A letter from a new member

I am posting a letter I received (with permission) from a relatively new attender at my Unitarian congregation in north London. She has come to us after years of trying to find her place in the Church of England. Now, she travels two hours to get to us, passing by a vast number of Anglican and other churches along the way.

My pledge today is to do all I can to make the author's vision of New Unity increasingly real...

I had a thoroughly inspiring time today - thank you. I'm looking forward to the 3 facets course and to coming to services whenever I can. 

The journey itself is becoming something I enjoy - it gives me 2 hours of reading time- and I am looking forward to what will happen when I get to you, as there is usually something to challenge, inspire, move or enthral me, and sometimes all of these at once! 

People here keep asking me what it is that makes you so different to normal church that I'm willing and keen to travel this distance for it, when I constantly refuse to go to regular church services.To answer this would require an essay! But words like 'freedom' 'space' 'encouragement' 'respect' 'vision' 'energy' 'a sense of adventure' 'trusting people' 'belief in goodness' and a hopeful mood of 'we can' all convey what your community says to me.
Though Jesus is seldom mentionned, I find more of his spirit amongst you than I ever did in 20 years of attending an Anglican church. 

I like and respect everybody I have so far met and talked to in your community; they are all so intelligent and caring and thoughtful, and a privilege to know. I can honestly say that I have never before felt this in any church, and it is a healing experience for me, restoring something that got broken and jaded through disappointment and disillusion. 

Your leadership is in such a contrast to the paternalistic and often suffocating authority of priests, who treat their congregation like children. It feels like all things are possible here; that everyone has faith - in themselves and eachother - and that nobody is afraid to take that first brave step on a long journey towards a better society. 

I think that the only reason your church isn't packed on Sundays is that people don't like 'church'. That word gives the wrong idea and puts people off. Your community is nothing much like any church I've ever been to in my entire life, and that is its strength and 'selling point'. We need to spread this around. Something very good is going on here and a lot more people should come in and benefit from it...

Should worship entertain?

In a 2010 paper on UU Worship, Mike Mallory asks us to consider the value of "entertainment" in worship services:

...we should be willing to include “entertainment” as a purpose in the Sunday morning experience. Entertainment is not a religious function. Then again, while community building is a secular function, it is vitally important for a religious community... 

The term “entertainment” is often viewed as cheap or superficial... However, if asked to name your favorite film or play, the answer, I suspect, will include a work of artistic merit, which produced insights into the human condition in a way, which was engaging, dramatic and memorable. “Entertainment” is not an antonym for “Authentic.” 

...evangelical mega-churches are serious about entertainment. I hesitate to point this out, because I am certainly not suggesting that entertainment in a UU congregation look like the entertainment that happens in an evangelical mega-church. Nevertheless, I am claiming that the presentation of the Sunday morning experience in UU congregations should be entertaining.  

Entertainment can be serious or lighthearted, tragic or comic, emotional or conceptual. Entertainment is a way of planning a presentation by focusing on the quality of recipient’s experience. Entertainment may not make a message more important, but it can make the recipient more engaged and the message more memorable. An entertaining message can inspire people to commit their time and energy into social justice, allow people to understand the inner reality of someone very different or lead a person into a moment of ecstatic presence...

Mallory goes on to question the typical UU anti-entertainment rationale and dares to suggest that our reasons may be more like excuses for an unwillingness to tackle the hard work of creating worship entertaining enough to reach the modern, plugged-in, worshipper:

I believe there is a sentiment that religion in general and Unitarian Universalism in particular should rise above the profane of entertainment and that a UU minister who stands and delivers a sermon, plainly and unplugged, is a living testament to honesty, genuineness and authenticity. I believe this sentiment springs from a naïve mythology and conveniently excuses the hard work of reimagining the Sunday morning experience. 

I find myself persuaded by Mallory's argument. The form of our worship should be among the transient elements of our faith, but has tended to be treated more like the permanent! In fact, the deep, permanent, elements of our faith may be ineffective because we fail to embed them in a form that touches people as and where they are.

What arises for me is not at all a feeling of revulsion at the concept of "entertaining worship", but a deep discomfort about my own inadequacy for the task and the lack of resources at my disposal.

I would love to hear how others engage with these ideas...

Top ten tips to find meaning and contentment in life

When I reached what felt to be about the middle of my life, it finally hit. No, I really would *not* live forever! There would be no exception made in my case and a time would come when I neared the end of my days and thought back over my life with one question in mind: "How have I lived the one and only life I was given?"

I realized then that "I sure attended a lot of meetings" or "I really helped make a lot of rich folks richer" or "I got the nice house and the nice car I wanted" were not answers that would satisfy. I realized that I wanted a life that was meaningful, purposeful, and connected. I think we all do.  Here are the 10 easy [not really] ways to have the life that will allow you to live and leave your life with satisfaction:

1. Strive to appreciate every bit of beauty, kindness, good fortune, and warmth you can find
   It is far easier to complain about what's wrong but it makes you far happier and nicer to be with if you are a person that is grateful for everything. If you can rejoice in a good cup of tea, you will be happy often.
2. Assume the best of people
   You may be wrong sometimes, but expecting the worst makes you fearful and shrivels your soul. Expecting the best often brings out the best in others around you - it is a gift that blesses them and you.
3. Don't play it safe all the time
   Take some risks with your life. It is better to have tried and failed than to carry deep regrets in your vocation, your avocation, your connections, or your love.
4. Persevere
   Nothing worthwhile comes without effort including growth, change, skills, learning, and especially the strength of relationships. If you give up at everything that does not come easily, you will have nothing worthwhile.
5. Give generously with your heart, your hands, and your wallet
   In serving others, we soften our often hard isolated selves and become part of the larger whole.
6. Remember every day that your life is precious
   Can you really afford to waste this day?
7. Let yourself be vulnerable 
   Love can be both exquisitely wonderful and exquisitely painful. We can't have the former without risking - and often suffering - the latter.
8. Don't take yourself too seriously - laugh!
   Laugh at yourself, your situation, and the whole tragedy of life. Take it all seriously and it will crush you. Take it lightly and you may find burdens floating away like clouds.
9. Have fun - it's not a crime
   If you have only one life to live, must you really spend it being serious all the time? 
10. Forgive easily
    Carrying anger harms both you and the target of your resentment. If it is possible, let it go.

No, they are not easy. Every one of these takes work and takes practice. That's life!

What business is your congregation in?

My background is in business. One important question for businesses - a question which, when answered unwisely, has meant the demise of many businesses - is this "What business are you in?"

In the US, there was once a massive and thriving ice business. The clever and industrious organizations in this industry harvest ice from fresh water sources in the winter and stored it until the warmer weather when it would be delivered to households around the US - and even overseas - where it would be used to keep food from spoiling in the heat. There was, of course, no mechanical refrigeration at the time.

When refrigeration was invented and began to be commercialized, it was not initially the smooth, quiet, reliable, and adjustable appliances we now know.

It was noisy. It was large. It was very expensive. It was easy for the ice producers to laugh it off as no threat.

Of course, refrigeration began to improve. And as refrigeration improved and become more competitive, the ice producers had to respond. They did so by finding ever better, more effective ways to harvest and store ice. They invented great equipment for transporting and cutting blocks of ice. They developed every more efficient ways of insulating the ice in storage.  They were certain of one thing - they were in the ICE BUSINESS and they needed to remain competitive.

Well, you know the end of this story. You are unlikely to run into someone at a cocktail party today who proudly announces "I am in the ice harvesting business." Refrigeration won.

The ice business was successful in continuing to improve what they did in the face of the threat from refrigeration. They failed to make a key shift however that could have made them business titans still today.

They concluded that they were in the ICE BUSINESS rather than the COOLING BUSINESS.

What business is your congregation in?

Many congregations would produce answers to this question that reflect what they do today - such things as sermons and hymns, committee meetings, church buildings, members, pledges, organ music. They have been so resistant to change that I can only guess that they firmly believe these ways of doing things to be their "business."

What business is your congregation in?

Is it not in the "life transformation" business? The "meaning-making and purpose-finding" business? The "gratitude-building, connection-revealing, justice-seeking" business?

If we come to these kinds of answers and we begin to think beyond our equivalent of the ice business, how then do we do things differently?

Look around your world. Who is doing your business well? They may be at early stages and still be noisy and inefficient, but this may be tomorrow's sleek stainless steel refrigerator!

What business is your congregation in?

The answer to that question and your response to it will determine the fate of your congregation.

Top ten tips for congregations that don't like change

Judging from the behaviour of congregations of many faiths here in the UK and elsewhere, there is a strong desire to avoid growth and vitality. As you know, I am ever obliging, so I want to offer such congregations a few tips to really make sure they are headed quickly to their goal of irrelevance and a slow conversion to historic relic status...

1. Be sure to consider the tastes and needs only of existing members when planning
2. Subject any new idea to tremendous scrutiny and give all members a veto - let old ways and programmes continue indefinitely
3. Have more committees than you can possibly manage and make sure they talk a lot and do little - people just love committee work
4. Let existing members be as disruptive as they like, but criticize newcomers for the slightest foibles
5. All concerns and disagreements should be addressed by talking behind peoples' backs
6. It is always a bad idea to spend any accumulated funds - money is for saving
7. Don't ask members to give generously to the congregations
8. Make sure you keep expectations of commitment to the congregation as low as possible
9. Hide the building as best you can and keep things in poor repair - you want to make it look like it went out of business years ago. "The smell doesn't bother us, why should it bother anyone else?"
10. If new people turn up, make it clear to them that they will be considered "new" for at least five years and will be welcome to have a say in "how we do things here" after ten, but they will always be considered new if they are not just like "us"

A Unitarian Ten Commandments?

It was not the Biblical 10 commandments that got me thinking about this. In fact, I've always thought that a lot of the Bible's big 10 have become either so obvious or irrelevant or even offensive that they need a great deal of reinterpretation to be at all useful. (George Carlin's dissection of the 10 commandments is always worth revisiting!) A few thoughts on the 10:

• Honour your father and mother - how about honouring everyone? What about abusive parents?
• Have no other gods before me - that's what ALL the gods say!
• Do not take the lord's name in vain - oh, for god's sake...
• Do not make any images or likenesses - has been pretty well ignored from day one
• Do not swear falsely - this is not strictly about lying, only about lying when you swear in god's name...

But it has been discussion in the Introduction to World Religions class I've been leading that has made me think more seriously. In particular, it was the Buddhist take on ethical rules that struck me for it's clarity that the rules are intended for personal transformation. The fact that these come not as commandments from on high, but rather as a system for becoming enlightened raises the interest for me. (I am not saying that there is anything wrong with rules for living in society - I'm a big believer in the importance of laws!) 

This led to an attraction to the idea of a Unitarian set of ethical guidelines - something that the class has begun to discuss at least briefly.

A quick Google search showed me that Rev. Michael McGee of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington VA was way ahead of me with his 2010 sermon series on A Renewed Ten Commandments.

In my proposed list of commandments below, (ten, of course!) I have borrowed and adapted from McGee. I have also taken a cue from the theology of Henry Nelson Wieman, and taken a great deal from my own congregation's input in a recent service where we explored the ethical foundations of our actions in the world and participants wrote their own short suggestions for the underpinnings of their best action.

For discussion, I offer the following. They have not been inscribed in stone tablets. They have no miraculous origin except for the not inconsiderable miracle of the human mind and heart!

A Unitarian Ten Commandments

We will strive to:

1. understand the original experience of others
2. treat each person gently and with respect
3. take care of the earth and its creatures
4. speak the truth with honesty and respect
5. act with and work for justice
6. value meaning over materialism and life over things
7. cultivate appreciation for all of life’s gifts
8. give generously
9. cultivate joy and wonder
10. be slow to anger and quick to forgive

A whole life

If I were to summarize what I understand to be the most faithful way of living, it is to "embrace life whole."  I mean to say that the world is a very messy place - not in any sense the stuff of sit-coms and other fairy tales. 

Our lives are sometimes beautiful and sometimes terrible. Sometimes life treats us with apparent kindness and generosity and other times it seems we can't catch a break. Even so, being complete and living fully means being present to all of this - the joys, the sorrows, the births, the deaths... everything. Holding back from any one aspect of life creates distance - not only from what we wish to avoid - but from everything.

Three weeks ago, my mother died. Hers was not a death that could easily be dismissed with "she suffered so - she is finally at peace."  My mother, though in her late seventies, was vibrant, energetic, mentally sharp, and physically fit - fit except for a heart valve that had leaked for decades and was now becoming worse, leaving her short of breath. It was time to have that repaired so that she could have a shot at another decade or two of the kind of vibrant living to which she was accustomed and committed.  A botched surgical valve replacement led not to a better quality of life, but to her death after three very bad months.

Well, here it is. The storms have come again to my life. The emotions swirl like cows, bicycles, and houses in some enormous Kansas tornado: 

Flying by over there is my sadness - a feeling of loss - an aching in my gut for all the things I will never be able to say, for the phone calls that will never come, for the moments when I think how pleased she will be at some bit of news and realize that I will never be able to share it with her and hear and see her enthusiasm.

And my anger goes whipping past the window now - a surgeon who couldn't be bothered to visit his failing patient in her suffering goes on making his fortune through a rushed series of surgeries that are not always as careful as he advertises. (A subsequent surgeon discovered that the first operation was badly botched in several ways). I want some kind of apology, if not full out vengeance!

Oh no!  There goes my compassion for her husband - my step-father - who is too deep in dementia to be able to cope with this, but sadly, not deep enough to be unaware of the tragedy that has befallen him. He weeps and I comfort him. 

But it is not only the debris of misery swirling around in this great wind. Over here is the love and support I feel from so very many people - people who come and call and write and email and make their care visible. It is a warmth and a sense of connection that has become to feel so much stronger in sorrow than in better times.

And over there is the joy of the deepening of my bonds to my family - the bereaved. I am especially grateful for the way suffering has brought a deeper connection with my beloved sister. Together, we cry and laugh our way through darkness into light.

And there are the memories that float past whenever I take a moment to look... With a sense of any true life after death coming to me only in my most sentimental moments, the life that continues is what we carry in our minds and hearts. My mother brought a tremendous love and energy and connection and beauty to her world. I know that I can carry these wonderful facets of her life with me for the rest of mine.

On and on the harsh and gentle winds of life blow. We spin and swirl. We laugh and cry. We live and die.

Mary Oliver asks "...what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

Live it. Live it fully and wholly.