A hymn to darkness

8.7.8.7.7.7.

WHEN the day of toil is ended,
And night cometh cool and still,
Clad in starry spangled raiment,
Trailing softly o'er the hill,
Hand and heart and aching brain
In her peace forget their pain.

Grateful presence of the night-time
Soft restraint of sleep so sweet,
Holding still our fervent fingers,
Gently chaining restless feet;—
They who labour in the light
Hail the holy, holy night.

May we rise with hearts more hopeful
For to-morrow and its strife,
With a stronger aspiration
And resolve for nobler life,
Consecrated all anew,
To the good, the pure, the true.

Robert Henry Underwood Bloor (160 in Hymns of Modern Thought)

Robert Henry Underwood Bloor, minister of  Trowbridge Unitarians from 1895 to 1899, was a former Anglican who had adopted Unitarian views. After ministering at Trowbridge, he went on to be minister for Brighton Unitarian Church and Essex Church in Kensington. He was the author of Christianity & the Religious Drama, which he gave as the Essex hall lecture for 1928, and which was published by Beacon Press in 1930. He contributed five hymns (numbers 69, 104, 114, 132, and 160) to the hymn-book of the Leicester Secular Society, Hymns of Modern Thought. Several other Unitarian authors (Sarah Flower Adams, Stopford Brooke, Frederick Lucian Hosmer, Moncure Conway, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Samuel Longfellow) appear on the list of contributors; they were mainly of the Transcendentalist and humanist persuasion. 

Nature Boy

There was a boy
A very strange enchanted boy
They say he wandered very far, very far
Over land and sea
A little shy
And sad of eye
But very wise
Was he 

And then one day
A magic day he came my way
And while we spoke of many things, fools and kings
This he said to me
"The greatest thing
You'll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved
In return"

(instrumental interlude)

"The greatest thing
You'll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved
In return" 

~ eden ahbez

The Green Chapel

Then spurred he Gringolet, and betook himself along the path by the side of a wood, and rode over a rough hill into the valley. And he lingered there some time, and a wild place he thought it, for he saw no resting-place, but only high hills on both sides, and rough, rugged rocks and huge boulders, and the hill shadows seemed desolating to him. Then he drew up his horse, and it seemed wondrous strange to him that he saw not the Green Chapel on any side. At length a little way off he caught sight of a round hillock by the side of a brook, and there was a ford across the brook, and the water therein bubbled as though it were boiling. The knight caught up the reins and came to the hill, alighted, and tied up the reins to the rugged branch of a tree. Then he went to the hill and walked round about it, debating within himself what place it might be. It had a hole at the end and on either side, and it was overgrown with tufts of grass and was all round and hollow within. He thought it naught but an old cave or a crevice. Within and about it there seemed to be a spell. 'Ah lord,' quoth the gentle knight, 'Is this the green chapel?'

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ll 2160 - 2186

Pan

Pan, by Inertia K

Your voice is heard
in the whispering of the olive trees
Your hoofbeats
echo in the rain on the roof at night
Your goaty fragrance
finds its way into my dreams
The curve of your back
is in the sinuous folds of the land
The crook of your horns
is in the crescent Moon
The music of your pipes
is whistling down the wind
Your wild dancing
stirs the Maenads to ecastic frenzy.
Your holy tree
is growing by the altar
next to my heart.

Pan, whose home is the wilderness
may I not fear the wild places
far from human habitat
may I not fear the wind
that brings constant change
may I not fear the sublime moment
of recognising my own smallness
in the face of all that is

(Yvonne Aburrow)

Meditation from Thais

My favourite piece of music of all time. So beautiful.

Then sings my soul

O Universe! When I in awe-struck wonder
Consider all the beauty of the earth,
I see the stars, I hear the mighty thunder,
The nebulae where stars are come to birth;

Refrain:
Then sings my soul, o Universe, to Thee,
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!
Then sings my soul, o wondrous mystery,
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!

When through the woods and forest glades I wander
and hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees;
when I look down from lofty mountain grandeur,
and hear the brook, and feel the gentle breeze;

[Refrain]

When I behold the wondrous evolution
Of diverse forms, adapted to their place
And know that life, arisen from the ocean
Can love and laugh, and move with fluid grace

[Refrain]

And when I die, and pass into a memory
I know that all my molecules shall be
Part of some life, some bird or flower or tree
For life is change, and death's a mystery.

[Refrain]

And life goes on, in all its splendid rhythm
And love is all the grace we'll ever know
Death yields to birth, and so the wheel turns always:
Love turns the wheel, and makes the dancers go.

[Refrain]

(pantheist version by Yvonne Aburrow)

(tune and original words)

What to call you?

Mother Spirit, Father Spirit, where are you?
In the sky song, in the forest, sounds your cry.
What to give you, what to call you, what am I?

– Norbert Čapek

So who or what is "God"? For me, the Divine (as I prefer to refer to it) is not a person, not a thing, and probably not an energy. For me, the Divine is an experience.

In Pagan religions, deities have specific names. Some people regard them as energies, some regard them as archetypes; some regard them as individual people. This gets complicated by issues like whether Odin and Woden are the same person. And then what about Thor, Perkunas, Jupiter, Taranis, or even Yahweh - they are all thunder gods, but maybe they are distinct from each other (they certainly are culturally distinct).

In monotheist religions, there are plenty of arguments about whether the "one true god" (TM) is the same as someone else's "one true god". Are the gods of Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Sikhism the same? What about Brahma in Hinduism? What about the Spirit of Life worshipped by many Unitarians and Unitarian Universalists? How far does your concept of "God" extend? If it does not include other deity-forms, should you enlarge your concept? Desmond Tutu has recently written a book, God is not a Christian, making the point that Gandhi's God is the same as Tutu's God.

When I address the Divine in a Unitarian service, I am not addressing Yahweh, or the god of Abraham, Jacob et al (except insofar as subsequent tradition has identified that view of the Divine with the ultimate divine source); I am addressing the Neoplatonic Divine Source, which as far as I am concerned precedes and transcends all other deity-forms.The divine source can be addressed in many ways: "Spirit of Life", "Source of All Life", "Ground of All Being", "Genderless Engenderer", the Tao, "Mother Spirit", "God", "Goddess", "Divine mystery at the heart of all that is" etc. There is even a Unitarian hymn addressed to the God beyond God. These kind of terms can include pantheists, "soft" polytheists, polymorphists, monotheists, theists, Unitarian Christians, non-theists, atheists, agnostics, and maybe a few other theological positions I haven't thought of.

In all of this, I try to keep in mind that the Divine does not exist; it is existence itself, and it's not a person or a thing, but an experience.

I would not use Pagan deity names when leading a prayer in a Unitarian service, because it's not part of the tradition, and because many people join Unitarian churches because they want to get away from viewing the Divine through the lens of personality, whether it's the personality of Jesus or the personality of a Pagan deity. And also, I think it would be difficult for some Unitarian Christians if prayers were addressed to Pagan deities. However, I have addressed prayers to the Shekhinah (the Jewish name for the feminine Divine presence), and read Thunder, Perfect Mind (a Gnostic hymn to Sophia).

I have privately communed with Pagan deities in a Unitarian service from time to time, when I was not leading the service. But mainly, I like the fact that Unitarian liturgy addresses a vague and undefined Divine mystery, and not specific deity-forms. I do think it is important to include feminine imagery as well as masculine and gender-neutral imagery, though.

Does it matter? I hear you ask. Well, it matters to me what I am talking to; and it matters to others, too. I think it is all too easy for people from a monotheist tradition to gloss over these differences.