Are you a Ringwood Unitarian without knowing it?

There are Unitarians in Ringwood.  It's just that they don't yet call themselves Unitarians because they don't know the name "Unitarian".  Are you one of these?

The thing about being a Unitarian is that there is no rule about what a Unitarian is.  Some say it's about hope, some say it's about systems of belief, some say it's about how you live.  Some say it's about freedom, reason and tolerance.  Some say it's about how you do a radically 21st century way of faith.  The national support team for Unitarians says it could be described as "nurturing faith, embracing life, celebrating difference".  All would agree that being a Unitarian is about exploring fundamental and searching questions, and not about preaching answers.  Unitarians also agree that the ultimate authority for anyone has to be their living, challenging, perplexing conscience, no matter what any other person says.  Behind all of this is the traditional Unitarian insistence on the oneness of God or the God idea, from which we get our name.  We set great store by any wisdom framework that points towards that oneness, without worrying about where that wisdom comes from.

Unitarians insist on the central call to love and typically care about right relationships such as

• equal rights and the ending of oppression
• being in touch with the Earth and its growing creatures and living lightly on the planet
• being in touch with how we have got to where we are now and what that means for our shared future
• being in balance in our inner life
• being human together and supporting strong communities

and about doing more than thinking about right relationships - Unitarians typically care about getting down and working for it, working for that better world now.

June meeting

The Unitarian meeting in Ringwood on 8 June was centred on the theme "one world".  We heard readings from the Bible (Genesis Chp1) and from Wordsworth.  There were some lovely prayers seeking lessons from the Earth for our daily living.  We mused on the smallness of the Earth in space as we listened to music from "The Blue Planet" and we sang hymns that reflected the interconnectedness of humans and the Earth.  We welcomed a new participant and we marked the passing of one of our number who was with us as recently as our May meeting.  There was a calm still feeling to the service which had lots of silence and time for meditation.

The discipline in being a Unitarian

Oneness is ultimate for many Unitarians.  Oneness of everything, including of ourselves within the oneness of everything that there is.

Oneness means no discontinuities, no barriers, no compartments – through and through a clearness that remains, however it is looked at.  That is the meaning of the word “integrity”.  And these ideas are closely linked with the words “true to” and “authentic”.

There is no creed, no statement of belief, that must be adopted by all Unitarians.  But  we still demand statements of belief.  Unitarians typically think that though there is not one creed for all, each must have a creed.  Many Unitarians would say that although there is not one faith for all, for each person there is a prescription, written into the universe, that must be found and then lived.

The only, small, matter of variance between us and people of other faith communities is where we allow ourselves to look for our discoveries and revelations.  We look in a broader range of places than one set of writings, beyond one human realm of activity, indeed we look beyond a human-centric focus.  We allow our exploration to range across the whole of the oneness we are able to perceive.

This is not an easy "pick and mix" approach to faith.  It is not saying that one can believe or do what one likes.  It demands instead a rigorous use of reason and conscience.  And a personal discipline to stick to what has been revealed and discovered, no matter the cost.