I love watching dogs play. They know intuitively when they are playing. They seem to instantly get in tune with each other. There are these momentary pauses in their wrestling and chasing and then they move into each other again. They are beautifully synchronised and understand one another. They quickly adjust to the size of one another too. They seem to understand each others needs and capacity. They seem beautifully centred on one another. It is a beautiful sight to behold how being in tune with themselves, they are in tune with one another, at least in play. It makes me think that this is a kind of empathy. It also got me thinking that maybe dogs at play is an example of the “Golden Rule of Compassion”; dogs at play seem to be a living example of “do unto the other dog as they would have done to yourself.”
Last Sunday Janine led a child blessing service. It was wonderful to watch her in action. To see how she had created her own service, that fulfilled the needs of the family. I enjoyed how she constructed the service. Afterwards we went for coffee and a chat. We chuckled to ourselves about the elements that she had combined together to create the service. Yes it was her own, but it was influenced by others, including myself. At café nero we were joined by three people who had been at the morning services. One a regular Nick, who had helped with the music during Janine’s service, and the other two had been a couple of times before. They were already there and invited us to join them. Obviously, they wanted to talk about the Unitarian tradition. It was a fascinating conversation as we talked about so many different things. The subject of Universalism came up again. There was a lot of talk about the origins of the Unitarian tradition and our approach to religion. There were many attempts to label things, something I never like as it always seems reductionistic. There were questions about symbols. I talked, but mainly listened. I walked away with a broad grin on my face, went home, got changed and then headed off to the park with Molly. As I watched her play I thought what a beautiful metaphor she is for a free approach to religion and spirituality.
On Monday I was talking with a friend who is studying for a counselling degree. She had been reading Carl Rogers and his view on person centred counselling and the need for deep empathy. It was a lovely conversation and great to hear her so enthused by what she is learning. I love enthusiasm in anything and anyone. She asked me if I had thought about exploring “self actualisation” as a theme. I said I hadn’t, at least not directly. She then started asking questions about counselling, empathy and ministry, suggesting that the work of Carl Rogers seemed to correlate with Unitarian ministry. I think some of his ideas do point towards a person centred spirituality, which to me is the essence of the Unitarian approach to what religion is about. I then thanked her for being one of my Muses for the week, as she had just set my thinking in a direction for this service. How do you like it so far? She liked this.
On his journey towards developing person-centered therapy, Carl Rogers renounced traditional Christianity. Seeing it as imposing judgmental conditions of worth, by the way he viewed all religion this way. Rogers grew up in an extremely conservative Christian family. He had a particular problem with the foundational belief in the doctrine of “Original Sin”, a view I certainly share. The idea that at birth there is something fundamental wrong in humanity, in our nature. This is anti-ethical to Rogers concept of “Unconditional positive regard”
“Unconditional positive regard” is the attitude of complete acceptance and love, whether for yourself or for someone else. When you have unconditional positive regard for someone, nothing they can do could give you a reason to stop seeing them as inherently human and inherently lovable. It does not mean that you accept each and every action taken by the person, but that you accept who they are at a level much deeper than surface behaviour.
I see parallels here with “The Golden Rule of Compassion”, which can be found at the heart of every one of the great faith traditions. It is “Love your neighbour as yourself”, in one form or another. To me this suggest that if we see ourselves and one another as fallen in nature then we cannot love each other and if we can love each other then how can we love God. This seems to be in direct contradiction to the essence of the teachings of Jesus and thus Christianity and every other of the great faith traditions. This is one of the reason why I have never understood “Original Sin” as being in line with Jesus’ teaching. I do not accept that life and humanity is born fallen. I was thinking of this as Janine conducted the “Child blessing” service last Sunday, as she named the child, blessed her life and asked her family and friends to support her in her life. She blessed this beautiful blessing. I reject the concept of original sin, that said I do not deny that we all sin. In the sense that each and every single one of us fall short of our ideal of what we can be. That said despite falling short we should never lose sight that at the core of our being we are inherently lovable. We are formed from love and we are capable of love. Rogers believed that the purpose of psychology is to bring this inherent worth to life, I believe that it is the purpose of communities like ours to bring that alive too and to recognise it in others. In so doing we can begin to bring that love alive through our human being and in so doing we will truly love God with all our hearts, minds and souls.
As you can imagine this all got me thinking and relating to ministry, particularly in our tradition. In many ways the Unitarian approach is very much person centred spirituality. As a minister my role is to meet people where they are and encourage them to seek their own answer to life’s questions, particularly the spiritual nature of life. Surely this is person centred. I was thinking of this as I watched Molly playing with another dog, how in tune with each other they were and how by doing so both were gaining so much, as I watched the dance. Then it came to me what we are about is person centred spirituality, in community. My role is not to tell others what to think and believe, but encourage all of us to seek truth and meaning together and somehow in that dance, something remarkable happens. This does require unconditional positive regard for ourselves and others. We do need to believe that we and others are a blessing, or we will not trust one another, in the way that dogs do as they play.
Coming together with a sense of positive regard for ourselves and others is not a private affair, it is communal spirituality, something that appears to be increasingly lacking in this day and age. Many people report a need for spiritual sustenance but are put off by what is described as organised religion, of any kind, which they see it as detrimental to their own spirituality. I remember a friend once posting the following Meme: “Spiritual people inspire me; whereas religious people scare me.” This is because religion is seen as inhibiting and life constraining, which of course it can be.
Of course, Unitarians claim that we are a free and enquiry religion; that we are free to explore and develop our own personal spirituality in community with others. We, as individual members, of free religious communities, do not think and believe in the same way about many things, but we are bound together in mutual love. We are one faith, but we may not believe in exactly the same way, as that conversation in the coffee shop proved. That said there is love and respect and of course “Unconditional positive regard”. Well at least this is what we aim for. No one achieves this perfectly as none of us are perfectly self-actualised human beings, certainly not me. Maybe one day.
A person centred approach to spirituality and religion, with positive self regard for ourselves and others, recognising each others worth and dignity requires an openness to all that is, life, the universe, everything. It reveals truth and meaning in everything and everywhere and it reveals the divine in all aspects of life. It does not reject. It leads to a reverence for the miracle that is life itself and for one another.
This for me is the purpose of true religion, but it’s no easy task. Forrest Church said that in order to achieve it “We must embrace each day as the miracle it is and fashion our very lives into instruments of praise. This is religious work and it requires religious discipline. We perform that work together weekly in our Sunday liturgy. Once a week we pause and pinch ourselves. We can't take this life for granted. We must receive it as a precious gift, a pearl of great price.”
We need to recognise the oneness, the unity of everything. We are all part of a vast and yet mysterious living system. By recognising this we begin to participate consciously in this vast oneness. The mystics of every faith tradition have proclaimed this divine unity. It is called Nirvana in Buddhism, or the Brahman-Atman synthesis in Hinduism, when Jesus declares “I and the father are one” he is talking of divine oneness. We are all part of the one undivided whole. This is how we love God and our neighbour and ourselves. It is positive regard for everything and that that is at the core of everything.
Howard Thurman described this near perfectly in “Creative Encounter” when he said "It is my belief that in the Presence of God there is neither male nor female, white nor black, Gentile nor Jew, Protestant nor Catholic, Hindu, Buddhist, nor Muslim, but a human spirit stripped to the literal substance of itself before God."
This oneness, this sense of communion can be experienced by everyone, no one is excluded, it transcends all human created differences. What name we give it matters little, whether it be Universal Mind, Great Spirit, God, The Divine. Whether we name it or not we can certainly know it, I am sure we have all felt that oneness at one time or another.
I know from personal experience and from really listening to others that there is a deep human need to be at one with ourselves, reconciled with our neighbours and at home with the universe. It seems to me that our feelings of friendship and empathy are but a faint reminder of this essential oneness. We can all feel that oneness and it is through this oneness that we can truly know ourselves, our true natures. Can we achieve this alone? Does privatised spirituality allow this? How can we be at with all of life, if we cannot engage with one another spiritually?
To be truly religious is to let the sense of the eternal make a difference in our lives. It’s really all about being good neighbours. It’s about how we live with each other. As Thomas Jefferson said “It is in our lives not our words that our religion must be read”. You can be spiritual on your own, of course any one can, but we can only be truly religious requires us to come together. Coming together does not mean you lose who you are though. In many ways you may learn more about who you are, in interacting with others.
Last Tuesday morning , before I began writing this sermon I took Molly to the park once again. It was pouring with rain. There were only one or two other dogs out and about. Molly didn’t have anyone much to play with. She looked around, chased a few birds and squirrels. She was ok, but not like she had been in previous days. For she had to play alone. She was at ease though. She doesn’t suffer what so many humans suffer from, she doesn’t experience self-loathing, she has a healthy self-regard and as such goes out into the world with a sense of joy. That said Molly has known nothing but love in her life. No one has told her or treated like there was something wrong with her, in her nature. She sees most people in this light. If she has met you once she will greet you as an old friend, she likes to say hello to everyone. She has certainly enhanced my life and taught me so much about how to recognise my own worth and dignity and that of my brothers and sisters and attempt to build a community based on person centred spirituality.
To me this is how life should be and certainly what religion should be. It should be person centred, with love at its heart. With positive regard for ourselves, each other, life and God at the heart of it. Then we will truly live by the Golden Rule of Love and we will begin to bring to life the kin-dom of Love right here right now.
Please find below a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"
