Ten Commandments - a Unitarian version?

It was not the Biblical 10 commandments that got me thinking about this. In fact, I've always thought that a lot of the Bible's big 10 have become either so obvious or irrelevant or even offensive that they need a great deal of reinterpretation to be at all useful. (George Carlin's dissection of the 10 commandments is always worth revisiting!) A few thoughts on the 10:

• Honour your father and mother - how about honouring everyone? What about abusive parents?
• Have no other gods before me - that's what ALL the gods say!
• Do not take the lord's name in vain - oh, for god's sake...
• Do not make any images or likenesses - has been pretty well ignored from day one
• Do not swear falsely - this is not strictly about lying, only about lying when you swear in god's name...

But it has been discussion in the Introduction to World Religions class I've been leading that has made me think more seriously. In particular, it was the Buddhist take on ethical rules that struck me for it's clarity that the rules are intended for personal transformation. The fact that these come not as commandments from on high, but rather as a system for becoming enlightened raises the interest for me. (I am not saying that there is anything wrong with rules for living in society - I'm a big believer in the importance of laws!) 

This led to an attraction to the idea of a Unitarian set of ethical guidelines - something that the class has begun to discuss at least briefly.

A quick Google search showed me that Rev. Michael McGee of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington VA was way ahead of me with his 2010 sermon series on A Renewed Ten Commandments.

In my proposed list of commandments below, (ten, of course!) I have borrowed and adapted from McGee. I have also taken a cue from the theology of Henry Nelson Wieman, and taken a great deal from my own congregation's input in a recent service where we explored the ethical foundations of our actions in the world and participants wrote their own short suggestions for the underpinnings of their best action.

For discussion, I offer the following. They have not been inscribed in stone tablets. They have no miraculous origin except for the not inconsiderable miracle of the human mind and heart!

A Unitarian Ten Commandments

We will strive to:

1. understand the original experience of others
2. treat each person gently and with respect
3. take care of the earth and its creatures
4. speak the truth with honesty and respect
5. act with and work for justice
6. value meaning over materialism and life over things
7. cultivate appreciation for all of life’s gifts
8. give generously
9. cultivate joy and wonder
10. be slow to anger and quick to forgive

New Facebook page

We already had a Facebook group, but now we have created a Facebook page. The page will display recent blogposts and new events that have been posted on the site.

You'll still need to visit the website to add events and register for them.

New resources area

We're very excited because we have just created a new resources area for the UKSpirituality site. It includes resources from several different traditions, and you can suggest a resource as well. We hope to build up a database of resources for people to use in their rituals and services.

Resources are organised into the following categories:

• Meal blessings
• Meditations and reflections
• Poetry
• Prayers
• Quotations
• Recommended books
• Recommended websites
• Spiritual practices
• Stories

New-look event form

Our forms for adding events and updating events are now easier to use - I have added a date picker to the date field, so a little calendar pops up when you click into the date field (or click on the calendar button next to it), and allows you to select the date of your event.

I also looked at time pickers, but these were generally hard to use and slower than entering the time in the format that we currently have.

I hope that people will now find it easier to add and edit their events.

A sermon in ten tweets

Stephen Lingwood, Minister at Bank Street Unitarian Chapel, Bolton, describes his experience

Anyone who cares about getting a spiritual message out to the general public cannot afford to ignore the Internet. That’s why at Bank Street Unitarian Chapel Bolton we have been seeking new ways to increase our web presence.

We have a website, and since 2009 have uploaded videos of reflections onto YouTube and to date have had over 2,000 views.

Then, in early 2011, we created a page on Facebook and a profile on Twitter. But the question remained of how we could use these new media outlets to get our message across.

The answer was perhaps one that a preacher like me would easily come to: I could “preach.” So I set myself the challenge of preaching five “Ten-Tweet” reflections/ sermons every day for one week. The local press responded well to the idea and wrote an article that appeared the Saturday before I started.

From Monday to Friday I posted a reflection each day in fewer than ten tweets. The subjects were: the banking industry, wealth and materialism, grasping and letting go, busyness, and gay rights. It was a challenge to make reflections that short, but I’ve always believed that profound things can be said in simple ways, so it was a valuable discipline to say things as succinctly as possible.

What was the outcome? It’s always difficult to say with these things. However we can say that within a few weeks we had over 100 followers from all over the world.

One American Tweeter said they thought what we were doing was great, and that they wanted to get their own church to do it. More locally the press coverage led to me being invited to appear on the local community radio station where I was able to talk about Twitter and about our community.

Someone was led from Twitter to our website where they left a message on the guestbook saying they liked the sound of what we stood for and would come along to a service to find out more soon.

You never know the seeds you are planting when you do things like that, but it’s felt like a worthwhile activity to use Twitter to get our message out there. It’s always worth trying something new.

Third Annual Pagan Values Blogging Month

Pax of the Pagan Values Blogject has just announced the third annual Pagan Values Blogging Month.

You can sign up for it on Facebook.

Pax writes:

We must not be afraid to discuss the values and virtues and ethics we have discovered in our contemporary Pagan faiths. There are enough books on rituals and spells and prayers to last us a few generations… let's start writing works on confronting poverty and hunger from Pagan perspectives. Let us set aside the fear of prejudice, and the once glamorous but now tattered and worn mantle of the outsider and the rebel, and take pride in ourselves and our faiths, in our works and lives and worship and in our Pagan communities and our larger communities.

Learn more about the event.

When you get your contribution written/recorded and posted in June put a link to it in the comments stream on the Facebook page. Tags such as "PVE2011" and "Pagan Values" are also encouraged.

Pagan Values Blogging Month 2010 and 2009 produced some excellent reflections on Pagan values and virtues - it was popular theology in the making.

Embracing the shadow

The human capacity for compassion and wisdom is in stark contrast to our capacity for cruelty and destruction. It is difficult to maintain an optimistic view of human nature in the face of the Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda, Abu Ghreib, torture, murder and rape. The only explanation that I find helpful for the human capacity for evil is the Jungian idea that we project our shadow selves onto others, and seek to destroy the shadow side by destroying the other. If we accepted our shadow side and sought to integrate it into consciousness, we would not persecute others, regard them as less human, and seek to destroy them.

But where did the shadow come from? Initially it may have emerged as a defence mechanism, or a by-product of the emergence of consciousness. This is suggested by the myth of the Garden of Eden, when the serpent reveals the distinction between good and evil to Adam and Eve, and then Yahweh says that the woman shall crush the serpent beneath her heel. If the knowledge of good and evil is equated with consciousness, and what is allowed into the light of consciousness is regarded as good, then the serpent (which represents the shadow and the unconscious) must be crushed in order to retain a sense of the self as good.

We can break out of this vicious circle by embracing the shadow, and taming the beast rather than seeking to destroy it.

A helpful myth in this respect is the original story of St George and the Dragon, where the saint did not kill the beast, but used the princess's girdle to make a halter for it. The princess represents the Anima (the inner feminine aspect of the hero), and her girdle, which represents her power, allows the hero to subdue the dragon (his lower nature).