Be ours a religion which, like sunshine, goes everywhere; its temple, all space; its shrine, the good heart; its creed, all truth; its ritual, works of love; its profession of faith, divine living.
Theodore Parker
It’s now the first full day of the 2009 General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association. As I’ve mentioned before its a pretty important one. We’ll be electing our next president and she or he will give face and voice to our little Association for, in all likelihood, the next eight years. The term is actually for four, but what has become the tradition is that the second term is simply a referendum, that so far, each president has survived.
There is an ongoing conversation about our relationship with pacifism.
And, we will have a vote on a draft revision of the Principles and Purposes, an attempt at describing what the majority of us feel at this particular moment in our history.
That’s what I’d like to reflect on a bit here.
My favorite part of the General Assembly is officially designated the Exhibit Hall but what I prefer to call the huckster room. This year our UU Buddhists are sharing space with the UU Christians and a newer group, the UU mystics. The mystics, I gather from glancing at their literature, appear mostly to stand within a broadly naturalistic mystical position, at least in part inspired by our Transcendentalist forebearers.
Across from us is the Humanist table, or the currently preferred designation, HUUmanists. I would love if someday the Buddhists, the Christians, the Pagans, and as I get to know them better, the Mystics, and the Humanists would all share a booth. That would be interesting…
Anyway, I noticed the Humanists have a bit of a campaign going trying to block the revised Principles document. While I could be wrong, I believe when one pushes to the bottom line most of them find the newer document a bit too spiritual for their tastes.
For me the most likely example of this more spiritual sense to the draft document could be in how the draft document replaces the wording for the seventh principle which currently reads “…respect for the interdependent web of existence…” with “…reverence for the interdependent web of existence…”
Me, I’m completely for this, and actually, for the document as a whole.
I am voting for it. And I hope it becomes our new statement.
I like this shift, ever more clearly articulating that we are a faith tradition. And that the Principles in either the older version or the newer, have put the finger on what exactly it is this faith looks like.
Not all of us. Not ever all of us. Freedom of thought is a cardinal good among us. And indeed, it was that very freedom which has allowed us to move from a Christocentric religion to our current position. So, I’m all for published “escape clauses” from any attempt at describing us. But, but, there is something we’re about. We’re not just a club for free exploration. We are about something very important.
And in this document, okay in the current version, more clearly in the newer, we find a description of a living faith, of a Way of Life.
I think the first principle with its call to the value of the individual and the seventh with its call to notice how the individual exists entirely within relationship, is a vital expression of a faith for our times. (The fourth which calls for a disciplined and free investigation is also important, but not where I want to dwell here…)
I’ve stated in the past that if we look at this shared intuition through a Mahayana Buddhist lens, we can begin to apply its insights into our practical lives as well as proclaim a healing faith to a wounded world.
And I’m quite intrigued that this Way of Life isn’t Buddhism, although it has a place for Buddhists like me. The same may be said for Christians and humanists and many others…
If it has a close analog, our contemporary Unitarian Universalism, as understood through the first and seventh principles is a homegrown western variation on the insights that created “high” or “philosophical” Taoism, another Way of Life.
Pretty cool stuff, I think.
And I’m ready to take it to the next step in our public professions.
Respect is good.
However reverence is what is called for.
Not in a bare worship the earth sort of way, but in that much larger dynamic of the great web within which we are born, live, and die. That is us, and which transcends us.
That can be described in theistic language. That can be described in nontheistic language.
That isn’t trapped by words, but rather, uses words to point to something…
A something that give life.
A Way of Life.
Two cents before going on to the convention for the day…
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