Prelude Melodia Africana I by Ludovico Einaudi
Opening Words by David Usher
Open your hearts to the wonder of worship.
Open your minds to the eternal quest for meaning and truth.
Open your eyes to the miracle of creation.
Open your arms to the embrace of your fellow men and women.
Open your souls, and let the divine sweep in.
Chalice Lighting (you may wish to light a candle in your own home at this point). (words by Laura Dobson)
As Unitarians we are people seeking
Truth, meaning, love and deep connection
As we seek to discern our path
May we follow the guidance of our hearts
May our hearts be open to unexpected truths
May our chalice flame remind us
To welcome all the truth of our lives
To welcome each other
Into the beloved community
Of love and compassion.
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 the clouds
of war, poverty, and climate change hover.
And help us to make a difference,
starting where we are, with what we have.
May we keep in touch however we can,
and help each other, however we may.
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,
victims of violence and war,
suffering in any way,
Amen
Reading from We Affirm and Promote A Free and Responsible Search for Truth and Meaning by Fredric Muir, in With Purpose and Principle edited by Edward A. Frost
Our search is marked by the tension and balance of freedom and responsibility: As we live out our search, as we live the mystery of life, we covenant to affirm and promote a way that is both free and responsible. Free because we know that every person is unique – in the first principle we affirm an individual’s inherent worth and dignity, and with that comes free will, the freedom to believe as your conscience dictates. It’s your search and no-one else’s. A responsible search because the right of conscience demands it : You’re not just a ‘loose canon’ in search of whatever works. In the more orthodox faiths, freedom is checked by the responsibility of authority – whether it be from tradition, the hierarchy, or sacred scripture and liturgy. In Unitarian Universalism, while these may hold value, they are not the final authority; they alone won’t balance freedom and responsibility. Balance comes from each person: human experience is the final authority. Lessons are learned from tradition, leadership, and the world’s sacred scriptures, as well as from life experiences, but eventually we each provide balance to our search; we give direction to our lives.
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 We Affirm and Promote A Free and Responsible Search for Truth and Meaning by Fredric Muir, in With Purpose and Principle edited by Edward A. Frost
Our search must be characterized by humility. In a free and responsible search, we are aware and humbled by our shortcomings, fears, uncertainties, and contradictions…. I know I need to think before I speak, and sometimes I need to speak less and be silent more. Humility in the free and responsible search is essential.
The awareness of oneself and others is also essential. To be honest, authentic, and open is paramount to religious searching and living. Awareness of where your experiences comes from and where they are leading; awareness of how others respond to your search; awareness of who and what makes you comfortable and what makes you anxious, and being able to verbalise both; awareness of former religious traditions and what you found affirming and challenging; awareness of motivations, resistance, and tendencies can also be critical to your search.
It is also important that a search be nonjudgmental…. There could be as many searches as there are people. Nonjudgmental means that disagreements don’t become personal attacks, insults, or thoughtless stereotypes….
A fourth feature of our search is balance… It’s a journey, not a race; a search, not a scavenger hunt; for a lifetime, not until the next book comes out or a fad begins….
Our search is distinguished by learning. Every new insight or revelation, each time there’s a breakthrough or an “ah-ha”, it is not dismissed but embraced, valued, and celebrated.…
A free and responsible search engages life not in a distant or transcendent location or reality. It is a search here and now.…
A free and responsible search for truth and meaning requires focused attention. Intentionality and deliberateness are crucial: Our search is not a casual thing, not a hobby. When we embrace our searches… when our desire for truth and meaning becomes a religious search – it receives our attention, our focus, because the light of truth and meaning cannot be ignored.
Prayer by Kay Millard
Spirit of Light. Help us to look beyond. Beyond the blind eyes that imagine more than we can ever see; Beyond persuasive words, to the truth they try to conceal; Beyond materialist desire for things that can never make us truly happy.
Spirit of Love. Help us to look within. Within us lies a well of hope to tap when we despair; Within us lies a sea of calm to hold us amid the chaos; Within us lies an infinite source of love for others.
Spirit of Life. Help us to look into your mystery. Your mystery is a deep source of wonder; Your mystery is a duty to live fully; Your mystery is a call to nurture all life.
Spirit of Life, Love, and Light. Help us to know that both beyond us and within us, Lies eternal life, now.
May it be so, Amen
Reading from A Free and Responsible Search for Truth and Meaning by Paige Getty, in The Seven Principles in Word and Worship edited by Ellen Brandenburg
This fourth of our seven Principles is a loaded one. It’s tempting to focus on the freedom part, or the search part, without looking at the Principle in its entirety. We mustn’t wave the flag of our religious freedom – and the free search – without committing ourselves to be responsible in the endeavor, without responsibly considering what makes truth true or what makes meaning meaningful. Without responsibility, a free search for truth and meaning is potentially narcissistic and destructive. It is our sense of responsibility that calls us to consider our relationships within the interdependent web of existence and the consequences of our beliefs – which, if worth anything, will lead to action.
Too often, we relinquish this responsibility in our insistence on maintaining our so-called freedom. Most remarkably, somehow we seem to have convinced ourselves that freedom implies an affirmation of rampant individualism – that whatever I have convinced myself is true in my mind and heart is justifiable and legitimate, regardless of my actions…. In our own spiritual quests, we dismiss certain religious perspectives as meaningless because they are too traditional or not traditional enough. And we grant no validity to certain political or social perspectives that vary from our own party lines.
Time of Stillness and Reflection by Margaret Kirk (adapted)
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,- that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.`
John Keats (1820) from Ode on a Grecian Urn
Truth is unblemished and clean,
like a snowdrop piercing the hard earth,
or a slender branch or leaf,
or a curlew`s call across the dark moor.
Truth arrests rottenness.
announcing what is green and good.
Freshly, – the air tingles with its purity,
The spores of malice are cleansed,
False words reveal their tarnished emptiness,
The disfigured faces of ignorance crumple in shame.
Truth comes in moments of quiet reflection,
bringing shafts of light to our burdened minds,
Truth can bring peace after heavy hurt and harm has drained the spirit.
And somewhere in the midst of grief it shines and sparkles
with a deeper knowing.
[silence]
But these are the times – the times we yearn for,
when its boldness might blast a carapace of lies,
shake the servile crowd,
scour the hollow rhetoric
and justly and mercifully and humbly,
re-assemble what is beautiful and true:
the ravaged pieces of decency and compassion to a fragmented world.
May it be so, Amen
Musical Interlude I Due Fiumi by Ludovico Einaudi
Address Fourth Principle: Search for Truth and Meaning
One of the characteristics of being human is that all of us are on a search for truth and meaning in our lives. Which is perhaps what distinguishes us from other living beings – not many dogs, for example, agonise about such abstract concepts. They are instead fully present in their physical and emotional lives, and enjoy (or endure, if they are unlucky) life as it comes. It is only humankind which looks deeper, can discern that there is something more than the here and now. And many of us seek truth and meaning through some kind of spiritual journey. What distinguishes us from other religious and spiritual folk, as Unitarians and Unitarian Universalists, is that we insist that our search should be both free and responsible. As we have seen in our readings today. We cannot simply “believe whatever we like”; our faith is not rampantly individualistic. We must undertake our search for truth and meaning responsibly, taking into account not only our own experiences, but those of others around us. Because as Laura Dobson said in our chalice lighting words, we seek not only truth and meaning, but also love and deep connection.
Fredric Muir lists the qualities we need to bring to our search: humility, an awareness of ourselves and others, a non-judgemental mindset, balance, an openness to new light, new revelations, and engaging with our lives with focussed attention. It is something which should be undertaken with freedom and joy, but also with responsibility.
The free and responsible search for truth and meaning in our lives can be seen as a pilgrimage. Living a religious and spiritual life is a journey which, like J.R.R. Tolkien’s Road, goes ever on. All through my life, I have been open to new ideas, new insights, primarily through the books I have read, some of which have influenced me quite profoundly. I even wrote a book of my own about it, called Gems for the Journey.
I have recently been haunted by the beautiful words of the song Pilgrim by Enya. Particularly the second and third verses:
“One way leads to diamonds, / one way leads to gold, / another leads you only / to everything you’re told. / In your heart you wonder / which of these is true / the road that leads to nowhere, / the road that leads to you. / Will you find the answer / in all you say and do? / will you find the answer / in you?”
It has resonated with me deeply, because over the years I have learned that the only place we can find true answers to the questions of “life, the universe and everything” (to quote Douglas Adams) is within ourselves. In our reactions and responses to the things our senses perceive and in our relationships with other people and with the world. Of course, each person’s journey will be different; I can only share my own.
One gorgeous thing about being Unitarian is that we never stop learning, never stop receiving new insights, from a multiplicity of sources. Until we eventually realise that God / the Divine / the Source of All Being is everywhere – in our lives, in our relationships and in the things around us. One influence that has been with me all the way through my journey is a love of, and reverence for, Nature. Founded in the fairy tales and legends of my youth, in Elsie Proctor’s wonder-full book Looking at Nature, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s powerful descriptions of Middle Earth, I have always found it easiest to sense the presence of God / the Spirit in the natural world. Yet it was not until the last decade or so that this reverence for natural beauty became integrated into the rest of my spiritual life.
This started in early 2009, when I did a module on my second Open University course, called Belief Beyond Boundaries: Wicca, Celtic Spirituality and the New Age. I was particularly fascinated by contemporary Celtic spirituality. I was introduced to the concept of the Wheel of the Year, and to the notion that we (and all living things) move through life in a cyclical rather than linear manner, in which the dark side is to be welcomed as an important part of the process. The module also covered modern Paganism, and I was so interested in what I read that I decided to find out more. So of course I bought a book … Paganism: An Introduction to Earth-Centered Religions by Joyce and River Higginbotham.
To my surprise, I found many elements in common with my own Unitarianism. For example, the first three Principles of Paganism, as explained by the Higginbothams, are as follows: “1. You are responsible for the beliefs you choose to adopt. 2. You are responsible for your own actions and your spiritual and personal development. 3. You are responsible for deciding who or what Deity is for you and forming a relationship with that Deity.”
In this approach, there is no religious hierarchy or tradition, telling the individual which spiritual path they “ought” to follow; it is up to the individual to work it out for themself. They explain: “Any resource, teacher, practice, or holy writing that helps you move toward your goal of spiritual maturity can and should be used. [But they] cannot be substituted for the effort each person must give to his or her own growth. … Spiritual muscles don’t get strong by letting other people do your work for you. Pagans strive to become spiritually mature and to take responsibility for their beliefs, actions, and spiritual growth.” Note the mixture of freedom and responsibility, so like our own.
At around the same time, I also came across a book by John Macquarrie, a Christian writer, who reinforced my belief that the whole of the universe could be sacramental. In his book A Guide to the Sacraments, he explained that rather than God’s presence being limited to either two or seven sacraments, God has so arranged things that the material world can “become a door or channel of communication through which he comes to us and we may go to him.” For this reason, “man’s spiritual wellbeing demands that he should recognise and cherish the visible things of the world as things that are made by God and that provide access to God.”
This way of perceiving the world demands that we believe that God is not only transcendent, the one-time creator of the universe, but also immanent – being in the world and acting through it. In other words, we are always in the presence of the Divine, in whom we live and move and have our being. Macquarrie also writes about material things such as stars, mountains and cities as ‘doors to the sacred’. He argues that “[God] is in all these things as the mysterious source and energy that has given to each of them its being and sustains them in being. These things … have the potentiality of lighting up for us the mystery of God himself.” For this reason, everything has the potential to become a sacrament.
Then I discovered the Celtic mystic, poet and theologian John O’Donohue, whose love for the Irish landscape of his birth flows richly through all his writings. One of his books in particular, Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace, helped me to appreciate with my heart, not just my head, how deeply God is present in the earth, in the sky, in the landscape. And in humankind.
So, having come to Unitarianism at the age of 18 because there were aspects of mainstream Christianity with which I was not comfortable, my journey since then has been somewhat of a pilgrimage, visiting various religious and spiritual viewpoints, and taking from each the sustenance I needed to continue on my way. Sources of revelation have been many and varied, including the basic morals and ethics of childhood tales and fantasy, the inclusive liberal Judaism of Lionel Blue, the radical and challenging simplicity of the Quakers, the sound advice for the journey from authors like the Brussats, Bill Adams and Brené Brown, insights about other faith traditions from my Open University studies, and the mystical, insightful Christianity of John O’Donohue and Richard Rohr. Not to mention the massive influence of various Unitarian authors, particularly Alfred Hall, Cliff Reed, and Forrest Church.
I have been helped along my Road, not only by the authors of the books I have read, but also by friends and mentors in real life. A process of change and growth, which really started when I began the Worship Studies Course in 2006, has led me in unexpected directions, not least of which was becoming a Unitarian minister, and I am sure that the pilgrimage has not finished yet. How could it be? I am a Unitarian, and so revelation can never be sealed. I don’t expect that I will ever finish my journey, and that is fine. So long as I continue to be nourished and fed by what I am encountering, even the dark stuff. For I have discovered that the Spirit is there too.
Each person’s spiritual journey is different, and it is here, in our Unitarian communities, that we find the support we need to step out boldly like Bunyan’s pilgrim, and the Pilgrim Fathers, more than four hundred years ago.
I cannot resist concluding with the words of that wisest of Hobbits, Bilbo Baggins:
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
May your search for truth and meaning in your life be undertaken with both freedom and responsibility, and prove rich and insightful and rewarding.
Closing Words
Spirit of Life and Love,
Our time together is drawing to a close.
May we appreciate the freedom we have
to search for truth and meaning in our lives,
and also the responsibility to search wisely.
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