Connecting With The Divine

When Alfred Hall wrote his book Beliefs of a Unitarian, he included three sections on prayer. He explains that "prayer is the response of the soul to the call of God; it is our answer to God's movement towards us and within us. ... Unitarians have had experience that prayer helps to bring them into right relations with God." 

Today our denomination is much more diverse. So it is not surprising that a wide variety of spiritual practices are used by Unitarians in order to connect with the Divine. While this certainly includes prayer, particularly during worship, there are now many other ways in which Unitarians open themselves to the Divine.

These include meditation of various kinds - mindfulness meditation, breath meditation, walking meditation, singing meditation, to name but a few; Taizé chanting; Dances of Universal Peace; journalling; walking in nature; lectio divina; participation in engagement groups - the list is endless. Events such as Hucklow Summer School or Festival of Unitarians in the South East (FUSE) provide Unitarians in the UK with the opportunity to  sample different spiritual practices, until they find one or more that suits them.

Gems for the Journey was the title of a Summer School workshop which I attended in 2009, led by Rev. Linda Hart and the late (and much missed) Patricia Walker-Hesson. Over the six morning sessions, participants learned about different spiritual practices which might help them on their journeys. I discovered that using prayer beads really resonated with me, and have used them ever since.

A couple of years ago, I visited a number of places in which different spiritual disciplines were practiced, using a wide variety of "gems". My husband and I went on a 'mini-break' in Somerset, visiting Wells on the first day, staying overnight, then visiting Glastonbury on the second day. Wells Cathedral was a wonderful building, with its facade of golden stone, and famous scissor arches holding up the crossing tower. They obviously have some very talented embroiderers, because there were a series of beautiful altar frontals, one for each season in the Christian year, one draped in front of the altar, and others in display cases on the aisle walls. They had clearly been stitched with love and devotion.

As this was an Anglican cathedral, I was quite surprised to find a series of wonderful modern icons by a Bulgarian artist depicting the Stations of the Cross, which had been presented to the Cathedral a few years ago. The colours were like jewels, bright and vivid. There was also a larger icon of Saint Andrew, to whom the Cathedral is dedicated. It seems that images are becoming more accepted as an aid to devotion in the Anglican church.

On the second day, we visited Glastonbury. It was a lovely crisp Autumn morning, so we decided to climb the Tor first, which has been a destination for pilgrims for millennia. The view from the top was spectacular, but the peaceful atmosphere was somewhat disturbed by the fact that some horticultural work was being done, using a noisy machine to turn the earth over. We then visited the Chalice Well Peace Gardens, which were very beautiful, and then went down into the town to see the Abbey. Now a ruin, it must have been splendid in its day - as long as any of the great cathedrals in France, if not as high. I bought a beautiful olive wood chalice in the Abbey shop, just big enough to hold a tealight - another gem for the journey.

The rest of the day was spent exploring the alternative culture that dominates Glastonbury's shopping streets. There were dozens of shops dedicated to spirituality of all kinds, offering the spiritual seeker as many gems as there are journeys - statues of the Buddha, and the Hindu god Ganesh, actual gems and crystals of all shapes and sizes, Wiccan and Pagan artefacts, Celtic crosses, and much material about King Arthur, for Glastonbury has a strong association with him. Even in the Abbey ruins, there is a place which marks the putative grave of Arthur and his queen, Guinevere. There were also several amazing bookshops whose contents covered all aspects of new age spirituality, and many places offering healing and therapies of various kinds. It was fascinating.

These days reminded me again that there are as many ways of walking the spiritual path as there are people to walk it, and that each is valid to those who follow it. The important thing is to realise that we are all fellow pilgrims on this journey through life together, and that we need to show love and understanding to each other, not fear and intolerance. There is room for us all, regardless of which gems we use to guide us. So long as the outcome of the journey is to make us kinder and more tolerant, rather than the opposite.

Note: some of this blogpost has been published before, over on Still I Am One, in October 2011.

Name Unnamed

One of my favourite hymns in the Unitarian hymnbook Sing Your Faith is Name Unnamed, which is a beautiful song written by Brian Wren, and which tells of the many and varied attributes of the Divine. In it, the Divine is referred to as 'Maker of Rainbows', 'Spinner of Chaos', Weaver of Stories', 'Nudging Discomforter', 'Straight-Talking Lover', 'Midwife of Changes', Woman of Wisdom', 'Daredevil Gambler', and 'Life-giving Loser'.

And of course Name Unnamed.

You may guess from this that Unitarians today do not impose a particular belief about God, about the nature of the Divine, on others. It is up to each one of us to experience the Divine in our own way, spirit to spirit, heart to heart, soul to soul. This respect for the individual’s right to work out their own beliefs has resulted in a wide spectrum of perceptions of God within our denomination. In any Unitarian congregation, there will be a wide diversity of beliefs about who God is. Some are what I would call “Liberal Christians”, who would define God as a person, perhaps a loving parent; 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.” as Cliff Reed describes it.

Yet others, whom we might describe as religious humanists, would use the word “God” to signify the best and noblest aspects of human beings themselves, to which they aspire. 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.

Over the years, Unitarians have recognised that if we are made in God’s image, as it says in the Book of Genesis, then God must be beyond gender. We have sought other ways to describe the Divine. Unitarian Universalist minister F. Forrest Church wrote: “God is not God’s name. God is my name for the mystery that looms within and arches beyond the limits of my being. Life force, spirit of life, ground of being, these too are names for the unnameable which I am now content to call my God.” 

Let us explore some different concepts of what deity is. Monotheists believe that there is only one God; polytheists believe in more than one – in other words, divine power is spread around among several deities. Pantheists believe that all the created world together equals deity. Related to this, but not the same, is animism, the belief that every part of creation – both animate and inanimate – is filled with the Divine or has a soul. Deity is equally present everywhere, but is usually not divided into parts as with pantheism. As Unitarians, we can choose which type of deity we believe in, or we can choose not to believe in a deity at all.

In conclusion, Unitarians accept that the concept of the Divine is a very complex one, and there are no right answers (or right beliefs!). The deity you believe in may be transcendent (that is, superior to everything else in the universe, and usually separate, or removed from it). He (and it usually is he!) is “up there” or “out there”, apart from humankind. Or the deity you believe in many be immanent, in other words, wholly present with creation because it penetrates creation in some fashion. The immanent divine is often perceived as feminine. As Marija Gimbutas writes: “The Goddess in all her manifestations was a symbol of the unity of all life in Nature. Her power was in water and stone, in tomb and cave, in animals and birds, snakes and fish, hills, trees, and flowers. Hence the holistic … perception of the sacredness and mystery of all there is on Earth.” 

This is echoed in the Tao Te Ching, which many Unitarians find inspirational (this lovely translation is by Stephen Mitchell):

"Every being in the Universe is an expression of the Tao.

It springs into existence, unconscious, perfect, free, takes on a physical body, lets circumstances complete it.

That is why every being spontaneously honours the Tao.

The Tao gives birth to all beings, nourishes them, maintains them, cares for them, comforts them, protects them, takes them back to herself,

Creating without possessing, acting without expecting, guiding without interfering.

That is why love of the Tao is in the very nature of things."