What do you give your heart to?

We live in an increasingly secular age. Less and less people attend places of worship. I am from this generation myself. For most of my life I had no interest in religion. I didn’t see the point. I only became interested due to several spiritual experiences that I wanted to make sense of. I have never found the answers just a life beyond imagining.

I am a religious person and I am also spiritual one too. It was not enough for me to experience my spirituality alone. I needed to find ways to express it and people to share it with. This is why I needed to community and this is why I eventually found a home with Unitarians, a community that does not demand that I conform to what it told me was the truth, more a space where I could live with my truth, my faith and doubt and to share that with others.

Thank you.

I recently conducted my first funeral with Sue. It was for the mother of a mutual friend. It was a deeply emotional occasion and I was moved observing family and friends coming together in mutual love and support. Like most families there was history and complication but I observed the members coming in devotional support for one another. The father of the grandchildren is Muslim and he and the whole of his family had come to offer respect to the loss in the family and of course to support the three children. This is something I see often in this work and it suggest to me how much we still need places where we can come together in love and share loving support. I believe that we humans need to offer devotion to one another and to life itself, whether we believe in God or not. We also need to worship. Well the truth is that we do in fact all worship, even if we are unaware of the fact that we are doing so. We all hold something of highest value in life, even if we are not fully aware of it.

For as it says In Matthews Gospel Chapter 6 v 21 “21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” What we treasure the most, what we offer our heart to is what we worship.

Ralph Waldo Emerson the great 19th century Transcendentalist had something interesting to say about worship. He wrote:

“A person will worship something, have no doubt that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behoves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.”

These words by Emerson have been vibrating in the core of my being, the marrow of my bones for quite some time now. Like I have said, a few years ago I would have dismissed them out of hand. I would have simply rejected them and said I don’t worship, how can I worship I don’t believe in anything. That said things did dominate my imaginations and my thoughts and they did determine my character, by falling into non-being and nothingness, by rejecting life I had become nihilistic and this did dominate my thoughts.

But is this worship?

Well let’s take a look at what we mean by worship.

Worship has its roots in Anglo-Saxon English “worthscipe” or similar variations and meant a condition of being worthy, honoured or renowned . It only became connected to reverence paid to a supernatural being during the 13th century. Worship is not something that is only conducted in places such as here at certain times of the week. We worship all the time; we worship whatever it is that we hold in highest regard. As Mr Emerson says what we worship is what dominates our lives our actions. Therefore it is important that we are careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping me are becoming.

I remember a while ago coming across a “Meme” on facebook that read “If money is the root of all evil why does the church keep asking for it”. Now I know that this was a critique of organised religion, especially the wealth of churches etc and I’m certainly not one to argue against such a critique. That said the Meme is misquoting badly here and failing to understand what the passage from 1 Timothy ch 6 v 10 is saying. The actual quote is “For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil...” It is not so much money that is the problem, but the love of it. By loving money you make it the thing of greatest value in your life. You place its value above anything and everything else and therefore by doing so you may begin to neglect everything else; everything else decreases in value. In Matthew ch 6 v 24 Jesus said something similar when he stated “no one can serve two masters. Either you will hate one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

I do not actually believe that these quotes are really about money at all by the, they are more about what we value the most in life, about what is of ultimate worth to us. We need to pay attention to the things that matter in our lives. We all worship, even if we do not believe that we do. We all give our love, our attention, to something and it is this that dominates our lives.

What we treasure, what we offer our heart to, what we worship really matters. For we all worship something or perhaps someone. By the way I suspect the worship of individual people is perhaps the most dangerous form of worship. I was recently in a rather shocking conversation with someone who suggested that as far as Demagogues go Donald Trump isn’t so bad. I found myself half agreeing when compared to some of the demagogues of the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century and then thought, hang on a minute there is no such thing as a good demagogue. A demagogue is a demagogue and the a personality cult of any kind is so often deadly dangerous.

You who come and worship together here, do not all believe alike. Something that I believe we all celebrate, certainly something our free religious tradition celebrates. Our tradition, I believe is not so much believing alike, but loving alike. It’s about celebrating difference and working towards acceptance. This is not easy. To me it requires deep faith.

To be a Unitarian is both a blessing and a curse. To be a Unitarian religiously is not easy. To believe in and follow the Unitarian religious ethos is not the easier softer option. Far from it!

As Burdette Backus said "We sometimes hear it said by some of our own members that you can believe whatever you please. Actually we are confronted with a paradox; we are not free to believe what we please, we are free to believe what we must."

Yes we do believe that everyone has the right to seek truth and meaning for themselves and that each individual’s life experience and their reflections upon these experiences must form their own understanding of their own truth. Our communities accept people as they are warts and all and beauty spots too. That said to truly call yourself a Unitarian is not just to believe whatever you like. We as individuals must stand by what we believe. Reason and rationality are as much cornerstones of our tradition as are freedom and tolerance.

It is not easy being a Unitarian, but then who ever claimed that life was meant to be that way. That said it can be incredibly rewarding because to me it's the only way I've found that can reveal what I would describe as acceptable truth and perhaps most importantly give my heart to that that which I believe, to devote my life to it, to worship.

So what is it that you give your heart to? What do you worship? Where is your treasure to be found? For what you give your heart to will shape your life? Something to ponder perhaps.

What we worship matters, as Emerson said “A person will worship something have no doubt about that...that which dominates our imaginations and thoughts will determine our lives and character...for what we are worshipping we are becoming.”

What we worship, what we love, what we give our heart to dominates who are and we how we are. Therefore it is vital that we are mindful, attentive and critical about our habits. We need to understand what it is that we hold of highest value in our lives and why we do so. This is why we need to pay attention to our lives. This is why communal worship is of such high value to me. Yes ok it was life changing spiritual experiences that brought me in search of answers in spiritual communities, but it is not this that held me there. I found so much more by coming to commune, to worship with others. I discovered that by worshipping with others , if only for one hour a week I was then better able to focus my attention to what really matters during the rest of my time.

Everyone desires and we all possess imagination; everyone holds something of highest value in their lives. We worship whatever it is that dominates our hearts. This is why it is important what we worship, because as Emerson said “What we are worshipping, we are becoming.”

So be careful what you worship because we all do so, whether we care to admit it or not.

Three Frog's and Nils Bohr: I Believe in Faith

Three frogs were happily sitting on a log. Suddenly one of the frogs decided to jump off the log.

How many frogs were left sitting on the log?

The usual answer is two, but is this true? Did the frog leap off the log? We don’t know. We are not told. All that we are told is that the frog made a decision to leap off the log, not that it actually did so. I love this illustration, it speaks to me. It teaches me that whatever we may say, think or even believe means very little unless it is followed by appropriate action, unless we act in faith.

A friend of mine recently posted on Facebook “If you don’t plan your plan, it remains a dream” Interesting I thought and replied “Live it”, which I’m sure sounded a little baffling at the time. What I meant was live the plan, live the dream. We can dream and plan as much as we want, but unless we actually put that into action, it means very little. My friend is a person of action, a person of faith who keeps putting her head above the parapet, despite life’s knockbacks and disappointments. I’m not sure she always sees herself that way, but it’s how she lives her life.

For me the difference between belief and faith is the action. Belief is the plan and the dream, where as faith is putting that into action. Belief informs a decision, which is meaningless unless it is followed up with faithful action. By the way my dictionary disagrees with me. It says “Belief is essentially the acceptance that something is true without the need for proof.” And “faith is a strong belief or confidence in someone or something; or it is a strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof.” My dictionary defines belief and faith similarly and yet I experience them differently. Faith is fluid where as belief is static and rigid; faith is active, it is a way of living, where as belief is a mental construction which I see as a possession, which can never be proved perfectly. Faith is a way of knowing, a dynamic process that gives order and coherence to life. It is a crucial life giving as well as sustaining force, in action, that is forever changing and expanding. Faith in its Greek and Latin roots speaks of trust and commitment. Faith is not a place or status to be attained or a stage to be realized. It is a way of being, moving and transforming. Faith cannot be owned or possessed; therefore it can never be lost or taken away. Whenever I feel that my faith is waning I have discovered that all I have to do is to begin acting in faith once more and I begin to experience it again. Instantly! I never stay stuck on my log for very long.

Belief seems so limiting, where as faith I have discovered is incredibly liberating. Faith, or do I mean “faithing”, reaches way beyond beliefs or concepts. It is an experience that involves relationships between ourselves, others, our world and that which is greater than all and yet present in each. Faith is our relationship with life itself and whatever we experience at the core of it all. Faith is so much more than a mental construction or even a decision; it is an active living experience. It’s more than that though; in my experience living faithfully is also transformative. Well it changed me and my life and it continues to do so.


I believe in faith.


I am going to end this little piece with a story I keep hearing and re-hearing from the life of Nils Bohr. It beautifully portrays the difference between belief and faith.

An American scientist once visited the offices of the great Nobel Prize winning physicist, Nils Bohr, in Copenhagen. He was amazed to find that over Bohr's desk was a horseshoe, securely nailed to the wall, with the open end up in the approved manner (so it would catch the good luck and not let it spill out). The American said with a nervous laugh,


"Surely you don't believe the horseshoe will bring you good luck, do you, Professor Bohr? After all, as a scientist --"


Bohr chuckled. "I believe no such thing, my good friend. Not at all. I am scarcely likely to believe in such foolish nonsense. However, I am told that a horseshoe will bring you good luck whether you believe in it or not."


How many frogs were left sitting on that log?


Below is a short clip recorded at the end of Carl Jung's life. In it he is asked whether or not he believes in God. He gives a curious answer...just watch the smile that appears on his face as he does so...it is one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen.