Every night a child is born is a holy night

Every night a child is born is a holy night

Christmas is coming and the year will soon be turning. I cannot believe it will soon be 2012 and yet as I write this it is only mid November. I just doesn’t feel quite right to be thinking of these things just yet, but life compels me to. Well actually the job does. I have to constantly think ahead, while still living day by day, nay breath by breath.

The theme for the congregations I serve, Dunham Road Unitarian Chapel Altrincham and Queens Road Unitarian Free Church Urmston, has been nurture. How we nurture ourselves, our families, our communities, our world. We are all born with potential, the ability to do many things but to achieve them we need to both nurture and to be nurtured. It's a theme we've been exploring together throughout the year.

I have recently been given the honour of conducting several blessings of both children and one adult. I have incorporated water into these ceremonies and blessed each child’s thoughts, words and deeds by touching them with water on their foreheads, their lips and their hands. At the ceremony with give out a certificate with the words “Every Night a Child is Born is a Holy Night” by Sophia Lyon Fahs.

And so the children come.

And so they have been coming.

Always in the same way they come --

Born of the seed of man and woman.

No angels herald their beginnings,

No prophets predict their future courses,

No wise men see a star to point their way

To find a babe that may save humankind.

Yet each night a child is born is a holy night.

Fathers and Mothers --

Sitting beside their children's cribs --

Feel glory in the wond'rous sight of life beginning.

They ask: "When or how will this new life end?

Or will it ever end?"

Each night a child is born is a holy night

by Sophia Lyon Fahs

We are each of us precious and unique and we each have so much to offer our world, if we could just unearth and nurture that greater reality deep within the core of our very being. There truly is that of God in each and every one of us; the potential to do great things. That said there is also the potential to destroy, to corrupt to abuse.

Karen Armstrong Author of “12 Steps to a Compassionate Life” once said “Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way you will be transformed.”

The purpose of the religious, the spiritual, life is to nurture and develop the potential within each of us. I see this as the purpose of any religious community. It is more than that though; the purpose of a religious community is to share this in their communities and the wider world; it is their purpose to spread those concentric circles of compassion, that Confucius described two and a half millennia ago, out to the whole world. This compassion begins within the individual, and spreads to our families, to our communities, to our regions, to our countries before it encompasses the whole world. It begins though by healing and nurturing the individual's soul.

Let the light of love heal our souls and let us make each and every moment holy; let’s make every night a holy night.

"The Charter For Compassion"

One winter’s evening whilst gathered round a blazing camp fire, an old Sioux Indian chief told his grandson about the inner struggle that goes on inside people.

“You see” said the old man, “this inner struggle is like two wolves fighting each other. One is evil, full of anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, deceit, false pride, superiority, and ego”.

“The other one,” he continued, poking the fire with a stick so that the fire crackled, sending the flames clawing at the night sky, “is good, full of joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith”.

For a few minutes his grandson pondered his grandfather’s words and then asked, “So which wolf wins, grandfather?”

“Well”, said the wise old chief, his lined face breaking into a wry smile, “The one you feed!”

Religion for me is a simple matter, its sole purpose is to awaken our natural goodness and enable each human being to develop their compassionate natures. I do not believe that anyone is wholly bad, nor am I so naive as to believe that we are perfect either. We all have the capacity to be selfish and we can all be deeply compassionate too. Whichever aspect of ourselves flourishes, depends primarily on what is nurtured.

Karen Armstrong has stated “that religion isn’t about believing things. It’s ethical alchemy. It’s about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness” She has spent many years studying the great faith traditions of the world and has discovered a common value that lays at the heart of all of them, compassion. She claims that the true purpose of religion is to develop our compassionate natures. Sadly though these traditions have often become lost and or hidden and over powered by fundamentalist strains within them. In her Book “The Case For God” she disputes the claims of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, writing that those three “insist that fundamentalism constitutes the essence and core of all religion.” In fact, she argues, it is “a defiantly unorthodox form of faith that frequently misrepresents the tradition it is trying to defend.”

Armstrong views the Golden Rule, “love your neighbour as yourself”, as the essence of religious practice; claiming that it is a universal principle and that versions of it are at the core of every single one of the major faiths, theistic and non-theistic. She does not advocate one tradition above any other; she just states that at the core of all of them is the “Golden Rule of Compassion”

Armstrong recently launched the Charter For Compassion to help promote what she sees as the essence of religion. At our denominational annual meetings, we Unitarians and Free Christians voted unanimously to sign up to the charter. As a result of this I have pledged to promote the charter in my ministry. Over the coming weeks and months I will begin this process. Come and join me and thousands of others. All are welcome

Edward Everett Hale said

I am only one
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything
But still I can do something
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.

Examples of “The Golden Rule” found in the major faith traditions:

Christianity	All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye so to them; for this is the law and the prophets. Matthew 7:1
Confucianism	Do not do to others what you would not like yourself. Then there will be no resentment against you, either in the family or in the state. Analects 12:2
Buddhism	Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful. Udana-Varga 5,1
Hinduism	This is the sum of duty; do naught onto others what you would not have them do unto you. Mahabharata 5,1517
Islam	No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself. Sunnah
Judaism	What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellowman. This is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary. Talmud, Shabbat 3id
Taoism	Regard your neighbor’s gain as your gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss.Tai Shang Kan Yin P’ien
Zoroastrianism	That nature alone is good which refrains from doing another whatsoever is not good for itself. Dadisten-I-dinik, 94,5