Belief's Wide Skirt

Today a friend posted a wonderful quotation from Toni Morrison on Facebook:

image by quotepixel.com

 

"For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul."

And it occurs to me that this is what ministry (and religion) should be about. It isn't about telling people what they should believe, or frightening them with bogey-stories about what will happen to them if they don't subscribe to a particular creed or ethical viewpoint. It should be about sharing our own authentic beliefs ("what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light") with courage and honesty, so that others may do likewise.

This is why freedom of belief is so important to Unitarians (and to other religious liberals, such as Quakers). We believe that everyone has the right to seek truth and meaning for themselves, and that the final authority for this is the still, small voice of your own conscience. So within the Unitarian community, belief does indeed have a wide skirt, and the best thing that we can do for ourselves and for each other is to share our authentic beliefs in a supportive community that encourages questions and doubts, so long as they are real.

Trusting the System

It has been an eventful week! On Wednesday, my children-no-longer-children and I spent the day at Alton Towers, enjoying a last family day out together before they both go off to university this weekend.

And I was persuaded by my daughter to have a go on the new attraction, a fourteen-loop rollercoaster called The Smiler. From the ground it looked terrifying. But, not wanting to appear a wuss, and not wanting to disappoint her, I joined the queue, which lasted for 50 minutes. During that period, I had plenty of time to regret my decision, as we could watch the ride from below, and people were spending a lot of time upside down, from what I could see. My stomach was full of butterflies, and I really wasn't happy.

image: dailymail.co.uk

Then our turn came. The harness was secured and the ride - which lasted nearly three minutes, which is quite long for a rollercoaster - began.

And yes, I was frightened. As we looped over and under, and round and round I had oodles of time to wonder what would happen if something broke. The only thing that got me through without screaming was the mantra "Trust the system." In other words, I realised that at a place like Alton Towers, safety is paramount, and this was a new ride, which would be maintained to the highest standards. And that therefore I was Quite Safe and in No Danger At All.

And the recognition at the end that the fear is generally worse than the reality, and that I had survived.

This recognition is holding me in good stead now, as I help the children to pack their worldly belongings, in preparation for their departures for university - my daughter on Saturday, my son on Sunday - both freshers. I am, of course, thrilled and delighted that both of them have got into their first choice of uni, and am so happy for them as they start a new phase in their lives.

But my goodness, I'm going to miss them. And of course I'm going to worry about them endlessly in the early days. But I'm hanging on to the knowledge that I can only give them two things - roots to grow and wings to fly (to coin a cliché). And that like when I was on the rollercoaster, I need to trust the system, and have faith that their future reality will be life-enhancing and good, and that I will survive missing them, and look forward to them coming home full of stories about their new lives.

And I know that I am so very lucky - I won't be alone - my beloved husband and cat will still be here. My new reality will be quieter, but not lonely. So I give thanks.

The Sum of All Our Experiences

A few nights ago, I went to see the new Richard Curtis film About Time with my husband and my daughter. It was a lovely film, well up to his usual standard, but what I found interesting was our differing responses to it. I was much more emotionally affected by it than either my daughter or my husband.

image: derekwinnert.com


This made me realise that whatever you experience, whether it is going to the pictures, attending a lecture or concert, or going to a church service, you will react to what you hear and see in a particular way, depending on your past experiences. What you get out of a particular experience will very much depend on the baggage you bring to it.

We are all the sum of all our experiences. Maybe we need to bear this in mind, in our dealings with others, treading gently and lightly on their tender spots, knowing that our own are just as tender.

Facebook Grace

I have just made a fairly fundamental change in my life, and am feeling good about it, if a little fragile. So it was wonderful to turn on my computer this morning, and read the following from PeaceBang, Rev. Dr. Victoria Weinstein, a wonderful Unitarian Universalist minister:

photo by telegraph.co.uk

"I would like to speak on behalf of SAVORING. Not gloating, but savoring. Stopping to recognize how much work, hope, planning, collaborating, expense, risk, what-have-you has gone into a project or event or life change, and really letting it soak in that you got there. You did it. You landed. I agree that our work is never done, but there are times during the climb up the mountain that one has to not only stop and look at the view but look behind and appreciate how long a climb has already been achieved. It's so easy to get absorbed in the next To-Do List. Take some time and get found in the Right Here List."

Reading it felt like a personal benediction. And I'm finding that this is happening more and more with Facebook. Perhaps it's just that I have a wonderful group of friends, but so often, I read posts and am inspired and cheered by what I read.

Thank you all. Reading your posts and blogs makes my life just that little bit richer, and I feel blessed.

Honesty - always the best policy?

I have been brought up to believe that honesty is the best policy. It was drummed into me as a child that one should always tell the truth, and that telling lies or acting dishonestly was wrong. The Quaker Advice no. 37 asks:

"Are you honest and truthful in all you say and do? Do you maintain strict integrity in business transactions and in your dealings with individuals and organisations? Do you use money and information entrusted to you with discretion and responsibility?"

And Alfred Hall, in Beliefs of a Unitarian, writes: "Unitarianism is not a system of creeds or beliefs. It is more than anything else an attitude of mind. It is a fresh way of looking at life and religion. ... Its method is that of appeal to reason, conscience and experience generally, and above all to elemental principles of truth and right which are implanted in the human heart at its nobles and embedded in the universe."

So not much room for equivocation then.

I wonder. Perhaps being honest and truthful is generally the best policy, but sometimes, just sometimes, telling a white lie, or even a whopping, great black lie may be the right thing to do. To cite just one example, look at the Dutch, German and other citizens during the Second World War, who hid and protected Jews, and saved their lives, by lying to and deceiving the Nazis.

And I honestly (there's that word again) do believe that sometimes telling a white lie in order to avoid hurting someone's feelings is definitely the best policy. Perhaps the key to knowing when to bend the truth is to use your reason and conscience, and to put what you believe to be right over the simple yes/no of telling a lie or telling the truth. I can see the dangers of this - if we do this, we are having to judge what is right or wrong in each individual case, and sometimes, we don't have enough information at our disposal to make the best decision (or what turns out to be the best decision in the long run).

I don't have any answers. Perhaps the best that any of us can do is to follow the best that we know, and to hope and pray that we will be guided to do and say what is right. May it be so.

Living at the Edge

I've just returned from an amazing week at Summer School, with my spiritual batteries re-charged. The theme for this year was 'Living at the Edge' and the workshop I was in was called 'Recovering Who You Are' and was billed as a reflective writing workshop, taking stock of our lives. Which it was. It was wonderful.




And of course, in the afternoons and evenings there were many other inspirational and fun things to try. But the culmination of the week for me was a Walk to the Edge with Nancy Crumbine and Julie Dadson. The Edge in question was Froggatt Edge in the Derbyshire Peak District, and we were invited to stand at the edge and either ask a question or discard something from our lives. It was an incredibly powerful ritual. It reminded me of that bit of the film Gone with the Wind when Scarlett stands in the ruined fields of Tara after the Civil War and swears "As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again."

On the face of it, standing at Froggatt Edge on a sunny Summer afternoon, with a couple of dozen fellow Unitarians, just wouldn't compare. And yet it did. I threw my promise to the wind and the fields and the limestone and the heather, and I intend to honour it.

Reason and Passion

I love the words of Kahlil Gibran, when he writes: "Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgement wage war against your passion and your appetite." I think that this is so true of all of us - at some times we are cool and logical and reasonable, and at others we are fiery and illogical and passionate. And that is as it should be.

In their early years, one of the names that Unitarians were known by was "Rational Dissenters". I looked this term up in Wikipaedia, and was interested to find the following description: " Like moderate Anglicans, they desired an educated ministry and an orderly church, but they based their opinions on reason and the Bible rather than on appeals to tradition and authority. They rejected doctrines such as the Trinity and original sin, arguing that they were irrational. Rational Dissenters believed that Christianity and faith could be dissected and evaluated using the newly emerging discipline of science, and that a stronger belief in God would be the result."

And I absolutely agree that what we believe and how we behave should be subject to our reason and conscience. Yes. But I also believe that there is more to life than being  perfectly reasonable and logical.  Yes, the final authority for an individual's faith should be their own conscience. But I think that this involves our hearts as well as our heads. When I first became a Unitarian, over 30 years ago, I was "converted", if you like, by reading the first section of Alfred Hall's book Beliefs of a Unitarian, when he wrote:

"But above all, it must be known and understood by Unitarianism is not a system of creeds or beliefs. It is more than anything else an attitude of mind. It is a fresh way of looking at life and religion ... It lays the stress on the reliability of the human mind to judge for itself ... Its method is that of appeal to reason, conscience and experience generally, and above all to elemental principles of truth and right which are implanted in the human heart at its noblest and embedded in the universe."

 



So Hall was saying that what is in our hearts is as important as what is in our heads. Yes. I also believe that there are some things in life that are beyond reason - how we love, how we feel compassion for others, and also, to some extent, what we believe, what gives our lives meaning. I think that both reason and passion are important - I am increasingly finding that while I can reject certain beliefs on the grounds of reason, there are some aspects of "doing religion" or having faith that are beyond reason. For example, I have a growing awareness of God or the Spirit at work in the world. This is on the basis of intuition, not reason, but I believe it is real.

Head and heart together, reason and passion. May we use all our faculties to find wholeness and completion and meaning in our lives.