U+ A Unitarian way of life

Please note that a few changes and updates have been made to this plan and these can be found on the New Unity web site here.  Other resources:

• U+ Facebook group for mutual support and exploration in following U+
• U+ worksheet for your practice plans and commitments: PDF, RTF, ODT, DOCX

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What follows is an early version of a project that I have been working on with a dedicated member of my congregation. We have both noted in ourselves and others a desire for a more rigorous way of living as a Unitarian (or Unitarian Universalist). This is what we've come up with so far. We would love to hear your comments and suggestions. 

I do want to emphasize again and again that THIS IS NOT FOR EVERYONE! If you don't want to do it, that's fine. Our hope is for it to be a strengthening and enlivening path that suits only a minority of people. That doesn't mean we don't want comments however. It means that we are not keen to ease this in a way where it becomes toothless and excessively vague - the very challenges it is meant to address!

Please note: I know that Unitarians and Unitarian Universalists will be tempted to modify this to suit themselves and/or their congregations. YPlou are, of course, free to do that. If you modify the programme, please do not use the name 'U+' for it. I ask this solely because I hope that a network of mutually supportive U+ groups might eventually emerge. This will be stymied if U+ is significantly different in different places. 

A worksheet is now available to facilitate your U+ practice. Click here.

Click here for the U+ followers and explorers Facebook mutual support group

U+

A rigorous Unitarian spiritual path

Preamble

Unitarianism is a faith that embraces a very broad range of people. The inclusiveness of our faith is one of its great strengths; there is a place for everyone of open heart and mind to find an appropriate path and to journey together, supported and loved in community

One of the concerns often heard in such diverse communities is that it can be hard to find a deeper, more rigorous path - that the diversity has a tendency to keep people at a broad but somewhat superficial level.

U+ is intended to address that specific concern and provide a deeper, more disciplined path for those who desire it.

As such, U+ is not for everyone! It is not expected to appeal to most Unitarians. It is for those who have surveyed the worlds of religion and spirituality and are prepared to make a more exacting way of living their faith.

U+ is not a club or a badge to be won. We envision that U+ groups might form in some congregations to support those on the U+ path. Networking between U+ groups would further support U+ followers. Individual groups may choose their own approaches to determining group membership; they may be open to all who wish to join or the group may choose to impose some kind of criteria for group membership based on adherence to U+ practices. In all cases, we would strongly urge that group membership involves a commitment to the practice and to one another.

The authors of this plan offer it freely to Unitarianism. We hope that it helps to provide a unique depth path within our faith’s rich diversity.

Teachings

1. Embrace life whole: The Sacred or Divine, the Precious and Profound, are made evident, not only in the extraordinary events of our lives, but in the simple and the everyday;  The best way to live is to strive to embrace life fully - engaging our spirits with all of the highs and lows life naturally brings
2. Potential for goodness: There is goodness in each of us. It can be helped to grow in communities of mutual love, acceptance, and support
3. There is no complete answer: The universe is too grand to be encompassed in any one perspective or truth. Freedom of belief and diversity of perspective are thus to be treasured and encouraged.
4. Seek relationship: Relationship between us and with other beings is our primary teacher of how to be fully human. Through the support and the challenges of communication and interchange, we grow toward our potential.
5. That which is sacred everywhere: The sacred in life is everywhere, including within each of us. It emerges in relationship and is most evident in our love. In striving to bring forth the sacred wherever it may be found, we serve all beings.
6. Wisdom is everywhere: Wisdom has been uncovered by many people in many different times and traditions. The wise person searches broadly and is open to many influences.
7. We are one: We are interconnected and interdependent beings - part of a greater unity of which we are usually unaware. We must seek an appreciation of our deep interdependence and relatedness.
8. Justice: We are obligated by our unity and our love to work for a more just world where each person has an opportunity to fulfill their potential.

Central Practices

1. Dietary responsibility: Adopt a just and compassionate diet.(1)
2. Responsible consumption: Adopt a just and compassionate approach to sourcing clothing, goods and resources.(2)
3. Reduce impact: Be kind to the earth and others by recycling, reducing waste, sharing and donating the goods we have
4. Generosity: Help the wider community

                 a.  donate generously to charitable causes (3)
                 b.  engage in social action or social justice, on an ongoing basis (4)

5. Community: Join a Unitarian congregation  
1. attend services and other events regularly
2. gIve generously of your time and talents to cultivate the community
3. financially support the community and its programmes
6. Serve your community: Take on service roles in your congregational community (5)
7. Care for your physical self: Adopt a wholesome lifestyle, avoiding substances and practices that would injure you or lessen your abilities and seeking those that strengthen.(6)
8. Exploration in relationship: Belong to (or lead) at least one ongoing congregational small group each year that gathers regularly for mutual support and spiritual growth
9. Individual exploration: Actively and deliberately examine your beliefs and values
1. Work on a course or programme such as ‘building your own theology’
2. Work on unpacking problematic ideas, angst, or frustrations individually, within a group.
10. Spiritual practice: Adopt one or more daily spiritual practices (7)
11. Annual renewal time: For two or more consecutive weeks each year live a more disciplined spiritual life, preferably with others in your community. This may include spiritual practices, charity work, and adhering to extra dietary restrictions.
12. Pilgrimage: Take on an immersive experience in the world at least once every five years. This may serve as a ‘pilgrimage’ to a ‘spiritual site.’ (8)

Footnotes:
(1) This practice, which calls us to make ethical decisions in the food we consume, may be observed in many ways. For some, it will involve a vegetarian, vegan, or pescatarian diet. For others, purchasing only ethically-sourced meat and other food may be a viable option. The range of options is very broad, including freeganism, fruitarian, etc.

(2) This means to avoid products that are produced through cruelty or exploitation or that are destructive of the environment. Examples of this practice would include using Fair-Trade and products and to avoid any products whose purchase encourages or supports worker exploitation

(3) We consider the Muslim requirement of giving 2.5% of accumulated net worth annually to be a fair and generally feasible goal. The objects of your giving should include your Unitarian community.

(4) As a guideline, try to devote at least 70 hours per year to social justice/social action work.

(5) There are many ways in which this practice may be carried out. For example, consider roles as recognised service readers, chalice lighters, storytellers, team-leader/members, hospitality, care-giving, and nurturing and mentoring others

(6) Moderation in drink and food are recommended. Other examples include avoiding smoking, drugs, and excessive sun exposure, and adopting a sensible programme of physical exercise.

(7) Spiritual disciplines are essential to spiritual and personal growth. Among the many ways to carry out this practice are meditation or prayer, mindfulness practices, and cultivating compassion. It is strongly recommended that time is set aside as a ‘protected’ space in the day for spiritual practice.

(8) Note that a ‘spiritual site’ need not be one recognised by others as ‘spiritual’ nor need it require a long physical journey to reach.

Being wrong as a spiritual practice

Failure! Oh, that is a bad word. "You failed" seems like one of the most deflating things we can hear. When I was a laboratory scientist, failure was part of the game. Everything was an experiment. Sometimes things were successful and sometimes they failed. That's just how it works.

In other parts of our lives, trying and failing just seems much worse than not trying at all.

Over at Ministrare, my colleague Sean Dennison wrote recently about human fallibility and forgiveness.  He describes something that all of us probably see in organizations (and feel in ourselves) too often - the fear of making mistakes:

I’ve watched people, committees, and whole congregations become paralyzed by this anxiety.   I’ve seen ideas that were destroyed by an almost compulsive need to imagine every possible thing that could go wrong and try to figure out how to avoid them all.

His take on it is that Unitarians are more afraid to make mistakes than others and that this comes down to theology. He chalks this up to the Unitarian move away from certain aspects of Christianity:

when we moved away from orthodox Christian theologies of sin and redemption, we gave up the stories, theology, and practices of forgiveness as well.

I could not agree more that the fear of making mistakes is paralyzing. It is destructive of trust and prevents the formation of truly authentic relationships within congregations. It prevents us from growing and learning because growth always means stretching and trying something new.

I’m not convinced, though, that a strong theology of sin makes anyone less susceptible to this sort of thing. I haven't seen a lot of conservative Christians coming up to me lately to say "sorry - I was wrong." Quite the contrary. So if orthodox Christian belief is a key to being more willing to be wrong, there must not be many true orthodox Christians - ones who really, really believe the teachings of their faith (and that is certainly very possible.)

I'm not even sure that this fear of mistakes is so much a particularly Unitarian (or non-Christian) thing as it is a 21st century, mean old work-a-day world thing. It is part of the materialistic tool kit required for “success” in the regular world. People have bosses and want to get ahead. You get ahead by being right - even if you're wrong. People don’t just drop that ethos when they walk into church (unfortunately).

A minister - or anyone in a position of influence - has some opportunity to change that at least a bit. The most effective approach is modeling. If I admit when I'm wrong - often and loudly - and show that the world does not come to a sudden end, it may make members of my congregation more willing to do the same. And, if we can accept that failure is not a disaster, we become more willing to try new things. So what if it doesn't work? We'll never know unless we try.  (One more experienced colleague advised me to make deliberate mistakes and then admit them!)

Sean's post got me thinking about something else though. I'm very focused on spiritual practice at the moment and especially thinking about non-traditional practices.

We know that needing to be right is destructive of relationships and communities. We know it makes us timid and defensive. What if - as a spiritual practice - we make a point of finding something we are (or were) wrong about and admitting it. First, admit it ourselves, but under the condition that we are going to be accepting and gentle about it. "I put too much salt in the hummus." And my response: "So what! The Queen's not coming for dinner tonight!" 

And then maybe admit it to a person you trust. Start small: "you know, it turns out I was wrong about dolphins just being gay sharks.* Oops!" See what happens...  If it's not a disaster, then maybe we can learn that we don't actually have to be right all the time.

One of the central notions of spiritual growth is putting aside the stuff that distracts us from authenticity, connection, and wholeness. It's not about creating something new, but about cultivating and revealing what is already present - although fragile or obscured.  If we learn that have to be right all the time, maybe that helps us to put aside the overriding ego thing just a bit

For this week, I think I'll give this a try and find something every day to be wrong about!  Anyone else willing to give it a go?

To begin for today, I was wrong to buy that Tesco 'value' paper shredder. Although it was cheap, it keeps jamming all the time. I should have spent more to get something more reliable.

Oh, I was wrong ignoring the half and half brown and green composting rule too. the compost is getting stinky.

And while I'm at it, the readings I chose for the service today were no better than just OK...

Now, let's see if the sky falls!

*Glee reference

Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo spirituality

I have developed a problem shopping in large stores. It's simply that I am overwhelmed by an excess of choice. I remember being in the toothpaste section in a one of the big American supermarkets. I just wanted toothpaste - simple ordinary toothpaste - for tooth brushing. You know? Nothing special please! There had to be a good 25 feet of toothpastes. Toothpaste for tartar, toothpaste for fresh breath, toothpaste to whiten and brighten. Toothpaste with fluoride, toothpaste with mouthwash, and toothpaste with special unnamed magical ingredients that would surely win you the partner of your dreams. If that choice of contents weren't enough, you have to choose between tubes, gels, pastes, pumps, drops...  and everything comes in five or six different sizes. Oh no! How can I make the 'right' choice? So many options! Help!

As I recall, I had to be rescued from the toothpaste aisle and led gently but firmly to a small mom-and-pop store that only sold two kinds of toothpaste. Done!

Now, when I shop in any large store, I remember to bring one of the most important childhood decision making tools with me: the ancient wisdom of eeny, meeny, miny, mo...  It never fails.

In some ways, spiritual practice is like shopping for toothpaste. If you are a strict _____ [fill in the blank with the religion of your choice], your path is constrained and proscribed. Simple. Just like the mom-and-pop store. You can choose between two kinds of prayer. Easy enough...

If, however, you are seeking spiritual growth outside of a traditional religious structure [Unitarians included here], you are in the mega-market toothpaste aisle! You have too many choices and, like me, you may go into the overstimulation daze and choose nothing. You don't meditate because it might be better to pray, or to do yoga, or to take a walk in the park, or or or or or...

Just like the toothpaste though, there really is no right answer. Eeny meeny miny mo is not a bad way to approach the problem. The truth is that any reasonable spiritual practice will help.

Why? Because spiritual growth depends always on being present, noticing, being mindful, being connected. However you describe it, this quality of awareness is the foundation upon which everything else in the spiritual life is built. You can't notice the sacredness of life if you are not aware. You can't detect the divinity in each person if you never look in that special, deliberate way that requires slowing and focusing. You can't detect the 'still small voice' if you can't stop long enough and listen intently enough to hear.

My advice: Just pick one and start.

Yes, different practices will help in somewhat different ways. After eeny, meeny, miny, mo takes you a certain distance, you may become aware that what you need now is something that is more physical, more focused, more people-oriented, more humbling, more emotional, more intellectual, or more creative. That wisdom will emerge once you are on the path. The key is to get started.

Often incorrectly credited to Goethe, but no less important if another author is responsible, are these words:

Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!

Nothing could be more true of your spiritual journey. Get started, even if your choice depends on the wisdom of eeny, meeny, miny, mo.

In praise of bigness

Vision matters. It is as simple as the fact that we can't get anywhere unless we have some idea where we want to go. Even though our destination will very likely end up different from the end we had envisioned, it still takes the vision to get us there!

I have a vision for my congregation. While the congregation has begun to cast a vision as a community, that work has, thus far, been at an abstract level - something like the vision for a car being 'fast' rather than 'a turbo-charged V8 so it can do 0 to 60 in 1.2 seconds.'  The elaboration of these high level visions needs to happen. In the meantime, my own vision continues to come gradually into focus.

The congregation is growing fast. We added 22 new members over the past year on top of a membership of 60-70. There is always turnover and we lost six people in the same time period. [don't worry - they're not actually lost, just moved on or away]  Thus, we grew by about 24% this year. It was similar the year before and the year before that.

If we continue on at this rate of growth, we could be 200 members in four years.

[Readers in the US: please note that everything in British Unitarianism is much smaller than you'd expect. You can generally divide US numbers by 10 to get a good estimate. About 5% of the population overall attends church regularly. Unitarian congregations average 15 members. Annual meetings include about 400 people. The largest Unitarian congregation in England has fewer than two hundred members.]

Is this growth a good thing? I think it's fantastic. I think so first because my sense of mission tells me that it is our moral responsibility to welcome people into a community that we have found so transformative. [Thanks to Peter Morales for the framing around an ethical obligation.] Thus, the fact that we are growing means we are doing the work we should be doing to help others and help the world.

I think it's wonderful also because of my vision for the congregation. My vision involves bigness - big bigness even! Why?

A Unitarian congregation is a very different beast from any other. Our ethos is to gather together people with very different viewpoints and perspectives - all under the same roof - and we believe that the intimate encounter with difference helps us all to grow in perspective, awareness, wisdom, and openness. We also recognize that different people can and probably should take different paths toward wholeness and meaning. What helps one grow more connected, centred, and deeply human is not necessarily right for another.

It takes big numbers to offer an environment with the variety of perspectives, influences, and experiences that can support a real diversity of paths. A very small congregation is able to provide very little more than Sunday services and the occasional social gathering. The truth is that - however good a preacher you've got - it is not possible to provide spiritual experiences in that setting that are both deep and broad. Thus, the small congregation has to choose between deep but narrow and broad but shallow - not a particularly appealing choice for a religious movement with aims such as ours.

With increasing numbers, we begin to be able to offer more programming and we naturally have the likelihood of including more diversity in their membership. We can begin to offer depth in more directions and support people along individual paths in a way that worship services simply can not do.

My vision is of a congregation big enough and diverse enough to offer breadth and depth. In this vision congregation, each person is introduced in worship and through discussion with others to a very broad array of perspectives. It is then immediately possible to drop into a wide variety of groups that are actively engaged in depth exploration in many different traditions, practices, and ways of being.

I imagine ten to twenty spirituality groups taking place at any one time. They may explore traditional and non-traditional paths. Some will tend more toward instruction and others more toward exploration. Some will be short-term and others will be ongoing established groups.  All will involve mutual support and the opportunity for authentic connection. Some people may remain in one group for many years as they settle into a path or practice that seems right for them. Others may move between groups more rapidly, as they continue to explore and also to change as their own needs change.

How big is big? I imagine that with 500 members [I hear gasps on this side of the Atlantic and yawns on the other], the potential is there to have depth in a very broad range of directions and approaches.

Of course, beyond the breadth and depth opportunities, such numbers bring many other blessings. A congregation of this size can easily support substantial programmes for children and youth, it can sustain support groups for a wide variety of needs, can have significant staff to specialize in different areas, can mount meaningful social action and social justice efforts, and can be a very significant voice for inclusiveness and justice in the larger community.

Yes, this vision is completely out of scale with what is currently happening in British Unitarianism. But, then again, everything that my congregation has done has gone dramatically against the flow...  That's how we like it!