you can prove it, then it’s not God; it’s something less than God’

This is a position I’ve taken personally for many years.  I too get frustrated that others wish to tell me what I can or can’t feel, what my emotions and intuition tell me exist.  I too get annoyed when, even fellow Ministers, try to explain my personal experiences.

For me, that defeats the whole purpose of my spiritual exploration.  It attempts to negate that glorious freedom I have been given to explore my own response to the world – seen and unseen – and to reflect on how this shapes or troubles me.  What I might change and what I might accept.

For Robbie Walsh, the beauty of God, or, as he puts it, the beauty of connection to the great creating, sustaining, transforming mystery – which you may or may not choose to call God – it is the beauty of the personal connection that provides the proof of something, if proof is needed.

And more importantly, the experience neither confirms nor refutes the ideas and experiences of others.

It just is.

Like all explorers, there is a personal experience that fulfils – the experience of others is interesting, but it does not connect.  We need to find our own link, our own experience, our own fulfilment.

As Unitarians it is our intention to be a beacon of light in the community, to be a community ourselves, ready to embrace new members and fellow travellers on this journey through life. 

We are a community, ready to embrace new members and fellow travellers on this journey through life.

And it is true.  We are here to preserve, maintain, and continue the possibility of sanctuary, safe space, and freedom to explore, to anyone that recognises the importance of personal experience and commitment.  

And that is a big offer.  From a spiritual seeker’s perspective, the provision of space in this way is almost unique.  We have no creed, no expectation of belief, no central spiritual doctrine around which we congregate.  We gather around a flame of freedom, not words of certainty.

Really?  Yes. Really.  And that is the advantage."

March 2015 meeting

Our March meeting for reverence and worship took the theme TRANSFORMING OURSELVES IN FAITH THAT BY DOING SO THE WORLD IS CHANGED TOO

We lit the chalice today with the words:

At any moment I could choose to be a better person.

But which moment should I choose?

We had our usual ritual of sharing bread, water, light, and fire.  Our only formal prayer for the day came from the Nadder Valley Inclusive Worship Service http://www.lulu.com/shop/lucy-harris/the-nadder-valley-inclusive-worship-service/ebook/product-17386813.html

Unseen Power and Pattern,

We live this life through You.

By Your laws and Your grace we meet in You here today

With our hearts, our minds, our bodies.

May this holy inspiration keep us in awareness of You in all times and all places.

We then carried out an exercise in which we set down on paper, privately, a list of people who had angered or irritated us recently.  At various stages in the service we came back to this list and reviewed it in the light of the readings we had been listening to.

Our scriptural reading today was not actually from sacred texts but was an accessible form of Buddhist instruction on evoking compassion, including words by the Dalai Lama.  This came from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, by Sogyal Rinpoche  http://www.bookdepository.com/Tibetan-Book-Living-Dying-Sogyal-Rinpoche/9781846041051  .  Our secular reading was from a book by Dan Millman, The Laws of Spirit  http://www.bookdepository.com/Laws-Spirit-Dan-Millman/9780915811939 and it focused on choosing the perspective we wish to take - and how that affects how we see ourselves as either separate or as part of a unified, one consciousness.

Both the readings we heard were about changing the way we look at people; about transforming the way we look at people.  This is primarily to help ourselves to be happier; because if we change the way we look at people we are able to let go of many destructive attachments we have.  We begin to learn to let go of hate, revulsion, anger and violence, all of which destroy our own balance, clarity of vision, and well-being. 

 We also heard these sayings:

 By an unknown Tibetan Buddhist master :

“Give all profit and gain to others.

Take all loss and defeat on yourself.”

And by the Jewish teacher Jesus who, like all his people, was steeped in the Jewish tradition that there can be no justice without love, and no love without justice:

“Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.”

It was suggested that if we properly followed either this Buddhist or this Jewish teaching, we as persons would be radically transformed.

We lit candles of joys and concerns and had our habitual 7 minutes’ of silence for prayer or meditation, according to personal practice.

We closed with these words by the internationally renowned physicist, David Bohm:

 “A change of meaning is necessary to change this world politically, economically and socially.  But that change must begin with the individual; it must change for him or her .... If meaning is a key part of reality, then once society, the individual and relationships are seen to mean something different, then a fundamental change has taken place.”

In the service we also sang hymns 172 and 35 from the green hymn book, in which we welcomed all people and remembered that there are many paths to God.