Unitarians and friends in Ringwood consider personal faith and collective worship - the genie was out of the bottle from the Edict of Torda, 1568 #WeAreUnitarians

Page from the Munich Codex of the first Hungarian translation of the Bible

We gathered again for reverence under the Unitarian umbrella at the gathering on 13 January 2019.  At the start of our gathering we noted that Unitarians widely commemorate in January the Edict of Torda, Jan 1568. This was the first piece of legislation in a European kingdom (Transylvania and Eastern Hungary) to allow people the freedom to choose the pastor of their church, and allowing pastors the freedom to interpret the Christian Gospels according to their conscience.

As usual we started with a period of quiet in which to remember our own private creed followed by a simple ritual in silence, to which each participant attaches their own meaning and from which each derives their own insights.

We then heard readings from John Dominic Crossan and Tony McNeile, which respectively showed that Jesus’ own faith changed in the light of his experience; and that whilst we can worship collectively, we each have our own experience and hence our own understanding of faith.  These readings were largely centred on Jesus and the historical Christianity from which the Unitarian movement has evolved.  So to balance them we heard a poem by Walt Whitman with his humanist, transcendentalist stance, and from Islam we heard the philosophy of Ibn al-Arabi (via an interpretation by Karen Armstrong).  As Karen Armstrong understands this 16th century scholar to mean:  “…. human beings, who became logoi, [God’s exhaled] words that express God to Godself……each human being is a unique epiphany of the Hidden God, manifesting God in a particular and unrepeatable manner…….the revelation that God has made in each one of us is unique, different from the one from the God known by the innumerable men and women who are also his logoi.  We will only know our own ‘God’ since we cannot experience God objectively; it is impossible to know God in the same way as other people.”

We prayed a prayer from the 1932 Unitarian prayer book published by The Lindsey Press; and also the “Naming God” prayer we have published on our website; and we sang three songs from the “Hymns for Living” hymnbook.  We continued our practice of sitting in complete quiet for seven minutes, which we each use for our own purposes. 

After our candles for joys and concerns, we looked forward to our fifth birthday which comes around at our next gathering.  At that gathering we will open our "muster" conversation, for people to decide the relationship they want with the Didymus group during the coming year.

Five year old Christmas message from #Unitarian President still helpful today

In an archive of useful stuff, we found this today, dating from 2013 and written by our national President, Rev Bill Darlison:

What happened at the Blue Christmas #Unitarian service at Ringwood for those who have a heavy heart at Christmastide

The Blue Christmas service on 16 December was a departure for both Ringwood town and the Unitarians who meet in Ringwood.

Prior to the event the people we asked thought that holding a service for those for whom Christmas is a hard time was a very good idea.  And so it turned out.  People came to the service who had not been to one of the regular monthly services, and among them were people who - it turns out - are suffering under some considerable strain at present.

The service began with a quiet time in which, in general terms, we were reminded the sorts of reasons why Christmas can be a painful season.  And then the narrative of the Christmas story was unfolded, interspersed with musical interludes.

Each of the readings had been chosen to be an unconventional perspective on the stages of the nativity.  A poem Bethlehem by Frances Thompson gave the perspective of the innkeeper’s wife, focused on caring for the young mother in the face of a very male world.  T. S. Eliot’s speculative poem, from the view from one of the wise men (The Journey of the Magi) suggested that death as well as birth was intrinsic to Christmas.

Unitarians are not certain about Jesus in the way that other churches are, and so space was left for participants to consider their own view of Jesus.  But the message of hope for renewal, signified by the birth of this baby, and indeed every human baby, and the possibility that Christmas is about reconciliation of difficulties, were explored.

Having cleared our minds we were invited to some minutes of silence, in the trust that in the silence the messages we most needed to hear would be born in us.

In amongst the more unusual pieces of Christmas music that we heard, we did sing one traditional carol: It came upon the midnight clear whose lyrics were written by Edmund Sears in 1849, who was pastor to the Unitarian Church in Wayland, Massachusetts at the time.

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

We closed with an unusual piece of music for a Christmas service, which was a song by Paul McCartney, which includes the hopeful lines:  “One of these days, when my feet are on the ground, I’m gonna look around and see, See what’s right, see what’s there, And breathe fresh air ever after.  It’s there, it’s round, it’s to be found, by you, by me: It’s all we ever wanted to be.”