Prelude Melodia Africana I by Ludovico Einaudi
Opening Words by Alex Brianson (adapted)
We gather today to share a particular kind of community – a community of faith in which each of us is free to quest for our own ways of being spiritual and religious.
We gather today to think about how we have done this until now, and how we might do this from now.
We are none of us the same as we were twenty years ago or even last week; we are none of us the same as we shall be in five weeks or ten years.
As the paths of our lives cover new terrain, may we find helpful new thinkers, concepts, and understandings of Spirit, or of the highest good in life, and new ways to interpret those we have loved long and hard.
And may we be open to the voice of wisdom, wherever – and however – we find it.
Chalice Lighting (you may wish to light a candle in your own home at this point. I will be lighting my chalice for worship at 11.00 am on Sunday morning) words by Andy Pakula
Let this light remind us of the sacred flame of life that blazes within
Constant, yet ever-changing
Burning, yet never consumed
O inner light of soul and spirit
Lead our minds to greater understanding
Lead our hearts to love more fully
And lead our hands to create justice
Opening Prayer
Spirit of Life and Love,
Be with us as we gather for worship,
Each in our own place.
Help us to feel a sense of community,
Even though we are physically apart.
Help us to care for each other,
In this world in which Covid has not yet gone away,
And the clouds of war and climate change overshadow us.
May we keep in touch however we can,
And help each other,
However we may.
May we remember that
caution is still needed,
that close contact is still unwise.
Help us to be grateful for the freedoms we have
and to respect the wishes of others.
May we hold in our hearts all those
Who are grieving, lost, alone,
Suffering in any way,
Amen
Story: Hide and Seek with God by Mary Ann Moore
Once upon a time God said, “I’m bored because I don’t have anything to do. I want to play with my friends.” And because God is God, as soon as the words were spoken, God’s friends were there. When God saw them all gathered, God said, “I’ve been bored because I haven’t had anything to do. Let’s play something.”
“Good idea,” said God’s friends. “What shall we play?”
God thought for a minute and then said, “I know, let’s play hide-and-seek!”
The friends all said, “Yay!” They knew that hide-and-seek with God was always exciting and different because God was the one who hid and God always thought of wonderful places to hide.
God’s friends closed their eyes tight and counted to ten. When they opened their eyes, God wasn’t there anymore. So they all went off to look for God.
One friend decided to look close on the earth and soon came to a meadow. As he was searching, he stopped to admire the tender new sprouts of green grass pushing their way up toward the sun. As he bent over to look more closely at the tender green, he realized there was something special and amazing and wonderful about it. So he jumped up and ran back to home base, calling out, “I found God! God is green and growing. I found God in the grass!”
Another one of God’s friends decided to look for God in the night. She watched the sun go down, and heard the work-a-day noises stop, and saw the lights in the houses go out. As it got darker and the peaceful night wrapped itself around her, she listened very hard, and then she realized there was something special and amazing and wonderful about it. And when it was so still that she could see and hear nothing at all, she suddenly jumped up and ran to home base, calling out, “I found God! God is dark and peaceful. I found God in the night!”
A third friend looked on the earth and felt the mystery of the grass growing toward the sun. He stayed and watched the night come on, and he felt the mystery of the darkness and the stars. He thought to himself, “These mysteries are special and amazing and wonderful.” But when he finally came back to home base, he said, “I found wonderful mysteries but I’m not sure if I want to call them God.”
A fourth friend decided to look for God where people were. He joined a group of people going home from work and went with them into the store where they bought food. He went with them back out on the street as they started for their homes. He was with them when someone came up and said, “Please, I’m very hungry. Could you share a little food with me?” The people readily agreed and as he watched them share, he realized there was something special and amazing and wonderful about those people. He turned around and ran to home base, calling out, “I found God! God is love and sharing. I found God in people who care for others!”
Finally, two more of God’s friends, a boy and a girl, decided to look for God together. After a time, they came to a house and decided to look for God in the house. In the house they saw a room, and they looked for God in the room. In the room they saw a mirror, and they looked for God in the mirror. As they looked into the mirror, they realized there was something special and amazing and wonderful being reflected in it. They turned around and ran to home base, calling out, “We found God! We found God in us!”
At this God appeared again and said, “I had so much fun! Weren’t those good hiding places? Some of you found me, others weren’t sure, and others are still looking. That’s OK because the most important thing is just to play the game. Let’s do it again! I’m sure I can think of some other good hiding places.” And the game started all over again.
Alternative Lord’s Prayer
Spirit of Life and Love, here and everywhere,
May we be aware of your presence in our lives.
May our world be blessed.
May our daily needs be met,
And may our shortcomings be forgiven,
As we forgive those of others.
Give us the strength to resist wrong-doing,
The inspiration and guidance to do right,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
We are your hands in the world; help us to grow.
May we have compassion for all living beings,
And receive whatever life brings,
With courage and trust.
Amen
Reading from What’s In The Temple? by Tom Barrett
In the quiet spaces of my mind a thought lies still, but ready to spring.
It begs me to open the door so it can walk about.
The poets speak in obscure terms pointing madly at the unsayable.
The sages say nothing, but walk ahead patting their thigh calling for us to follow.
The monk sits pen in hand poised to explain the cloud of unknowing.
The seeker seeks, just around the corner from the truth.
If she stands still it will catch up with her.
Pause with us here a while.
Put your ear to the wall of your heart.
Listen for the whisper of knowing there.
Love will touch you if you are very still.
Prayer by Tony McNeile (adapted)
Spirit of Life and Love,
May our souls sing the song of life to the God in our hearts,
in pleasant exploration.
Let us not dally with the mystery of God
but simply look around us as we travel the meandering road…
see God in everything.
Let us be pleased with our souls, whether sailing on the seas or on the hills,
or waking in the night with thoughts,
silent thoughts of time and space and death,
like waters flowing.
Bear us through the regions infinite, whose air we breathe.
Let us feel God wherever the heart is stirred by beauty
or by the loving kindness from our brother or sister.
Let us give of God actively to them.
Let our souls be open to the love of brotherhood and sisterhood.
When we travel forward look at the horizon
and beyond the horizon into the universal soul,
let us rejoice in life and the echo that returns.
Amen
Reading from What’s In The Temple? by Tom Barrett
If I say the word God, people run away.
They’ve been frightened–sat on ’till the spirit cried “uncle.”
Now they play hide and seek with somebody they can’t name.
They know he’s out there looking for them, and they want to be found,
But there is all this stuff in the way.
I can’t talk about God and make any sense,
And I can’t not talk about God and make any sense.
So we talk about the weather, and we are talking about God.
I miss the old temples where you could hang out with God.
Still, we have pet pounds where you can feel love draped in warm fur,
And sense the whole tragedy of life and death.
You see there the consequences of carelessness,
And you feel there the yapping urgency of life that wants to be lived.
The only things lacking are the frankincense and myrrh.
We don’t build many temples anymore.
Maybe we learned that the sacred can’t be contained.
Or maybe it can’t be sustained inside a building.
Buildings crumble.
It’s the spirit that lives on.
If you had a temple in the secret spaces of your heart,
What would you worship there?
What would you bring to sacrifice?
What would be behind the curtain in the holy of holies?
Go there now.
Time of Stillness and Reflection
“If you had a temple in the secret spaces of your heart, what would you worship there? What would you bring to sacrifice? What would be behind the curtain in the holy of holies?” Let us ponder these questions in the silence …
[silence]
May we listen to the deepest parts of our hearts, and allow our lives to be shaped by the truths we find there. Amen
Musical Interlude I Giorni by Ludovico Einaudi
Address What’s in the Temple?
In the poem which formed our second and third readings today, Tom Barrett poses three questions: “If you had a temple in the secret spaces of your heart, what would you worship there? What would you bring to sacrifice? and What would be behind the curtain in the holy of holies?” We pondered these questions in the silence, and now I’m going to give you my answers.
I think that the first question, “What would you worship there?” is quite a challenging one for Unitarians, as we do not presume to define God / the Sacred Divine for others, and some of us do not believe in an external divine other at all. Our Unitarianism these days is a wonderful “free faith based on the inner authority of the enlightened conscience.” And our consciences are enlightened by not only what we think and believe with our heads. Intuition and feeling are also considered important, thanks initially to James Martineau, the great 19th century Unitarian theologian.
Since 1890, when Martineau published his most influential work, The Seat of Authority in Religion, Unitarians have become increasingly free to formulate their own beliefs; to decide for themselves “What would you worship there?” And the wonderful thing about our faith (in my eyes at least) is that all these different beliefs are accepted; and the right of any individual Unitarian to believe as they wish is paramount (so long as that belief is submitted to their own reason and conscience and to the checks and balances of being part of a religious community). Alfred Hall sums this up marvellously in his Beliefs of a Unitarian:
“But above all it must be known and understood that 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.”
Cliff Reed explains that Unitarians today “do not presume to define God for others. We believe that everyone should be free to encounter the Great Mystery for themselves ‘without mediator or veil’.” This respect for the individual’s right to work out their own beliefs has resulted in a wide spectrum of perceptions of the Divine within our denomination. Some are what I would call “Liberal Christians”, who would define God in Christian terms as a “loving, personal power – father-like, as Jesus experienced”; others would say that they “experience God as a unifying and life-giving spirit; the source of all being, the universal process that comes to consciousness as love in its creatures.” Yet others, whom we might describe as religious humanists, would use the word “God” to signify “the human ideal, the noblest visions and aspirations of humanity, against which we measure ourselves.” And then there are some whose chief perception of God is that of the “still, small voice” within us, rather than any external power. It should also be realised that these beliefs are not mutually exclusive. Most of us would say that belief in a combination of them is where we would find God / the Divine / the Sacred.
It is also a vital tenet of Unitarian belief that all are free to work out their own positions, in the light of their own ongoing experience. This openness to new thoughts and ideas is a key concept in Unitarianism; indeed it is what has kept it green and growing down the centuries. Our movement has been underpinned by a process of continuous and continuing revelation. So my answer to the first question might be: I would worship the God I believe in, whom I have come to believe in through exercising my reason and conscience, and through bouncing ideas off other Unitarians. And that the God I believe in is a personal God, who exists both “out there” as well as “in here”, and whose divine principle is Love, at the centre of everything. But that is just my answer, as one Unitarian.
The second question is: “What would you bring to sacrifice?” This is a reference to the customs of the Jewish people in the days of the Temple in Jerusalem, when, according to Wikipedia, “Such sacrifices were offered in a variety of settings by the ancient Israelites, and later by the Jewish priesthood, the priests, at the Temple in Jerusalem. A korban (as it was called) was often an animal sacrifice, such as a sheep or a bull that underwent Jewish ritual slaughter, and was often cooked and eaten by the offerer, with parts given to the priests and parts burned on the Temple mizbe’ah. Sacrifices could also consist of doves, grain or meal, wine, or incense. The Hebrew Bible narrates that God commanded the Israelites to offer offerings and sacrifices on various altars, and describes the offering of sacrifices in the Tabernacle, in the Temple in Jerusalem until the First Temple was destroyed, and resumed with the Second Temple until it was destroyed in 70 CE.”
So at first sight, the question “What would you bring to sacrifice?” may seem to have no relevance to modern Unitarians. But I think that if we understand the word “sacrifice” in terms of giving something up, it makes a lot more sense in a Unitarian context. Because our Unitarian faith should not be practiced lightly, without commitment, and making a commitment to something often involves sacrificing some part of our old lives.
When I was accepted for ministry training, Rev. Lindy Latham sent me these beautiful words by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, which have to do with accepting God’s calling:
“You must give up everything in order to gain everything.
What must you give up? All that is not truly you; all that you have chosen without choosing, and value without evaluating, accepting because of someone else’s extrinsic judgment, rather than your own; all your self-doubt that keeps you from trusting and loving yourself or other human beings.
What will you gain? Only your own, true self; a self who is at peace, who is able to truly love and be loved, and who understands who and what she is meant for.
But you can be yourself only if you are no one else. You must give up ‘their’ approval, whoever they are, and look to yourself for evaluation of success and failure, in terms of your own level of aspiration that is consistent with your values. Nothing is simpler and nothing is more difficult.”
So my answer to the second question, what would you bring to sacrifice, would be “all that is not truly me, all that I have chosen without choosing and valued without evaluating, or accepted because of someone else’s extrinsic judgment, rather than my own; and all my self-doubt that keeps me from trusting and loving myself or other human beings.” This is a work in progress; to fulfil it will take my whole life.
Barrett’s last question was “What would be behind the curtain in the holy of holies?” The holy of holies was the innermost sanctuary of the Temple in Jerusalem, and was separated from the rest of the Temple by a curtain or veil. According to the Hebrew Bible, only the high priest could go in there, and he only once a year. The holy of holies was said to contain the Ark of the Covenant, which contained the ten commandments given to Moses by God on Mount Sinai. This was the most holy and precious object in Temple Judaism.
So the answer to the question what would be behind the curtain in the holy of holies refers to that which is most precious to each of us, which we prize above all other things. Or perhaps what we appreciate most about Unitarianism.
One of the most oft-quoted Unitarian aphorisms is “We need not think alike to love alike” by our Transylvanian founding father Francis David. Our fierce defence of freedom of belief, within the denomination, and in the wider world, boils down to our belief in this one phrase “We need not think alike to love alike.” And the principles underpinning it are what I most appreciate about Unitarianism.
It is a concept sometimes explained by the phrase “unity in diversity”, a seeming paradox which most people outside the denomination, and indeed many inside it, struggle to comprehend. How can we claim to be one religious / spiritual movement, if we all believe different things?
As I said earlier, Alfred Hall maintains in Beliefs of a Unitarian that Unitarianism is an attitude of mind. And this attitude is the key to understanding why, despite our wide-ranging and sometimes mutually-exclusive religious and spiritual beliefs, we manage to hang together as a movement.
For us, being Unitarian means having the freedom to believe what we will (so long as it is consonant with our reason and conscience, and doesn’t harm anyone else) whilst simultaneously being a member of a religious / spiritual community, whose members share the attitude that we are all on a spiritual journey together. We come together in community, providing a safe and sacred space in which all can explore what gives our lives depth and meaning. For some this may involve a belief in a divine presence, which they may call God; for some it may be more of an internal process; or a faith in humankind; or a reverence for the natural world.
But the important thing is that we are united in our diversity; united in the mutual provision of this safe and sacred space, in which we may explore our diverse beliefs and faiths, knowing that our doubts and questions and beliefs will be held and respected, and that we will be welcomed just the way we are.
And it is precious. This way of being united in diversity – a way of being religious and spiritual that involves mutual respect and acceptance and love – is what would be behind the curtain in my holy of holies.
Each of us would probably come up with different answers to these three questions. Half the fun of being a Unitarian is the very possibility of doing this rich and fulfilling exploration together. Long may it continue!
Closing Words
Our time together is drawing to a close.
May we appreciate our precious Unitarian communities,
in which we have the sacred space and support
to ponder deep questions,
and come to our own answers.
May we return to our everyday world refreshed,
May we share the love we feel,
May we look out for each other,
and may we keep up our hearts,
Now and in the days to come,
Amen
Postlude Stella del Mattino by Ludovico Einaudi