Today’s selection is really a treat. I went looking for Unitarian Universalist perspectives on the events in Pearl Harbor, the attack that happened on this day in 1941, and came across the writings of Rev. John B. Isom (December 2, 1909 - April 23, 2004), who served as an Army chaplain during World War II. He was a Baptist minister, who then underwent a theological crisis and became a Unitarian in 1955. He served churches in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Louisville, Kentucky, Wichita, Kansas, and the First Unitarian Church of Des Moines, Iowa, where he was named an emeritus in 1975.

Rev. Isom was quite a prolific writer, and his children and grandchildren have collected many of his works for the public to read. The excerpt I chose for today is from “As I Remember Me,” Rev. Isom’s memoir, specifically dealing with his theological crisis. His reading of Albert Schweitzer’s The Quest for the Historic Jesus was a major tipping point for him, which he describes here. What strikes me is the pain that is evident in Rev. Isom’s realizations that he can no longer believe what he was raised to believe, and his sense of loss as he comes to these realizations.

I hear echoes of the sermon I posted last Friday, in which the Rev. James Covington states, “No, my friends, you and I are not free to believe anything we choose. You and I believe what we must. The beauty and genius of a faith like ours is that we are not asked to pretend to believe things we do not believe. You and I are not free to choose what we believe, but we are free to stay with our religious community when we grow and when we change our minds.”

For consideration: Have you experienced a crisis of faith? Have you experienced a conversion to Unitarian Universalism, not just from another religion, but perhaps a moment of realization of your commitment to your faith?

From “As I Remember Me”

by Rev. John B. Isom

When I went to Spartanburg, as I have already confessed, I had some serious doubt about some things I was expected to believe and teach as a Baptist minister. I knew then that I had no hard evidence to justify me believing some of the very basic assumptions which were essential to the Christian faith of Baptists and most other Christian believers, such as the Bible being the holy word of a supernatural being called God, who created the heavens and the earth and all life therein; the supernatural events associated around the birth, life and death of Jesus; Heaven and Hell as places for the eternal abode of all human beings. By the time I read “The Quest for the Historic Jesus” I knew I had no evidence for believing such assumptions. All I had left was a very dim hope that such evidence might still be found. After reading “The Quest for the Historic Jesus” that dim hope was no longer possible. There are a number of reasons why that book made me face up to the truth of my disbelief in the basic essentials of the faith as taught in most Christian churches.

(Read on … )

Approaching prayer as a language of faith in a religion that does not require belief in a god can be a tricky thing. Today’s prayer (PDF) by the Rev. Bill Neely, from his days as the ministerial intern at Unity Church-Unitarian in St. Paul, Minnesota, explores this unknowing.

Rev. Neely now serves Neshoba Unitarian Universalist Church in Cordova, Tennessee.

For consideration: What do you name Holy? What do you consider larger than yourself?

Minister’s Prayer

by Rev. Bill Neely

Let us pray,

What shall we name you today, how shall we call you forth, by what shall we know you?

Are you Love greater than feeling, are you Truth truer than reason? Shall we call you Hope fueling all life, or Source of all beginnings and endings? Are you the gentle Father? Are you the sustaining Mother? Today, will you be our Trusting Companion or our Loving Guide? Shall we name you All? Shall we call you One? Are you all of these? Are you Mystery?

In humility, may our hearts call you whatever they will call you, knowing that all are just fine for now, knowing that while our language may be limited, love is not. With openness and with courage, may we seek to know you, even though we can’t define you, may we experience you, even though your truest nature is a mystery to us.

May you be the seed of unknown origin growing in our hearts and minds, a seed whose creation we do not understand and whose destiny we cannot foretell, but whose growth nonetheless nourishes our minds and refreshes our hearts, regardless of whether we can express it or not. For it is in our moments of greatest joy and greatest sorrow, our times of great fear and great hope, or even when we are accompanying someone close to us as they move through those moments, that we often find ourselves wordless or our language lacking. And yet the experience may be, even with diminished verbosity, abundantly holy.

Let us continue to call you what we will with honesty and humility. And let us know you, in some form, in moments of great joy and great sorrow, and all times in between.

Amen.

Source: Minister’s Prayer (PDF) by the Rev. Bill Neely, while serving as ministerial intern at Unity Church-Unitarian in St. Paul, Minnesota, delivered November 14, 2004. Used with permission.

This prayer was given exactly four years ago, for Veteran’s Day, by Rev. Kathleen Rolenz, who serves West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church in Rocky River, Ohio.

I choose it today because I feel it exemplifies the ideas in Monday’s post that “If there is a God who listens, then he or she is listening in the people gathered here.” Rev. Rolenz offers a timely message, four additional long years into the same war, and a reminder to all who hear it that we are, after all, in it together as a human family.

For consideration: What kind of public prayers speak most to you and your community? Is private prayer a meaningful practice for you?

Prayer for November 14, 2003

by Rev. Kathleen Rolenz

Let us join our hearts and minds together in the spirit of prayer:
O Holy One, that unites all who are estranged
and challenges all who preach division and exclusion,

We see that unity so often in the eyes of a child, who sees neither race or creed in any eyes that look back, but only whether those are smiling are crying.

(Read on … )

So we started on Monday with examples of individual congregational mission statements: statements trying, with varying success, to communicate the purpose of gathering in a particular religious community.

Today we explore congregational covenants, the promises that members of a religious community make to one another in determining how they will be together in that community. The lines between these two kinds of statements can be somewhat blurred, but I have tried to select examples that illustrate the difference of intention behind them.

The Unitarian Universalist Association’s Principles and Purposes, part of the by-laws that govern the national organization, are framed as a covenant between congregations, and many individual members use them as a guideline for what a Unitarian Universalist community strives to be, but many congregations have their own statements for how they will be together in addition to the Principles.

The denomination’s Commission on Appraisal wrote a report entitled “Engaging Our Theological Diversity” (very long PDF worth reading), published in 2005, in which they took a snapshot of the state of our congregations and how the movement as a whole copes with the unique position of building communities of faith without the bindings of theological creed. They found that about half of the responding congregations recite a covenant in worship each Sunday (see page 102), and the most commonly used statement is the Williams Covenant, with some variations on the text.

For consideration: How is a covenant different from a mission statement? How does a congregational covenant reflect into the daily lives of individual members?

Covenants

Love is the doctrine of this church, the quest of truth is its sacrament and service is its prayer. To dwell together in peace, to seek knowledge in freedom, to serve humanity in fellowship, to the end that all souls shall grow into harmony with the divine, thus do we covenant with each other and with God.

~J. Griswold Williams, Singing the Living Tradition #471 with common adaptation

(Read on … )

The third principle of Unitarian Universalism as set forth in the by-laws of the Unitarian Universalist Association is the covenant to affirm and promote “Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations.” In the conclusion of his essay, “Love the Contradictions,” Rev. Robert Hardies challenges individual Unitarian Universalists to take on that spiritual growth through our common struggle with the contradictions of our world and our own selves.

A question for discussion: what responsibility does an individual member of a congregation have to the larger community when it comes to spiritual growth?

The essay was printed in the UUWorld’s summer 2007 issue, from The Seven Principles in Word and Worship, edited by Ellen Brandenburg (Skinner House Books, 2007). Part one can be found here, and part two here.

Love the Contradictions, pt. 3

by Rev. Robert Hardies

Let’s not be fooled by the false dilemma of whether we should focus our lives on spiritual growth or social justice, as if the two are mutually exclusive. When we frame the conversation this way, we undermine both our spiritual health and our work for justice, and we misunderstand the meaning of a world-affirming spirituality.

The moment I first understood this link between spirituality and justice was when I had the opportunity to study with Gustavo Gutiérrez, the father of Latin American liberation theology and one of the preeminent religious thinkers of the twentieth century. Gutiérrez is the priest of a large, poverty-stricken parish on the outskirts of Lima, Peru. I took a class with him just after I returned from working in Guatemala, when I was still trying to reconcile my experience there with my life in the United States. On the third day of class, a student asked Gutiérrez to explain how we, as residents of the richest country in the world, could best serve the poor in Latin America. After some silence, Gutiérrez confessed that he had always struggled with how to divide his time between being a parish priest and a theologian. Sometimes he felt guilty traveling the world giving talks and papers while his parishioners struggled just to survive. Other times, he felt frustrated that he couldn’t more broadly share liberation theology’s gospel of God’s love for the poor and oppressed. “All my life,” he said, “I’ve sought a theoretical or spiritual answer to this question of how I am to serve the poor: as a priest or as a theologian. But I haven’t found one. I simply try to find a balance between being a theologian and being a pastor. And in the midst of all the suffering—I know this might sound romantic—I try to be happy.”

“As for you,” he said to the student, “you have to find the answer for yourself.”

(Read on … )

A smaller segment today of Rev. Robert Hardies’ essay, “Love the Contradictions,” printed in the UUWorld’s summer 2007 issue, from The Seven Principles in Word and Worship, edited by Ellen Brandenburg (Skinner House Books, 2007). Part one can be found here, and part three here.

Here, Rev. Hardies brings in the concept of size in spirituality and faith, an idea in language that I find fascinating. What is big? What is big enough? What capacity do we really have as human beings?

Love the Contradictions, pt. 2

by Rev. Robert Hardies

Not long after divinity school, I stumbled upon the work of theologian Bernard Loomer, who began to point me in the right direction. Loomer is an important figure in process theology, a movement that contends that the universe is always growing in size and complexity, and that as the universe grows, so does God and so must we. Loomer saw the increasing complexity of creation as a glorious blossoming that God was delighted to behold. Late in life, Loomer was a member of the First Unitarian Church of Berkeley, California, where on Sundays after church he would lead thought-provoking theological conversations. After describing his vision of the complexity of creation, he often asked the group, “What is the size of your soul?” By which he meant, “What is your soul’s ability to grow and expand, to stretch when life throws more contradictions your way?”

Size was the defining concept in Loomer’s spirituality. He almost always wrote the word S-I-Z-E, with capital letters and dashes, to better convey the spaciousness that he intended by using the word. Loomer describes the concept this way:

By S-I-Z-E I mean the capacity of a person’s soul, the range and depth of his love, his capacity for relationships. I mean the volume of life you can take into your being and still maintain your integrity and individuality, the intensity and variety of outlook you can entertain in the unity of your being without feeling defensive or insecure. I mean the strength of your spirit to encourage others to become freer in the development of their diversity and uniqueness. I mean the power to sustain more complex and enriching tensions. I mean the magnanimity of concern to provide conditions that enable others to increase in stature.

(Read on … )

This week is dedicated to the ideas presented in Rev. Robert Hardies’ essay, “Love the Contradictions,” printed in the UUWorld’s summer 2007 issue, from The Seven Principles in Word and Worship, edited by Ellen Brandenburg (Skinner House Books, 2007). Rev. Hardies serves All Souls Church, Unitarian, in Washington, D.C.

The essay is just packed, so I’ve broken it into three sections. The first describes Rev. Hardies’ personal realizations of the contradictory nature of the world, and his life within the world. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t struggled with this.

Part two can be found here, and part three here.

Love the Contradictions, pt. 1

by Rev. Robert Hardies

When I was in seminary, I had to take a test called the Minnesota Multi phasic Personality Inventory, a multiple-choice exam that asks questions like, “Have you been hearing voices lately?” When I sat down with the psychiatrist two weeks later to hear the results, he told me, “By and large, this is a healthy profile.” Then he pointed to a line that plummeted from the top of the page to the bottom. “But do you see this? This means that your soul is conflicted, filled with tensions and contradictions. Those tensions can either be a blessing or a curse; they can either stimulate creativity and vitality in your life, or they can shut you down.” Seeing my reaction, he reassured me, “Rob, you have to learn to love the tensions that are in your soul.” Love the tensions? I wasn’t sure I had heard him right.

Ten years later, I am still trying to discover what it really means to not merely accept the tensions and contradictions of life but to love them. We want to love the world, but does that mean we must condone all that is wrong with it, that we must quietly acquiesce to injustice? What is there to love about contradictions?

(Read on … )

Sometimes the best prayers come out of just sitting still, and you don’t have to be a minister, either. Blogger UUMomma wrote this in September:

Today, a prayer, I think

by blogger UUMomma

Okay, God. I’m listening. I sat in the sun and ate dumplings yesterday and the wind blew over and through me, much as it did that day I stood on a ridge near an old, old battlefield.

They are all old battlefieds, aren’t they God? All the spaces we inhabit hold the old and new battles, the seen and the unseen. Those battles between classes, between races, between lovers, between parents and children, bosses and workers, even between friends. Those interior battles, too, I see, within the shifting, temporary walls that hold me in and in place.

The wind is the same and it holds that which binds us one to another, when we look, when we listen, when we feel. The sun warm on my face, the wind lifting my hair, the taste of plum sauce sweet on my tongue–you have my attention. And I thank you for offering me this moment of sight and sense and grace.

Amen

Source: “Today, a prayer, I think” by blogger UUMomma, posted September 12, 2007, used with permission from the author.

I’m still working my way through the 1914 American Unitarian Association New Hymn and Tune Book, and bring you three hymn texts today.

There are a few things I try to keep in mind as I go through this material. Firstly, though this collection was published in 1914, many of the texts are from far earlier than that. As in our present-day hymnal, there was probably consideration taken to well-loved traditional hymns, balanced with some new things. Secondly, the language is unabashedly theistic and in many cases patriarchal.

What I take away from these texts into my here-and-now life experience is the sense of longing expressed in so many different ways — longing for the touch of the Holy, longing to be free from the flaws inherent in all of us, longing to see a better, brighter world. I think we have many of the same longings now, but we don’t express them nearly so eloquently.

Hymns from The New Hymn and Tune Book

published by the American Unitarian Association, 1914

100. Where is thy God? set to the tune Domenica S.M.
Thomas Toke Lynch, 1855

Where is thy God, my soul?
Is he within thy heart;
Or ruler of a distant realm
In which thou hast no part?

(Read on … )

This morning we celebrate an extraordinary songwriter, who just happens to belong to the Community Church of New York, Unitarian Universalist: Pete Seeger. Many of us had the privilege a couple of years ago at the General Assembly in Fort Worth, Texas, of hearing him play and sing along with a host of musical friends. For me, at least, it was one of the most spiritual experiences I had at that General Assembly.

Pete Seeger wrote a song in 1997 called “And I’m Still Searching,” which I find to be one of the best examples of a simple song with a profound message, something he is a master at:

And I’m still searching
Yes, I’m still searching
For a way we all can learn
To build a world
Where we all can share
The work, the fun,
The food, the space,
The joy, the pain,
And no one ever
Ever need or want to seek
To be a millionaire.

There is a wonderful interview with Pete at Beliefnet, with text and recordings, that sheds a lot of light on his story and his beliefs. While most of his most famous songs are from the Vietnam War protests, or part of the environmental protection movement, they all seem to have a common thread of a simple theology: Be nice to each other, don’t take more than you need, be fair and loving. Here are a few of those that speak most deeply to me:
(Read on … )