More books

I went on a shopping spree at lunchtime and bought:

• The Book of Atheist Spirituality by André Comte-Sponville
  It is obvious to non-theist mystics that you can have spirituality without God, but it needed re-stating. I disagree with Comte-Sponville's definition of religion, but he is refreshingly dismissive of the unpleasant dogmatism of New Atheism
• Godless morality by Richard Holloway
  I enjoyed his other books, so thought I would read more; and I certainly agree that you can have morality without any notion of a creator
• The Book of Shadows by Don Paterson
  No, it has nothing to do with Wicca - it's a book of aphorisms - a couple of them made me laugh out loud in the shop, so I had to buy it
• A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland
  This is all about the blessedness of silence, contemplation and the absence of noise in the lives of mystics, which sounds awesome.
• Theatre Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
  I really loved Ballet Shoes, and this appears to be a sequel, so I bought it for a childhood nostalgia trip and comfort reading.

Books I have loved

Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.

1. The Prophet - Kahlil Gibran
2. Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Richard Bach
3. The Telling - Ursula Le Guin
4. Illusions: the Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah - Richard Bach
5. The Tao Te Ching - Lao Tsu
6. The Fifth Sacred Thing - Starhawk
7. The Deptford Trilogy - Robertson Davies
8. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
9. Taking Care - David Smail
10. Poems of Sylvia Plath
11. Poems of Ursula Fanthorpe
12. The Wild Girl - Michèle Roberts
13. The Gnostic Gospels - Elaine Pagels
14. Puck of Pook's Hill - Rudyard Kipling
15. The Art of Conversation with the Genius Loci - Barry Patterson

(these are in the order that I recalled them, rather than ranked by amount of influence on me)

Burne-Jones windows

This morning I visited Rochdale Unitarian Church, met some lovely people, heard a lovely service about Jonathan Livingston Seagull (one of my favourite books), and saw the beautiful windows by Edward Burne-Jones (one of my favourite artists) there. They also sang some hymns from the new purple book, including the lovely Name Unnamed (one of my favourite hymns). So, all in all, a very satisfying experience.

The windows represent a series of Virtues: Truth, Justice, Liberty, Prudence, Knowledge, Love, Faith, Humility (all very Unitarian values). Burne-Jones wasn't a Unitarian, but another Pre-Raphaelite painter, Barbara Bodichon, was one.

Touching base

Andrew Brown has posted an outline of the basis of Unitarianism. It is true that this is a very important part of our heritage and continuing tradition, but I would have to add the results of interfaith dialogue, namely an openness to insights from other religious traditions. The dialogue with other traditions began early on, and appears even in the writings of Servetus, who referred to "Hermetic" texts, according to Earl Morse Wilbur, historian of Unitarianism. The pantheist tendency (which Andrew Brown embraces) and the nature-loving tendency both began fairly early on, as I explored in my article Pagan tendencies in Unitarianism. Another very important factor was the encounter with Rammohun Roy and the continuing relationship with the Brahmo Samaj.

I have always thought that a tradition's theology (whatever it is) cannot exist meaningfully if it behaves as if there were no other possible understandings of the world, but must explain and celebrate the existence of other religions - as liberal traditions generally do. For instance, when a liberal polytheistic religion meets another tradition, it adds some of the gods, goddesses and heroes of that tradition to its own pantheon, or assumes them to be equivalents; when a liberal monotheistic tradition meets another tradition, it assumes that they are worshipping a different manifestation of the same Ultimate Reality.

Doing this does not have to undermine the coherence of the original tradition; in fact it should strengthen it, because it takes the other tradition as a confirmation that the Divine is everywhere and speaks to all humanity.

So yes, there are certain values and ideas which are outside the Unitarian tradition - for instance, I imagine that a hard polytheist would be most uncomfortable within it, as would political conservatives. But there is a broad range of ways in which we can interpret the Bible, and cross-reference it with other great spiritual texts in order to elucidate its meaning, as John Andrew Storey did. Because the Bible is part of our culture, we cannot understand our legal and moral system unless we engage with it (even if we want to change the system, it is important to understand what it is based on). And the Bible is too important a text to be left to conservatives.

I very much liked Stephen Lingwood's outline of Unitarianism and how it brings about spiritual transformation. This emphasises practices and values rather than beliefs.

Marcella Althaus-Reid

The LGBT Religious Archives Network has posted a profile of one of my favourite theologians, Marcella Althaus-Reid.

Her first book, Indecent Theology (2000), received widespread recognition in the theological field and earned her self-described reputation as an "indecent, Latina, bisexual theologian." Her next book, Queer God (2004), was a bold and provocative challenge to the sexual oppression inherent in most Christian theologies and established her as a fresh, cutting-edge thinker.

Here's a quote from one of her books:

Our task and our joy is to find or simply recognise God sitting amongst us, at any time, in any gay bar or in the home of a camp friend who decorates her living room as a chapel and doesn’t leave her rosary at home when going to a salsa bar.
— Althaus-Reid, M. (2004) The Queer God. London: Routledge.

Community

The useful thing about communities is that they can give rise to shared values and a consensus view of reality. This is also the dangerous thing about them: communities under stress can produce really scary norms and values (Jonestown, Nazi Germany, Cambodia under Pol Pot, etc). So we need individuals to balance this out sometimes, and produce new paradigms (it's a bit like Kuhn's theory of scientific advances). Examples of such individuals triggering paradigm shifts include the founders of religions and great collective surges of conscience (early Unitarians, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, early feminists, etc.)

But assuming for the moment that a community is going to tend towards sanity... whom should a community include? If it is going to call itself a community, should it exclude the "walking wounded"? If its collective values are strong enough, can't it include (and help to heal) the damaged people? OK, some people are too damaged and need professional help, but we ought to be able to help the "walking wounded".

How do we create and nurture community? By meeting regularly in large and small groups; sharing our feelings and thoughts. By discussing and negotiating our shared values. And by developing collective ways of putting those shared values into practice.

I've just been reading On Forgiveness: how can we forgive the unforgivable? by Richard Holloway. In it, he talks about the radical change that can be brought about by forgiveness (for example, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa). Forgiveness is one of the practices that a community needs if it is going to function effectively. It is not something that can be done lightly; it's not about just forgetting what has been done. It is a radical act, and not one that you can command people to do - but it can be developed as a spiritual practice. Another important factor in the development of community is compassion (for ourselves as well as others, and for all living things, not just humans). Compassion can include empathy, love, pity, and mercy. And finally, a certain amount of humility might be useful. Humility literally means "closeness to the Earth". By humility I mean a willingness to accept our own shortcomings. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." I do not mean that we should only focus on our shortcomings; compassion requires that we and the community should also celebrate our strengths; and if the community celebrates our strengths, it can also benefit from them.

Archetypal

I saw this street entertainer yesterday doing a show that has been popular since the medieval period, and she reminded me of the classic Tarot card of The Magician.