The Golden Thread: We Come Together in Love

 O come together in truth;

O come together in peace;
O come together in joy and sharing,
Come together in knowing and caring;
Come together,
O come together,
O come together in love.

Beautiful words by Dorothy Grover, from a much loved hymn. 

They describe why I became a part of spiritual community. They are not the reason why I went from a secular singular person to one who sought out spiritual community, but they are why I stayed. I came to try and understand, to make sense of the sudden and profound changes that had occurred in my life many years ago now, changes that have continued on and on and on. I have not found the answers I was seeking by the way, in fact if anything there are many more questions today than there was then. What community has given me, amongst so many others is a space to explore those and many other questions with like hearted people. In such an environment I have learnt to not only ask and listen to the questions, but to truly live them. I came seeking answers, but it is not why I stayed. I stayed because I found something far more than I was consciously looking for. I stayed because I found community, I found true belonging. I found love. I found my heart's desire.

We come together, oh come together, we come together in love…

Now sadly of course we can’t come together as we would like, we can’t all be together to share in worship, well not physically at least. We are of course together in heart and mind, spirit and soul, some physically at Dunham and hopefully soon at Queens Road, some on Zoom from all sorts of places, and those who are reading the service at home too. We are being creative in ways of coming together, always in love. We are of course coming a little closer, step by step, with love always as our guide.

This not being able to be physically together can be particularly difficult at those times in life when we come together for rites of passage. Like the family funeral I conducted this Friday, or the Gott wedding this afternoon. Despite not being able to be together, physically, as we would like the love that runs through life can and does bind us together if we would but let it. It is the same with birthdays and other celebrations too or at times when those we care for are ill or suffering, as so many are in these challenging days, we find ways though. I saw a lovely example last Saturday as I saw Thelma and her daughter Lisa enjoying fish and chips and each others company sat in the sun in the gardens at the chapel, from a safe social distance of course.

We can still “come together in loving and caring

Oh come together, oh come together, oh come together in love.”

It brought to mind this wonderful bit of wisdom from “When all you’ve ever wanted isn’t enough” by Harold Kushner

“A life without people, without the same people day after day, people who belong to us, people who will be there for us, people who need us and whom we need in return, may be very rich in other things, but in human terms is no life at all.

I was sitting on the beach one summer day, watching two children, a boy and a girl, playing in the sand. They were hard at work building an elaborate sandcastle by the waters edge, with gates and towers and moats and internal passages. Just when they had nearly finished their project, a big wave came along and knocked it down, reducing it to a heap of wet sand. I expected the children to burst into tears, devastated by what had happened to all of their hard work. But they surprised me. Instead they ran up the shore away from the water, laughing and holding hands, and they sat down to build another castle. I realized that they had taught me a valuable lesson. All of the things in our lives, all of the complicated structures we spend so much time and energy creating, are built on sand. Only our relationships with other people endure. Sooner or later, the wave will come along and knock down what we have worked so hard to build up. When that happens, only the person who has somebody's hand to hold will be able to laugh."

It also brought to mind the following verse from Matthew’s Gospel Ch 18 v 20 “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” When we come together in love, that spirit comes to life.

“O come together, o come together, o come together in love.

This is why people come together in spiritual community, why the commune. As the writer Annie Dillard put it “We are here to abet creation and to witness it. To notice each other’s beautiful face and complex nature so that creation need not play to an empty house.”

In coming together in love we create community, it is the love that we create together that binds such community together. This love is the thread that binds us together. We are all responsible for weaving this thread and repairing it when it gets damaged. It is this that binds us to one another and it this that hold us together in love.

Now as Parker J Palmer put it while reflecting on the wonderful poem “A Thread to Guide Us” by William Stafford.

“Holding on doesn’t make life any easier, but it can keep us from getting lost in the dark woods that swallow us up every now and then. Knowing we can find our way home with that thread in hand, we’re more likely to explore the darkness and learn what it has to teach us.”

Here's the poem:

“The Way It Is” by William Stafford

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

Now an old rarely heard word for this thread of love that binds us together in love is “yoke”. Now a yoke is a wooden bar that is fastened around the necks of two animals, connecting them together and to the vehicle or load they are pulling. In the context of community though yoke is a nurturing word. It is a humble and tender word, particularly for the most vulnerable in family, community and society, it is that loving thread that binds us together in love. In such connections we find rest, comfort, care, protection and light-heartedness. Yes light-heartedness for there is a sense of fun in this idea of yoke. Gosh how much do we miss this ability to come together in joy and laughter too. In Middle Eastern languages yoke has connotations of laying arms on the shoulders of another and dancing in cirlces and long lines. It is a familiar and comfortable feeling and fills one with delight as you get lost in the music and sing and dance and just let go without fear. To be yoked means to come together in love.

We come together in search
Of new beginnings for all,
Where understanding and trust surround us – 
Gone the hate and fear that bound us;
Come together,
O come together,
O come together in love.

The Sanskrit word for yoke is yuj. Like Yoke in the west it is a physical device used to join cattle. From this interestingly the word yoga came. Now Yoga means union, just think about this idea of something binding us together in love. Yoga though is not really a noun, a thing, it is more a verb, something that you do, like people coming together in love, to create loving community. Sue and myself have been practising yoga these last few months, since lockdown began. It is one of the many loving threads that has held us through these difficult days. It has been comical too as we have had to negotiate two dogs, particularly the disobedient little dog, not a lot of space and bodies that will not do the things that the woman on the video can do. There has been much laughter as we have yoked and joked our way through, being held in love these last weeks and months.

These principles of coming together in love will help us as we try to rebuild and rebind our communities, to create space for people to come together not only in love, but also search in the days ahead.

We come together in search
Of new beginnings for all,
Where understanding and trust surround us – 
Gone the hate and fear that bound us;
Come together,
O come together,
O come together in love.

Loving community is something that I believe everyone needs, in order to truly thrive and grow and become all that they can be.

Starhawk catches this need near perfectly when she writes:

“Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free.”

So let us continue to build this community of love, where people can come together in love. As we slowly open and begin to be together again we will need a loving community even more, a place where love hold us and sustain us together. It is something that we will all be responsible for creating, but not just here, but also in our families, our communities, our world. Let us begin to repair and weave that thread of love. Let us come together, lets us go out together in love.

O come together in truth;
O come together in peace;
O come together in joy and sharing,
Come together in knowing and caring;
Come together,
O come together,
O come together in love

Amen

Welcome: On Becoming a Wished for Guest

"Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again , come , come."

Words of the Sufi mystic Mawlana Jala-al-Din Rumi

Simply Rumi to most folk

I’m told I’ve got one of those faces. One that’s easy to talk to, easy and approachable. I’m not sure how true it is, but I do find strangers come and talk with me. It happened on Monday afternoon. I’d just come back from the act of Remembrance in Urmston and went to the gym. I set off for half an hour on the cross trainer before getting stuck into some resistance work. I’d only been moving a minute or so when an old guy came to the machine next to me and began to engage me in conversation. I think he told me his life story in about 20 minutes before he’d had enough, not of talking, but of the machine. He told me about his career, his family, his religious beliefs and his politics and a whole lot more. He told me how he’d been a good salesman and that this was down to the smile and his open face, something that his granddaughter had inherited he was proud to say.

I smiled as he left and I got on with the rest of my routine. I wondered if that’s how it works. All you need is an open face and folk will feel welcome. There’s probably more too it than that, but it’s a good start I thought.

Over the years I’ve developed a bit of a ministerial catch phrase. I wonder if anyone reading this can guess.

I am often hear sating “Come as you are, exactly as you are, but do not expect to leave in exactly the same condition.” It is my play on those words of Rumi’s at the beginning of this post.

It is my attempt to make feel people welcome wholly as they, but to also keep them open to the possibility of change. For I do belief that life is flux, always changing. As Heraclitus so beautifully put no one steps in the same river twice, because the river is never the same and neither is the person stepping into it. Change of course is something to be celebrated, my hope is people will always feel welcome exactly as they, without apology. I want everyone to feel welcome in my company and this community. So, I’m kind of glad that folk find me approachable.

And when I say come as you are, exactly as you are…but do not expect to leave in exactly the same condition, I really mean it.

I hope that people always feel welcome in my company...

“Welcome” is one of those very interesting words. It is derived from and old English and Germanic word meaning a wished for guest. So when we welcome people it is more than just accepting folk as they its about wanting nay wishing for what these guests bring. So in the communities I serve when we say all are welcome here, we mean that you truly are wished for guests, although we are not yet sure exactly what it is we are wishing for.

Who you are as you are is wished for…No need to explain or apologies for who you are…

Now of course people don’t always feel welcome in certain company. People have been rejected for all kinds of reasons, whether that be race, gender, sexuality, beliefs or lack of. I and the communities I serve aspire to make no such exclusions, but I know we fall short of our own ideals at times, who doesn't . We do attempt to make no exclusions. We say all are welcome as they are, you are a wished for guest as you are.

It is not just we ourselves who sometime do not feel welcome, sometimes we do not wish to welcome all of life. Some aspects of life and some people are not welcomed by we ourselves. What is unwelcome in our personal guesthouses? What are life’s unwished for guests?

This brings to mind another one of Rumi’s better known poems “The Guest House”

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

I, like so many folk, love the mystical poetry of Rumi. I particularly love his notion here, that being human is like being a “guest house”. In life we are visited by all kinds of guests, so many unexpected visitors occasionally show up and stay for a while, including some you’d really like to throw out. Such guests are certainly not wished for. And yet perhaps such guests are the ones that we ought to be wishing for the most, because if we do welcome them then they may have something to teach us, they may lead us to some new truth, new experience. Perhaps these are the guest we ought to be wishing for, maybe they are the true gift givers in life.

If only we could just simply do that. Just let all life in without fear of what might happen to us, if we could live without stranger danger, whether that be people, situations, feeling and thoughts. Rarely do any of us make the uncomfortable feelings and situations welcome guests.

There are conversations in my life that I avoid, that I would rather not have, that I swerve around. I did it on a couple of occasions with the man I the gym, especially when he moved the subject to politics. I’m sure most folk experience this with family and friends in these increasingly divisive times

Not that I ignore what is going on in the world around me, quite the opposite actually. Sometimes I get a little stuck in the troubles of life. Yes of course there are people places and things that I would rather not listen to; things I would rather ignore avert from my eyes, than pay attention to. There are things in this world I don’t like and do not approve of; there are actions in my nearest and dearest that I don’t agree with; there are aspects of myself that I wish were different. Should I turn from them? There are those who would say so and I have certainly done so in the past, but I try not to these days. Nobody is perfect, no one is complete, but that does not mean that they should be shunned, they should be locked outside love’s gate. They should become un-wished for guests, unwelcome.

This brings to mind a passage from Luke’s Gospel Ch18 vv 9-14 In the passage a prideful Pharisee, who considers himself better than others, is described. He follows the laws and commandments to the letter. In the same passage a tax collector is also described who recognises his imperfections and does not feel he is worthy of God’s love. In the passage Jesus holds up the tax collector and not the Pharisee as being the exalted one. Jesus says “For everyone that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbelth himself shall be exalted. You see the Pharisee turns from the tax collector and others who he believes are beneath him. He sees their wrongs and thus believes that unlike himself they are not worthy of God’s love. The Pharisee fails to see that by rejecting his neighbour he is also rejecting God.

There is something in this teaching, a theme repeated in the Gospels, about being a good host and a good guest. It’s about accepting our humanity and the humanity of one another. It’s about love and acceptance of ourselves and one another; it’s about universal love; it’s about perfect love. I believe that the only thing we can do perfectly is love. This requires us to love all, without prejudice. In my eyes this is how the love that is God comes to life, how it incarnates. I fall short of this mark every day, but I believe that it is possible to attain such love, not just for myself but for everyone. We can accept all people, we are capable of love. The key is to make all of life a wished for guests.

Now of course to truly love someone requires you to get to know them and this can be both scary and at times painful. And of course to know someone requires us to understand what a person loves and what causes them pain. To truly welcome someone means we welcome all of them. We can’t ask the guests we wish for to leave part of themselves outside of the guesthouse

There is a wonderful story told by Madeleine L’Engle in “Walking on Water”, which describes this oh so beautifully.

“(Here is) a story of a Hasidic rabbi, renowned for his piety. He was unexpectedly confronted one day by one of his devoted youthful disciples. In a burst of feeling, the young disciple exclaimed, “My master, I love you!” The ancient teacher looked up from his books and asked his fervent disciple, “Do you know what hurts me, my son?”

The young man was puzzled. Composing himself, he stuttered, “I don’t understand your question, Rabbi. I am trying to tell you how much you mean to me, and you confuse me with irrelevant questions.”

“My questions is neither confusing nor irrelevant,” rejoined the rabbi, “For if you do not know what hurts me, how can you truly love me.””

To know someone is not only to share in their joy, but also in their suffering. To welcome someone is to welcome them wholly, to make every aspect of them the wished for guest.

I believe that one purpose of religious communities is the development of intimacy, real intimacy, something that is lacking in our increasingly isolating culture. Something that modern day consumerist spirituality does not offer. It does not offer the intimate encounter that community brings. Spirituality cannot occur in the privacy of our lives or hidden away on mountain tops it can only come to life in real lived encounters with other people. In awkward difficult encounters with people like you and me, perfectly imperfect people who know both joy and pain. With folk who practise what t it means to truly love. Who worship wholly in all areas of life, not in a superior way, but humbly and because they love life and their souls need this worship and love of life.

The communities I serve say all are welcome, we say come as you are exactly as you are...but don’t expect to leave in exactly the same condition.

We say we accept people exactly as they are in their faith, doubt and confusion, in their joy and sadness. This is true hospitality. Welcoming the weary traveller with open arms, whoever they are and where ever they have come from. Welcoming them wholly body, mind and soul; that they leave no part of themselves at the door. All that we ask is that those that we welcome are good guests and hosts themselves, that they accept us as we are and others who come as they are.

We say this is a community of love, where we aspire to offer perfect love, to accept people as they are.

So come as you are, exactly as you are, become the wished for guest, but do not expect to leave in exactly the same condition…

Daily Bread for the Daily Journey

Every morning we step out into the world uncertain of what the day will bring. Yes we make our plans and designs and have our own ideas about what will be. Sometimes things work out exactly as we expect, but often they do not. Sometimes they work out far better than we could have dreamed of, but at other times they do not. We cannot predict life and I do not believe that it is already pre-ordained. I believe that the book of life always remains open. I do not believe that God has pre-ordained anything. I do believe in the Lure of Divine Love, but that this is not controlled by some primal centre, but hey I could well be wrong. I do believe that this Love speaks to us in and through life, as well as in and through us. This is why I believe that everything matters. Life feeds us and we feed life. We are all a part of the Great Co-Creation. This is why it matters how we journey on in life. This is why it is so important that we keep on stepping out into the world, on this continuous journey, experience all that life offers to us in all its blessings and curses. Always remembering that we do not journey alone.

Many people describe life as a journey that moves from one stage to another, sometimes full of joy and sometimes full of fear. Like the seasons life is forever changing. My life has taken me to different stages and I have journeyed with a rich variety of people. Some have been there from the very beginning, some have joined and stayed and others I have travelled with for only a short time. They have all touched and blessed my life in deep, rich and meaningful ways and I hope I have blessed theirs likewise.

Much has changed these last twelve months and these changes seem to be increasing in pace as the days go by. Yes there are the obvious physical changes, but those are just the ones on the surface. There are many other changes, unseen, that have been occurring deep within me. One thing I know for certain is that I am not done with my changes and life certainly isn’t done with changing me. I have never felt more fed by life, nor do I feel I have fed life more positively at any other stage of my life. I have never felt more alive and I want to share this aliveness with everyone.

How do I know this? You may well ask. Well because I feel that I know myself now better than I ever have before. Even these last few weeks’ deeper and newer truths have been revealed. The journey into who I truly am has gone deeper.

Now the inner journey is very much a spiritual journey. It is not really about physical travel, one of distance, it is more one of depth. This is captured beautifully in the following poem by Wendell Berry

"A Spiritual Journey"

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,
no matter how long,
but only by a spiritual journey,
a journey of one inch,
very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,
and learn to be at home.

by Wendell Berry

Now no doubt the Wendell Berry poem is inspired by the Christian mystic Meister Ekhart. It was he who claimed that the spiritual journey is not one of distance, that we do not so much travel on a physical pilgrimage from A to B to C to D etc, that the spiritual journey is some kind of linear progression in which we reach some goal, some new state of being way over there in some distant realm. No instead we discover new truths, understandings and experiences as we journey through life in a cyclical sense and that as we do so we move deeper into the core of our own being and find ourselves at home within ourselves.

John O’Donohue captured this beautifully when he wrote:

“Meister Eckhart radically revises the whole notion of spiritual programs. He says that there is no such thing as a spiritual journey. If a little shocking, this is refreshing. If there were a spiritual journey, it would be only a quarter inch long, though many miles deep. It would be a swerve into rhythm with your deeper nature and presence. The wisdom here is so consoling. You do not have to go away outside yourself to come into real conversation with your soul and with the mysteries of the spiritual world. The eternal is at home — within you.”

(John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: a Book of Celtic Wisdom)

Now strange as this may sound a life time’s journey can only be taken in one day. Did you know that the word journey is derived from the Latin word "diarnum" meaning daily portion from which the old French word "jornee" which meant a day’s work or a day's travel, is derived. I love this truth, it makes me smile broadly. Of course any spiritual journey can only be taken one day at a time and can only be achieved through taking our daily bread, feeding our spirit, and feeding life itself with our spirit. The key is of course to keep on going deeper and deeper feeding and being fed by and on the journey, while constantly being humbled and opened by the experience and thus feeding life.

Now while each of our journey’s are individual, they are not private. They are not taken alone nor in isolation. We are all a part of something far greater than ourselves. We are influenced by all that is around us, just as we influence all that we interact with. This of course begins with the people we share our lives with, those we journey with. We feed them and they feed us. We care for others and they care for us. Howard Thurman captured this rather beautifully in what follows. The Reverend Howard Thurman, was a theologian, minister, a Baptist with heavy Quaker leanings, Dean of Theology and Chaplain at both Howard and Boston Colleges, and the co founder, with Dr. Albert Fisk, in 1944, of “The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples”. America’s first fully multicultural church. Thurman wrote:

“Every person wants to be cared for, to be sustained by the assurance that we share in the watchful and thoughtful attention of others—not merely or necessarily others in general but others in particular. We want to know that—however vast and impersonal all life about us may seem, however hard may be the stretch of road on which we are journeying—we are not alone, but are the object of another's concern and caring; we want to know this in an awareness sufficient to hold us against ultimate fear and panic. It is precisely at this point of awareness that life becomes personal and a person is free to ask and find answers to this question: What makes me come alive, and how can I share that aliveness with the world?”

Here Thurman captures how vital communal spirituality is to personal spiritual development and journeying. Spirituality cannot be truly expressed in isolation otherwise it just becomes self-centred and self-serving, thus stagnating personal growth. True spirituality needs community. It needs to feed and be fed by community. It kind of has to become religion, in its truest sense, to mature into all that it can be. I’m not talking about religious dogma here. I mean free religion, I mean coming together in love. I mean the idea that be bind together in fellowship. A living, breathing, fellowship of love. A community of loving support and understanding who journey together hand in hand.

It’s about more than just fulfilling our own personal needs. It’s about building something more. Not just for ourselves but for the good of all, for we all depend upon it. That though is not to say that the individual journey does not matter. Of course it does. It is about the individual becoming all that they can be within community with others. It’s about, as Thurman says the individual coming alive and sharing this aliveness with life. In so doing we inspire others to be all that they can be. In so doing they then inspire us to become even more than we could even dream of becoming.

This to me is what it means to build the kin-dom of love right here, right now. Yes this kin-dom is already here, right here right now if we would just let it come to life. It is there within each and every one of us. Our task is to let it come to life and to share it with our brothers and sisters and thus inspire them to do likewise. In so doing they will too inspire us to become even more than we could even begin to dream of.

Life is a journey, a journey we are engaged in even if we are not fully aware of it at the time. Yes ok, it’s not really a journey that goes anywhere. Even when it ends all that we are really doing is returning to the beginning. Yes changed by the experience in some way, but still the essence remains. What matters is how we travel, we can always go first class; what matters the most is the journey that we travel today. What our days’ work is today, remember that is what journey really means, today's work. Our day’s work today, is how we feed life and to do our day’s work, our journey, to our best ability depends on how we feed ourselves and how we feed life. It matters you know, it really does.

So how are you going to journey today? What is your day’s work today? How will you allow life and those around you to feed you today? And just as importantly how will you feed life today, in all that you feel, all that you think, all that you say and all that you do?

It matters you know, it really does…

Live to eat or eat to live

In “From Beginning to End” Robert Fulghum wrote

“Since the beginning of time, people who trust one another, care for one another, and are deeply connected to one another have shared food as a sign of and a reaffirmation of their relationship. When attention is paid to this sharing, it takes on a ritual character. The nurturing of the body becomes a metaphor of the mutual nourishing of lives. Every time we hold hands and say a blessing before a meal, every time we lift a glass and say fine words to one another, every time we eat in peace and grace together we have celebrated the covenants that bind us.”

Our lives are steeped in ritual, even if we don’t always recognise and acknowledge them, and perhaps the most significant are based around food. I suspect that eating in every sense is a form of communion, of coming together in love. On its most basic level it is our connection and communion with the earth from which we are all formed. Is there a more intimate and holy relationship in life than with that in which we live and breathe and have our being?

Thoughtful, mindful, reverential eating is surely an awareness of what it means to participate in the holiness of life itself. How we eat, the way that we eat is not only about feeding our bodies but also our minds, our hearts and souls. For the bread of life does not merely feed the physical body it feeds our whole personhood and if fed in the correct way we then respond to life in reverential ways and participate in life in all its holiness.

Eating reverentially feeds our interconnectness; interconnectedness feeds our sense of belonging; a healthy sense of belonging feeds our wholeness; a sense of wholeness relieves us from the spiritual hunger that so many seem to suffer from. If we eat reverentially we understand how we are interconnected not only to the earth from which we live but all that exists within this beautiful blue, green and brown planet of ours. Eating reverentially links us to the people who prepare our food, those who grow our food and produce and transport the food as well as the plants and animals from which our food comes. Eating reverentially also connects us compassionately with those who have nothing, who struggle to survive in this abundant world of ours, those for whom the search for daily bread is a daily struggle.

Food is valuable beyond its ability to merely fill us physically. There are many other benefits too. Health benefits come from eating certain food types, as do healing and soothing benefits too, whether on a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual level. Food can also arouse the many senses, more than just taste, it can even re-awaken memory. It connects beyond our own singular selves to those we share our food with and to all people and all communities on earth who come together in communion in sharing their love and food around the table. As Robert Fulghum wrote:

“Since the beginning of time, people who trust one another, care for one another, and are deeply connected to one another have shared food as a sign of and a reaffirmation of their relationship.”

I see clearly a ritualistic and interconnected relationship with others and with life itself, but what about a personal relationship with food? How does how we eat and relate to food impact on how we relate to ourselves and then life itself? Well surely everything in life stems from how we are fed and how we feed life itself.

Over the last few weeks I have been attending and participating in a series of Lent Breakfasts with Churches Together in Urmston. These begin with the sharing of tea and toast before a theme talk and conversation. This year we have been exploring “The Lord’s Prayer”. Each week someone from one of the Urmston Churches has chosen a line from the prayer and we have spent time reflecting and discussing our thoughts on it. Recently we looked at the line “Give us this day our daily bread”. Now as it happens I have not been taking my daily bread for quite some time. One of the changes in my diet has been giving up bread. This along with other changes in my eating habits have enabled me to move from a weight of over 20 stone (284 pounds) to one a little less than 12 and a half stone (173 pounds) and a Body Mass Index (BMI) that once was 38.5 to a healthy 23.5. My relationship with food, with myself and with life itself has changed considerably these last few months.

Now while I may not be literally “taking my daily bread” in many ways life is feeding me more nourishingly than it ever has before and as a result I am feeding life in ways I never have before. As a result I am communing with life in new and wonderful ways.

The morning following the Lent Breakfast I went for a walk with thoughts about feeding and being fed floating around my consciousness and the following words from Socrates singing in my heart and soul. The words were:

“Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.”

It is a phrase I’ve heard in many forms, many times before. The most common form being “There are two types of people in the world, those who eat to live and those who live to eat”, which I suspect is rooted in this quote from Socrates.

As I walked I was thinking about my relationship with food and life and the relationship we all have with the two. I was thinking about food addiction and addiction in general and the things that rule our lives, the things of value in life, the things we worship in life and how they and our relationships with these things impact on our lives and the way we live. You see how we are fed and how we feed life really matters.

Just as these thoughts were floating around I noticed a long line of deer in the park, all congregated together in a kind of communion line. The park rangers had obviously laid out a long line of feed for them. I smiled as I observed them eating. Then I noticed something that made me smile ever more broadly. One after another the young deer, probably a little too old to still be called fawn’s, got up and just began skipping off and enjoying themselves in the beauty of the park. These animals and all the animals in the park were eating to live, not living to eat. They were not slaves to the food they were eating it was not their object of worship, the thing that meant the most to them. No instead it was the fuel by which they lived.

This got me thinking about worth and worship itself. It particularly brought to mind a favourite quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A person will worship something, have no doubt about 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.”

Whatever it is that dominates our thoughts are the things that we worship, the things that are of highest worth in our lives. So if we live purely just to eat then that is the thing that is of highest worth in our lives and our lives will be ruled by this. By doing so we will become consumed by the very thing that we are consuming and we will remain hungry in our hearts and souls.

Now I am sure there will be objections from some claiming that this isn’t worship. Well actually this is exactly what worship is. 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 specifically set aside for this function. 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 we are becoming.

Well people do say “you are what you eat.” Well perhaps this is true if you “live to eat” instead of “eating to live.”

As I have said many times before I am a great believing that everything matters. Everything we do and everything we do not do matters. How we are with one another and live with one another also matters. How we relate to all life and the people we share this life with really matters. It is the same with food and our relationship with the food that we eat, for it too will reflect on how we live our lives.

Food and the eating of it is something that connects all of us to one another. We all need food to eat in order to live, we cannot live without it. Therefore it is no surprise that the most basic human rituals have been based around food. It is these rituals and our engagement with them that help us to sanctify life, to recognise the sacredness of our existence and all existence. Therefore if we bless the food we eat, the source that this food came from and those that we share this food with we will sanctify all life and in so doing we will sanctify and make sacred both our existence and all life. We will develop reverence for life itself.

In so doing all that we do will be of true worth, for we will be truly worshipping and sanctifying life and we will begin to commune with ourselves, with one another, with all life and with the great mystery that permeates all life and we will truly begin to eat so that we can truly live.

Now I began this "blogspot" with a little bit of Robert Fulghum and I would like to end with a little bit more of his wisdom too.

He wrote:

Once upon a time, somewhere far back in ancient human history - so far back that personal survival was the only concern - a defining event must have taken place. Someone didn’t eat what he found when he found it, but decided to take it back to the cave to share with others. There must have been a first time. A first act of community - call it communion - in the most elemental form”

We come together in Love

O come together in truth;
O come together in peace;
O come together in joy and sharing,
Come together in joy and sharing,
Come together in knowing and caring;
Come together,
O come together,
O come together in love.

Beautiful words by Dorothy Grover, from a much loved hymn.

They describe why I became a part of spiritual community. They are not the reason why I went from a secular singular person to one who sought out spiritual community, but they are why I stayed. I came to try and understand, to make sense of the sudden and profound changes that had occurred in my life some 11 years ago, changes that have continued on and on and on. I have not found the answers I was seeking by the way, in fact if anything there are many more questions today than there was then. What community has given me, amongst so many others is a space to explore those and many other questions with like hearted people. In such an environment I have learnt to not only ask and listen to the questions, but to truly live them. I came seeking answers, but it is not why I stayed. I stayed because I found something far more than I was consciously looking for. I stayed because I found community, I found true belonging. I found love. I found my heart's desire.

We come together in search
Of new beginnings for all,
Where understanding and trust surround us –
Gone the hate and fear that bound us;
Come together,
O come together,
O come together in love.

Loving community is something that I believe everyone needs, in order to truly thrive and grow and become all that they can be.

Starhawk catches this need near perfectly when she writes:

“Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free.”

John O’Donohue describes beautifully what it means to come together in love. He wrote ““When we come together in compassion and generosity, the hidden belonging begins to come alive between us…”

Describing community as a constellation. And inspired, no doubt, by the spirit of Paul’s letter to Romans, he further stated “Each one of us is a different light in the emerging collective brightness. A constellation of light, of course, has greater power of illumination than any single light would have on its own. We need to come together. When people come together because they care and are motivated by the ideals of compassion and creativity, true belonging emerges, communities cease to be inward looking and enrich our world.”

Madeleine L’Engle in her piece from “Walking on Water”, was also no doubt inspired by the same spirit when she wrote the following.

“We all feed the lake. That is what is important. It is a corporate act. During my time in the theatre I knew what it was to be part of such an enlarging of the human potential, and though I was never more than a bit part player or an understudy, I knew the truth of Stanislavsky’s words: “There are no small roles. There are only small players.” And I had the joy of being an instrument in the great orchestra of a play, learning from the play (how much Chechov taught me during the run of Cherry Orchard), from the older actors and actresses. I was part of the Body. That’s what it’s all about.”

This is spiritual community, this is what it means to come together in love. Something which many observers say is going the way of the Dodo!

Many decry the state that we are in. they say that people are becoming increasingly isolated and selfish and that there is no community concern, no togetherness. Yet in recent weeks I have seen beautiful examples of people coming together in love and helping one another in difficult times. The devastating floods that have hit the north of England, parts of Wales and Scotland in and around the Christmas and New Year period has caused untold damage to individual lives and communities. And what has been the response, well I have witnessed so many people coming together in caring and sharing. Helping one another out in times of need.

One of my sisters lives on a Narrow Boat at Horbury Bridge in West Yorkshire, just off the River Calder. Over Christmas the water levels hit the highest point ever recorded and they and several other boats were in peril of rising above the canal bank and finding themselves on the tow path. Many of the people who they were moored with were away over the Christmas period. Those left behind were in peril but came together to support one another and keep all the boats safe. It was a scary time, but they came through it. I have seen and heard of many other similar examples up and down the land.

I had another personal example too, last week. My car broke down in stationary traffic on the motorway. It had overheated and I had to pull over on to the hard shoulder as there was steam coming out of the bonnet. I opened the bonnet and saw the water coolent tank looking like it was about to explode. I reacted foolishly, thinking I ought to loosen it and steam burst out and burnt my hand and face. I called to be rescued and the help came. As I stood there waiting in pain so many people called out pulled over and offered me water to help sooth my wounds. Just another example of people coming together in love, sharing and caring.

It is easy to get cynical about human nature and the selfishness that can grip us and yet there is a love there when it is allowed to flower and burst out on us all.

Having said all that our modern way of living does not encourage community as it once did. Last Sunday I was without a car. I could not get it into the garage to be repaired due to closures etc during the Christmas and New Year period. This meant that I had to travel by taxi between the congregations I serve. I got into a fascinating conversation with the taxi driver who began to tell me that he believed that his business would not be around for many more years.This was because Artificial Intelligence was taking over and that already in San Francisco there were taxi’s without drivers and that people would be increasingly turning to them. He also suggested that it would be the same in fast food outlets etc and all sorts of other industry. He suggested that increasingly there will be less and less human contact as all kinds of impersonal interaction would take over. He talked about the isolated lives that we live and lead these days and that young people don’t need to go out today and can live artificial as well as self-created and self-sustaining lives.

The image he painted was bleak. I did think to myself there was something of the Luddite in his fears, but he did make an interesting point. I pointed out to him, as I was paying for the ride, that one thing that would be lost would the fascinating human interactions that we had just shared in if things turned out that way.

The conversation awakened my homiletic consciousness and fed into some of the other thoughts I’ve already discussed in this blog. I thanked him for helping me write my sermon for this week. At which point we both laughed and smiled and got on with our business

I find it hard to believe that we humans will become what the taxi driver expressed. What I have witnessed in recent weeks has shown me that this spirit of coming together in love is powerful within us. Community may not be as obvious as it once was, but people will always come together in love, that spirit cannot die. There will always be community. As Howard Thurman once said “The moving finger of God in human history points ever in the same direction. There must be community.” There will always be community, the spirit will never let it die.

This is why, despite current trends, I believe that there will always be spiritual community. Privatised spirituality is not enough, for it does not truly bring the spirit alive. It loses power on its own it cannot thrive and grow. There is a need to come together in love; there is a need for community; there is a need for spiritual community.

Now I didn’t know this when I began searching for answers all those years ago. It’s not why I walked through the doors of Cross Street Chapel almost exactly 11 years ago to the day. I didn’t find what I was looking for, far from it. No, I found far more than I could have even begun to dream of. I found a place where I could come together in love…I hope and pray that it is something that everyone finds on their spiritual journeying.

Let’s continue to come together in truth; let’s continue to come together in peace; let’s continue to come together in joy and sharing; let’s continue to come together in knowing and caring; let’s continue to come together, o come together, o come together in love…

Community: Men's service reflection

The following blogspot is a collection of material shared by the men of Dunham Road Unitarian Chapel Altrincham, on Sunday 15th September 2013, during our annual "Mens Service".

The theme was "Community"

Opening Words


We gather to share

our faith

in the spirit of freedom,

our doubts

in the spirit of honesty.



We gather to focus

our love in prayer,

to send it to those

who suffer and grieve –

in our own community

and in the wider world.



We gather to strengthen

the good that is in us,

that the goodness may be

stronger on the earth.



We gather to worship.

Extract from: "Exploring Our Desire to Belong" by John O’Donohue taken from "Eternal Echoes"

The ideal of community is not the forcing together of separate individuals into the spurious unity of community. The great traditions tell us that community somehow already exists. When we come together in compassion and generosity, the hidden belonging begins to come alive between us. Consequently, a community which is driven by power, or too great a flurry of activity and talk, will never achieve much more than superficial belonging. The attempt to force community often drives away the more independent and creative people.

We do not build community as if it were some external and objective structure. We allow community to emerge. In order for community to emerge, we need time, vision and a certain rhythm of silence with each other. The invisible tissue which sustains real belonging is never spectacular; - It is quiet and unostentatious.

At its heart it is impossible to grasp what makes true community. We often hear the phrase "community spirit" and that recognises that community is not so much an invention or construction of its members, but a gift that emerges between them and embraces them.

Perhaps community is a constellation. Each one of us is a different light in the emerging collective brightness. A constellation of light, of course, has greater power of illumination than any single light would have on its own. We need to come together. When people come together because they care and are motivated by the ideals of compassion and creativity, true belonging emerges, communities cease to be inward looking and enrich our world.

Prayer

Spirit of light, Spirit of life, hear our prayer… help us to see that we are

children of this earth, children of God, children of the universe. Help us to see that we are precious and that our world is a precious blessing ... still us, help us to be still and to know that we are loved.

If we come here feeling alone, help us to know we are not alone ... we are here among

friends, some we have known for many years, some we have known for only a short time and some we may never have met before ...

If we come here with guilt for what we have done, or failed to do, help us to see, we are not alone, that we are in the healthy company of others with the same guilt over our human shortcomings ...

.If we come here wishing our lives were more whole, more satisfying, perhaps even more

perfect; help us to see that the honesty of these wishes marks us out, as someone who belongs here….here we come to face the truth unafraid, even when we are afraid. Because we know, even when we do not want to know, that the truth can set us free. Perhaps not painlessly, but nevertheless the truth can set us free…

After all we do know ... we just need to remember, that we are children of the earth, children of God, children of the universe. We know that we are precious and the world needs our blessing.

Be still and know that you are loved.

Amen

"First Reflection"

The following reflection is by Aled Jones (Chapel Secretary)

Community

“Time Flies”, what an over used cliché you would say, but since it is used so frequently there must some truth in it, I find it remarkable that it is now well over a decade since I retired from full time work. With the passing of time the details of my routine tasks are receding. However there is one aspect of the work I still recollect vividly, but it is rather a bleak recollection, but relevant to the theme of community.

One of my occasional duties was to attend Inquests at the local Coroner’s court as an expert witness, in Salford where I worked. One of the main functions of the coroner systems is to inquire into the circumstances of death in case of accidents and such like. Attendances at the court were always formal occasions but the events I refer to are particularly sombre and somewhat depressing.

The environment of courtroom where the hearings were held, was old fashioned and drab, the Court met in what had been the council Chamber in Pendleton in Central Salford, built I suspect at the beginning of the last century when Pendleton was an independent borough with a Mayor and its own local councillors and in its day it would have been a rather splendid chamber, but now rather drab past its best and in need of refurbishment.

The whole court proceeding was not enlivened by the character of this particular Coroner, whose full title was Her Majesty’s coroner for the Greater Manchester Area, Northwest region. He was one of those unfortunate individuals, a solicitor by training, who though able enough, was I considered totally unsuited to his job. He lacked dignity, had no aura of authority, he was diffident and sometime had difficulty in making up his mind ,who looked perpetually worried and unhappy could be petulant and angry and I suspect someone who lost a lot of sleep worrying about his cases

Nevertheless, when the court was in session, it was a lively enough scene with Police Officers or fire brigade officers, Ambulance crew, members of the public, all ready to give their evidence and lots of relative and friends of the deceased together with representatives of the local press.

However, sometime it would be totally different and this is the point of this account, I would turn up and the court room would be empty apart from the coroner, his officer perhaps a solitary policeman and me. These would be tragic cases where the deceased had died alone, perhaps a homeless person found in a deserted building, a recluse who was an alcoholic, sometimes a young drug addict and often there was a background history of mental health problems. These were indeed unfortunate people who had lived tragic lives, who had slipped through all the social service support networks that the state had tried to provide for such people in the inner city. But the most striking nature of these cases was they had become alienated from society, there were no relatives or friend, and there had been no community to help during life. Although these were depressing and rare cases, I still remember these events with great sadness and impressed me of the great importance of belonging to community.

So what do we mean by community and what makes them work?

I have been member of both religious and secular communities at different stages in my life. The greater part of my early life was spent in North London and then in a leafy suburb in Liverpool and in both places I experienced community life as a member of Welsh Chapels. At that time and I am referring to the 40’s and 50’s, there were significant Welsh speaking communities in both cities due to the migration from rural Wales to seek urban employment in the cities and a significant part of the migrant’s social life were centred on these chapels which provided both vibrant social and religious communities. There were shared cultural religious activities and much communal support and good pastoral care and these communities nurtured loyalty and much community spirit. They worked well because of the communal common goals.

After my retirement I was associated with community association near to where I live in Chorlton. As the sociologists would express it, I live near a social interface, in plain English my neighbourhood is adjacent to a fairly large overspill housing estate built by Manchester city council just before and after the second world war and at the time of building this was country side at the very edge of the city. At that time city planners thought that if they built small but good quality houses, the rest of the amenities to make a vibrant and cohesive community would just follow without any specific money and plans. Unfortunately this is not so. Fortunately there were many good and visionary people on the estate who saw the need for a cohesive community and one way of achieving this was forming a community association and providing a purpose build community centre.. The community leaders worked hard and with the help of the local member of parliament cajoled and, persuaded the central government and local authority to provide money for such a building, and it was built about 30 years ago and has been a successful amenity for the whole estate since then.

It is relevant to ask what makes any type of community work. In the reading by John O’donohe he takes a very spiritual view of what makes a true community and he said

“At its heart it is impossible to grasp what makes a true community, we often hear the phrase ‘community spirit” and recognise that community is not so much an invention or construction of its members , but a gift that emerges between them and embraces them.”

Yes, he claims that it is ”a gift that emerges between them and embraces them.”

This is what I would call the ethereal view of building communities. If that were true how easy life would be!! What little I know of building community life is, if there is a good clear vision of what is required, there is a good chance that the community will succeed, but vision and goals are not enough and it means that community members and especially leaders have to roll up their sleeves and pitch in with hard work if it really is going to be a successful community, religious or otherwise.

As I mentioned, I was a member of the management committee of this local community centre in Chorlton for the last ten years. But it entailed a lot of hard work to keep it afloat and make sure it met the needs of the community it served, especially in the last few years when it has been a period of economic stringency and this is always a difficult time for the voluntary sector. Due to cut backs it was always a struggle to raise the money for new projects and indeed keep the core activities afloat.

It is said of society in general, that nowadays people are reluctant to join social clubs; fraternal organisations, volunteer groups and faith communities as they once did and so Individuals are increasingly becoming more isolated and independent ,so, perhaps this is why people are turning to the social media such as facebook etc, and as a result perhaps it will become a difficult time for communities of all types

Next year, our chapel will celebrate its 200th anniversary, having provided a religious community in this town for that period. It has had good periods and it’s not so good periods. Its reason is to be a place of worship based on reason, freedom and tolerance, which is its vision, and because of that it will continue.

The following extract is titled "Community at Unity Church Milwaukee"

Living, as we do, in a world that is very impersonal, it is important to build a network that will support us as we move through passages of our lives. Life as we know it isn’t easy. Nor will it be easier in the future until we recognize we are all members of the same divine family. As for our personal happiness, there are strategies we can employ to alter and alleviate the difficulties we encounter in life. Many of these strategies are to be found at Unity Church and one we advocate strongly is to participate in our spiritual community here at Unity.

How do you define any community? We are all familiar with what is called a functional community, be it either a nuclear family or an extended family since these are already there for us and these are functional communities. But most communities nowadays are intentional communities. So when we speak of building community today we mean an intentional one and this is characterised by sharing one or more common visions and working together to build mutually fulfilling goals and completing these goals

People who belong to intentional communities and indeed the one at this church, stay committed to the community for a significant period of their lives and by so doing, contribute to the wellbeing of the other members.

However it is not always easy to build and sustain a successful community, religious or otherwise. Large individual egos, personal jealousies and rivalries and destructive competitiveness can be demoralising and these need to be overcome. However, the rewards of joining and participating are huge.

There is an old saying, “You only reach God by serving others”. This is also true for a caring religious community.



The following extract is titled "Community and Hospitality£ by Stephen Lingwood Minister at Bank Street Unitarian Chapel Bolton 

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it”. (Hebrews 13:2)


Hospitality is one of the key practices handed to us Unitarians, by the Islamic ¬Judeao-Christian tradition.

One of the key ministries of our Unitarian communities should be the practice of hospitality. We are communities who welcome the weary traveller with open arms. And we welcome the whole person: mind, body and soul. We do not ask anyone to leave any part of themselves at the door. We welcome people with their doubts and beliefs, with their imperfections, whomever they love, wherever they are on their spiritual journey. The only qualification to our welcome is that those who are welcomed, should also welcome others, and should contribute towards the welcoming and loving ethos of the community.

This is our religious mission: to welcome the stranger. There are many ways we do this: by demonstrating a genuine and warm welcome to the visitor at Sunday worship; by making a cup of tea for the homeless man who drops in at an inconvenient moment; by creating community for those who would otherwise be very lonely: the elderly, or international students, or stay-at-home parents.

Such work creates religious community, and it is my belief that such religious communities save the world. Never doubt the power of this mission.

Second reflection

This final reflection was written and delivered by Phil Jackman the chapel's publicity officer

As part of my recent holiday to Morocco we spent a week in the Atlas Mountains.

I thought that a little of the stillness from the mountains would provide an excellent break from the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

However my time in the mountains was to teach me something far more poignant, about today’s subject of community.

The Atlas Mountains are home to the Berber people who carve out a living through a mixture of subsistence farming, tourism and the manufacture of beautiful woollen carpets.

Put in these terms a cynic may judge this way of life as primitive; many of the luxuries we take for granted are absent;

There is no local government as we would recognise it, limited electricity and fresh water. They don’t even have a police station.

However to judge the Berbers on these things alone would be to miss an important lesson.

For I have come to see that society and community are two separate entities.

All of the things the Berbers lack we have provided through an impersonal system of local government. Despite their developmental and societal shortcomings, the Berbers are more than compensated by the intricate bounds which bind them together.

As we walk down the windy irrigated mountain paths through their villages, children run up to greet us, shouting “bonjour” in excited voices through beaming smiles, and offering to high 5 us.

After growing up in a Mancunian suburb this experience is somewhat alien.

It is as if their mothers never told them not to talk to strangers, like mine did. In fact it seemed quite the opposite, as if they were actively encouraged to do it at every opportunity.

By the river which winds through the valley, women laugh and gossip as they wash their clothes in the icy flow, their livestock contentedly grazing close by.

In the village men stand in the square, laughing and talking among themselves.

Life takes a much slower pace here.

The life here is full of time, whereas we often find ourselves struggling to manufacture this elusive entity.

They revel in the limitlessness of their time, whilst we are too often bound by the constraints of our only too limited time.

I suppose the lesson I learnt is that, for me, it can be all too easy to hide behind our impersonal yet functional society, with our technological driven communications.

I learnt that community is not societal security, a reliable health system or even technological and material comfort.

What I am coming to realise is that community is as simple as greeting strangers with a smile and a hello.

Building relationships with our spiritual, geographical and physical neighbours; our fellow travellers in the ship of life.

It is perhaps not without irony that The Beatles asked “where all the lonely people come from”.

I share with them their confusion; babies are not born lonely, quite often exactly the opposite.

Due to this, people must become lonely.

I have learnt that the opposite of loneliness is the sense of belonging which is provided by community, whether it be religious, geographical, physical or through shared interest.

However I have also learned that for community to be successful it is as much about giving as it is taking.

If chaos theory suggests that the clip of a butterflies wings can cause an earthquake half way around the world, then surely a smile is enough to break a person out of the binding constraints of loneliness.

If only for a few seconds.

After my experience in the mountains, I am coming to see that community, at its most basic origin is about courage.

About having the courage to be open to strangers.

About having the courage to be present in others lives.

About having the courage to look life in the eye, smile and say hello, perhaps even ask how it is.

Who knows where that may lead… 

Closing word

As we leave this sanctuary

may the holy music linger in our ears.

May the poetry of the spoken word stay in our minds.

May our spirits remain uplifted

May our lives be blessed.

Mind Your Language

This is the third in a series of pieces I have written on religion

I was recently driving with Derek Brown chairman of one of congregations I serve. I enjoy travelling with Derek it gives me a chance to listen to him. One advantage of driving with people, I have discovered is that I tend to say very little and listen a lot. During the journey he mentioned a telephone conversation he had with the curate at the local Parish church. She was curious to know what exactly a Unitarian is? What they believe in? What they don’t believe in? We chatted about this for a while. Due to the fact I was driving and therefore not really able to talk as freely as I can the answer I gave was pretty vague and fairly evasive. I did not give him a firm straight answer.

It is a good question to ponder though. How do I articulate my faith? There is no easy answer to this. Unlike the Anglicans we do not have a creed to subscribe to. Quite the opposite we say ours is a religion without a creed. One of our cries is “Deeds not Creeds”. A lot the publicity I’ve recently seen declares “one faith, many beliefs”. Both statements speak powerfully to me. I have no desire to be part of a community which tells me what I must believe and what I must not believe. That said my faith must mean something, otherwise it just becomes the empty meaningless vessel that some folk accuse it of being.

Like many folk throughout the world I love the tv series “The Simpsons” It has a wonderful way of communicating to a wide range of people, at many levels. This is why it is so popular. I discovered a few years ago that its creator, Matt Groening, is himself a Unitarian. Religion is explored, along with all aspects of life in the program and Unitarianism rears its head every now and again. It is poked fun at. There are no sacred cows in the Simpsons, except perhaps in Apu’s home. In one episode the church pastor Rev Lovejoy offers the Simpson children a bowl of Unitarian ice cream. When one of the children replies that the bowl is empty his response is that this is the point. The bowl is empty.

This is the point an empty bowl. He is saying there is nothing in it. It is an empty vessel which will not feed or sustain you. Now I don’t believe and have certainly not found this to be true, but it is certainly how others view my faith. Why is this? Well I believe it is because we find it hard to articulate exactly what our faith is about. We can say what it isn’t far more easily, but find it hard to say what we are really about. I know I do.

Language is so very important but it is limited. We all use it differently. When we use words like God, spirituality, soul, religion, prayer, worship are we all talking about the same thing? Or are we more like the blind men trying to discover what an elephant is? I’m not convinced that when we use these words we are all talking about exactly the same thing, it really depends which part of the elephant we are holding. I think that perhaps the fundamentalists both of religion and atheism are but they are just a small proportion of the population. It seems that the rest of us are using these words in different contexts and different ways. Personally I see nothing wrong in that. It is honest no two people see the same thing in exactly the same way. I do not believe that anyone has the right to claim ownership of language. We should never be afraid to express what is true to us.

Of course some Unitarians would prefer our faith to let go of religious language all together. They claim that there is too much baggage that comes with it. How do we overcome this hurdle that causes so many shutters to go down in most ordinary folk when they hear words like God and soul and prayer etc? We can’t simply avoid this language. Many have tried to do so in the past and it is this I believe that has led to the accusation that we are an empty vessel and that there is nothing in our faith. This is not true. We are a genuine and open faith, but one which does not subscribe to creedal statements.

So what exactly is it that holds a Unitarian community together with a network of other communities in this country and throughout the world? And how do we articulate that to other folk out there? How do we get our message across to those people who think that to be in religious community must mean that you have to subscribe and adhere to a certain set of beliefs and practices?

The honest answer is I don’t know. I’m not sure any of us know.

I know that does not sound very helpful and sounds a bit like an empty ice cream tub or just plain evasion.

Is this true? I do not believe so I actually think it’s an honest and dare I say humble starting point. By surrendering to the fact that I don’t have the full and complete answer, I believe I can find the room within myself and encourage that space in others to seek out those answers. This enables dialogue, open and honest dialogue. It encourages folk to ask the questions of themselves and each other, what it means to be people of faith? To be people who come together in a free religious community that is not told what it must believe about life, the universe and everything.

I need to always remember why I joined my first Unitarian community. I came to make sense and explore. Not sure I’ve achieve the making sense bit, but I have found freedom to explore and as a result I have experienced far more than I could ever have imagined or even wished for. Something I could never have achieved on my own by reading or by sitting under a tree and meditating. There is something very powerful about coming together in open relationship. 

To me this is essence of religion.

I am going to end this little chip of a blog with some words by Rainer Maria Rilke

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the question themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."