Pentecost and church-building : Three necessary elements for a sustainable Unitarian congregation June 2022

(Postscript dated 9 Jun 2022:  This crosses over very neatly with a blogpost from last year by Francis Elliot Wright, which challenges us to think about what being "a successful Church" means.  You can find it here

https://unitarianchristianark.blogspot.com/2021/09/why-are-we-here.html?fbclid=IwAR2BZnIKuUldg7WKup2NKfSv1MlfCrM7ZuqnnuWN0_qxqVYsd7QqarG5k1s  )

On 5th June 2022, after a super online UCA service about Pentecost by Rev Sheena Gabriel, there was also a rich conversation.

I was asked by others to record a contribution I made, which is my personal assessment regarding the arc that may be experienced by someone coming to Unitarianism, and its link with securing the ongoing life of a congregation.  So, with thanks to Sheena, Ruth and Rob who were in the conversation with me, here goes.

It seems to me that it will be a very rare thing indeed for someone who has not in some prior way experienced a life of wondering about faith, someone who has not already been infused with some style of self-awareness or moral living or both, someone who has not had at least a little exposure to formal faith practice through their upbringing, to try out any kind of spiritual or church movement from scratch.  I know the marketing industry works on the basis that you can make people want something they previously didn’t know existed, merely through clever advertising — that a demand can be constructed from scratch — but we know how much money is involved in the marketing industry.  So let’s set aside the idea of trying to reach people who never previously considered spiritual or religious exploration.

Thus, in my view, a person trying out the Unitarian setting is initially looking for a new setting for their past experience of faith and spirituality — they are looking for something for themself.  A safer space.  A more welcoming space.  Perhaps a place to heal or even mend.

And what the congregation must offer them at that stage is just that : a something for themself.   A place where they can, perhaps for the first time, be openly honest.  A place where they don’t have to define themself in terms of specific doctrines.  A place where they can try out different versions of themself at different times.  A place where they are heard and seen but on their own terms.  A place where they can ground themself again.  Rest.  Space.  Air.  Light.  Warmth.  Time.  As Rob put it yesterday, a place where they can find the holiness of their own person.

The arc progresses.  After the time of healing and grounding, some (if not many or even most) will then find they reach a stage where that motion begins to reverse — where instead of absolutely needing something for themself, they have sufficient resources to want to start to give back.  This is where — perhaps for the first time, or for the first time in a long time — the community as a body assumes importance for our ‘newcomer’.  The co-creation starts.  The holiness of community begins.  The exploration about humility, about service to the community itself and to the neighbours in which the community sits, assumes importance.  The personal needs are met, now what’s next ? — the needs of the group.  At this point the congregation must offer someone a way to be integrated into the life of the community — but again, as on first arrival, it must be on their own terms.  And the community must show that the contribution of the ‘new’ person immediately changes the group : the group is now different and may need to look afresh at how it operates, and respond positively to queries about its aims and activities.  “Ohh!  Now we need a new plan!” should be a happy commonplace, not a negative shock to the system.  To use very old language, if we are to see the spark of the divine, the Christ, in each person, then the opportunity is there to “become new in Christ” each time someone new integrates*.

Then the arc matures.  The ‘newcomer’ may no longer feel that instinctive, emotional giving back is enough.  In my experience, most will want to understand the motives of the group for being a group at all.  What is this congregation actually about?  This is the bit where in my experience congregations can fail, and failure can be most drastic.  The Unitarian movement is not about peak experiences, whether that be in art, music, literature, intellectual study, science, logic and rationalism, meditation, prayer, humility, one-ness, social service, justice making, or self sacrifice.  It’s not about diversity for diversity’s sake.  It’s not even about inclusivity for inclusivity’s sake.  All of these things are essential, are absolutely necessary, but are not sufficient. What are they all for?  Why are we doing this?  Why are we doing what we do?

For me, the only satisfactory answer I have found lies in the book by Stephen Lingwood: Seeking Paradise - A Unitarian Mission For Our Times.  After long and careful thought, Stephen argues (and I agree) that we are seeking to build paradise on earth.  The word ‘paradise' wraps up all those necessary things previously mentioned, and more, but in itself is much bigger; too big to be contained in our minds.  We are looking beyond ourselves, beyond our concepts, beyond our self-image, beyond our own terms of explaining ourselves, indeed, beyond what we are capable of imagining.  We are not worrying about achieving results or about realism.  We are seeking to build regardless of our chances of success.  We are not worried about whether we survive the attempt.  We are seeking to build paradise because that is the only clean motive that makes sense to us.  We are here because of the holiness of the beyond.

And because we are Unitarians, and not inheritors of tradition from the Indian sub-continent or the Arabian peninsula, not direct inheritors of land-based, spirit-filled cosmology (Africa, North America, Australia and other places) nor of political philosophies and wisdom (China); because we are Unitarians, our myths and narratives in common come out of Christianity and sit in the context of western law and culture infused with the demands of the Jewish Ten Commandments and the directive attributed to the teacher Jesus — to love God and our neighbour as we love ourselves.  Because we are Unitarians, the paradise stories and images we come back to again and again are related to the wisdom that we inherit in the Bible.  Spiced up, of course, by fusion with other thought streams : we are truly people of our global times.

To be able to show that line of thought, that anchoring, to someone asking why we do what we do; to be able to point at that, our history; in my view that is the third necessary element that a congregation must be able to provide, for a satisfactory arc of growth of both a person approaching a Unitarian group, and that Unitarian group itself.

~~~~

So, if you ask me, the three elements that a sustainable congregation needs to provide are a safe space for healing (holiness of the person); a living, growing community working together (the holiness of community); and the ‘paradise-building’ purpose beyond itself, anchored in history (the holiness of the beyond).

* 2 Corinthians 5:17 (NRS) So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!

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.

 

#Unitarian gathering in Ringwood considers the beauty of a complex, interrelated world and what Togetherness does for us

In our gathering on 13 May, we explored ‘Togetherness’ through the first chapter of Genesis and the prologue to the gospel of John.  A world where everything is in relation to something else; everything understood, and interacted with, as part of a larger whole.

 

We wondered at the beauty, elegance and mystery that we are living in such a world, and are not outside observers of such a world.

Then we considered how to look beyond our own relatedness by 'following the gaze' of others whose different 'relatedness' gives different perspectives on that world. Together we can see more.

We could, apparently, as humanity, all stand on the Isle of Wight.  So we thought it might be relevant to show here some different perspectives on the Isle of Wight...... 

August meeting for reverence

We started our meeting by holding silence, so that we could each do the equivalent of (silently) reciting our personal creed.  And we followed that with our usual ritual of passing fire, bread, water, and – a new tool for us in the form of a fan of ravens’ and pigeons’ feathers – air, around our circle of fellowship.  After partaking, these four signifiers are placed on the table between us.

The theme of meeting for reverence was “wholeness”, 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 had some prayers and meditations including a meditation by Richard S. Gilbert on our chalice of being, and we heard readings from Taoism (from the Tao Teh Ching) and Christianity (a story from the Desert Fathers and Mothers).  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 not to the running away from an imperfect world.

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.  We also heard a contemporary take on revivalist music – very uplifting after our candles of joys and concerns which turned out to be focused on the darker side of living.

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.