I am often asked why I entered into the ministry; it happened several times at our denominational annual meetings. It’s a good question to ask any minister and it was particularly appropriate this year as I was being formally recognised. That said it is a question that I always feel reluctant to answer, it often fills me with dread. Why you may well ask? Well the reason is that my journey began with agonising, horrific grief; my journey began as I attempted to come to terms with a great loss. The death of my dear friend Claire’s son Ethan and all that followed it, is truly what cast me down the road to Unitarian ministry. Love and loss and finally putting the pieces back together, is what compelled me down this path. As I tried to come to terms with my own grief, while attempting to be there for Claire, I was held and supported by my own minster Rev John Midgley. He was present with a kind heart and a listening ear. He was there the day that Ethan was killed and over the weeks and months that followed. He said very little that I can remember, but he did listen. It cannot have been easy. To me this was a great example of pastoral ministry. John listened and he was there. Claire often tells me how seeing a single tear in his eye at Ethan’s funeral held her through some very dark days. He was no robot, merely going through the motions; there was deep compassion in his presence.
I have now been with the good folk of Altrincham and Urmston for nearly a year and I feel that we have got to know one another quite well. From the outset I made it a priority of mine to spend time talking, but above all else listening, to them. During the worship we have shared I have encouraged openness by allowing them to get to know me. Worship for me must always be speak the language of the heart and not just feed the intellect. This may well have been a challenge for some folk, but was a deliberate decision on my part in an attempt to give those present permission to be open with me. I have pretty much spent time with everyone connected with both congregations, visiting them in their own homes and talking with them about many things. This has been a real treasure to me, personally. We have some real gems hidden away in our congregations. I cannot begin to express how deeply moved I have been by what people have shared with me. Virtually every conversation has been littered with moving stories of love, of pain, of grief and of faith. I have heard some of the most incredible tales of personal spiritual experience, something I have interest in. I have rarely left someone’s home without feeling that my life has been enhanced by the time we have just shared. I have felt welcomed into the lives of the people within both communities and for that I am profoundly grateful.
One of my favourite hymns is All Are Welcome Here which reads “All are welcome here...all are welcome to seek in spite of fear...to open wide to all our hearts...for all are welcome here.” For me the purpose our faith is to build communities of love that encourage that search for understanding and meaning, that search beyond the confines of ourselves; we are about building communities that encourage each of us as individuals to continue that search but to do so together, unconstrained. For me the key to creating this welcome and fostering it amongst ourselves is in the listening; the key is to listen with the “ears of our hearts.”
“Listen with the ear of your heart”, has become one of my mantras over the last few months. It comes from “The Rule of Benedict” a set of ancient principles for monastic orders, followed by many Christian and some Buddhist communities today. The foundation of the rule is listening, deep attentive listening. It begins, “listen carefully, my child, to the instructions...and attend to them with the ear of your heart “. What is required is deep listening, a concept proposed, in contemporary times, by the Dalai Lama.
This has become the foundation of my ministry, to “listen with the ear of my heart” and to encourage that in others. Of course I often fall short of this mark as I get wrapped up in many things, some important but many trivial. That is ok though, one of my other mantras is “progress not perfection”.
The reason I came into ministry is to keep open my own heart and to encourage others to do likewise.
Friday, 8 July 2011
Tuesday, 5 July 2011
Lessons from geese
There's always something new to fall in love with...
When flying in V formation each goose creates uplift for the birds flying behind it, by flapping its wings. The whole flock together creates 71% greater range than if each bird flew alone.
People who share a common sense of direction and community can get where they are going quicker and easier because they are travelling on the thrust of one another.
When the lead goose tires, it rotates back into the formation and another goose flies to lead position.
It pays to take turns doing the hard work and sharing leadership, as with geese, people are interdependent on each others skills, talents, understanding and capabilities.
The geese flying in formation honk to encourage those at the front to keep going.
We need to make sure our honking is encouraging. Groups where the honking is encouraging work much better. The power of 'encouragement (to stand by one's core values and beliefs and encourage the core values and beliefs of others in the group) is the quality of honking we seek.
When a goose gets sick, wounded or shot down, two geese drop out of formation and follow it down to help and protect it. They stay until it dies or can fly again. Then they launch out with another formation or catch up with the flock. .
If we have as much sense as geese, we will stand by each other in difficult times as well as when we are strong.
May we have at least as much sense as geese.
from a speech given by Angeles Arrien,
based on the work of Milton Olson
One of my favourite songs is “Bluebeat” by New Model Army. There is a line it that goes “There’s always something new to fall in love”. I find this to be a consistent truth of my life.
Last year I fell in love with Geese. It all really began as an antidote to anxiety.
Prayer is really important to my life, it gives me the strength and direction I need to live as openly and honestly as I possibly can and therefore fully experience all that is before me. That said I have discovered, in recent times, its limits; for whatever reason prayer did not take away that anxiety that would come a calling, every Thursday morning, just over a year ago. I can see now that it was the very stillness and solitude of prayer that may well have caused its limitations. When I was in prayer I was still alone. Solitary spiritual practise was not enough it seems, well not at that moment in my life.
So what was the cause of this over powering anxiety, what created this ghost of fear, to come knocking at my door once again?
Well it was learning to drive, something that did not come naturally to me. I let the struggles I had with it get to me at times and I have to say I never thought I would be able to learn. That said I stuck with it and eventually passed.
You may well ask, how did I overcome that anxiety that would almost overwhelm every Thursday morning?
One Thursday morning I rose from solitary prayer and stepped into the cold of winter, crossed the road and walked around Platt Fields Park. I was studying for the ministry at the time at Luther King House, which is where the Unitarian college is, is just across the road from Platt Fields Park between Fallowfield and Rusholme in Manchester. I walked and walked and connected to the simple beauty of nature, the people and the animals. Over the next few weeks and months I would continue this walk, often several times a day. I got use to the similar sights. The group of middle aged men, with their cans of beer and their dogs; the students and Asian women jogging; the BMX boys; the mothers with prams; the men fishing and on Sundays the old guys with their model sail boats. I also took friends there and we would walk and talk together. It became more than a weekly ritual; it became a daily one or even sometimes a several times a day one.
Of all the different things I encountered on these walks, it was the geese who had the greatest impact.
You see I’ve fallen in love with the geese.
I’ve fallen in love with the geese. Just as Milton Olson did in seeing them as an inspiration for how our human societies can function successfully. He observed how every individual gains in power by simply working together for a common purpose, each taking it in turns to lead.
Just by simple watching these geese in a park in central Manchester I was able to connect to the humble reality of my own existence. As I passed them and watched them as they took off and landed as they cried out and honked to one another. I would often chuckle to myself as they waddled about and I observed their funny feet. This love deepened during the spring and summer as they gave birth to their own chicks, which followed them around the lake.
Just gorgeous, yes I’ve fallen in love with the geese, not the swans, or ducks or other birds. The geese, I’ve fallen in love with the geese.
I fell in love with these simple creatures. They took me out of myself and enabled me to connect to that greater reality that for some reason prayer was failing to do at this juncture of my life. Actually that may not be quite true because it was of course in this quiet time of prayer that the voice in my gut told me get up and walk outside into that cold winter morning.
So what has this experience taught me? Well it taught me once again that I cannot exist as a solitary individual. I need to connect I need to relate. To me this is the essence of spirituality. Spirituality is about relationships and about developing a simple and loving connection to the greater reality. As I understand it spirituality is really all about developing relationships at every level.
Whatever I do in life and wherever I go if I forget this I’m in trouble. Spirituality is about relationship. Nothing in life exists alone, without something to relate and connect to life will lose its meaning. No man is an island.
I think this is why I despair at so much of what is described as “New Age” spirituality. It is also why I believe my own Unitarian tradition is open at times to appropriate criticism. It can be too individualistic. Rightly no one has authority over another’s right to a private faith, doubt, belief and disbelief. That said we can’t just believe what we want, what we feel like on a whim from one week to next. Our faith offers freedom to search and seek and to ask the difficult questions. This I believe leads to a vibrant faith without certainty. That saidUnitarians do not just simply believe whatever they want, at least not in my experience.
A few years ago my brother took a holiday, with his wife, to America. One day they were being shown around Dallas by a taxi driver. At one point they passed a church and the driver exclaimed in a mixture of bewilderment and humour “That over there is a Unitarian Universalist church and those folks can believe whatever they like”
Now when he initially related this story it irritated me. Why peoplemay well ask? Well it’s this caricature that is so often painted aboutthe Unitarian faith “that we can believe whatever we like”, that gets to me. As I have heard others state "It’s not so much about believing whatever I like, but about believing what I must." What life in all its mystery and wonder compels me to believe. For me this is a painful and difficult task at times. There are no easy answers.
Also if spirituality becomes a purely private affair, who’s sole aim is to relieve an individual of the pain and discomfort that life can bring, it becomes narcissistic.
Narcissism leads only to more pain and suffering and in the end merely enhances the isolation. Narcissism is the antithesis of spirituality. It is the total annihilation of our humanity. A narcissist is a person utterly absorbed and preoccupied with themselves and their own pain to the total exclusion of others. It was Sigmund Freud who actually coined the term. He was influenced by Frederic Nietzsche, who was fascinated with the Greek Myths, and how these myths told the stories of our everyday lives. Freud saw in the myth of Narcissus this common state of preoccupation with our own pain.
Narcissus was a handsome Greek youth who rejected the desperate advances of the nymph Echo. As punishment, he was doomed to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Unable to consummate his own love, Narcissus wasted away over time and changed into the flower that bears his name. He lost his humanity.
A free religious faith cannot be narcissistic and I do not believe that Unitarianism is and I do not for one minute believe it encourages such instincts. Yes we are individuals, who often believe and disbelieve differently from one another, but we are also much more than that we are a community with a common purpose, we do have shared values. By coming together in community we strengthen one another far more than we could do by sitting alone in solitary isolation, trying to make sense of life. We learn from one another but we do more than that we open one another up to many of life's great mysteries.We share each others joys and pains. We cry together, we laugh together and we celebrate together.
Yes I’ve fallen in love with geese, why you may well ask?
Well, because they have taught me what it is to be truly human and how to live in community with other folk.
Honk...honk...honk
When flying in V formation each goose creates uplift for the birds flying behind it, by flapping its wings. The whole flock together creates 71% greater range than if each bird flew alone.
People who share a common sense of direction and community can get where they are going quicker and easier because they are travelling on the thrust of one another.
When the lead goose tires, it rotates back into the formation and another goose flies to lead position.
It pays to take turns doing the hard work and sharing leadership, as with geese, people are interdependent on each others skills, talents, understanding and capabilities.
The geese flying in formation honk to encourage those at the front to keep going.
We need to make sure our honking is encouraging. Groups where the honking is encouraging work much better. The power of 'encouragement (to stand by one's core values and beliefs and encourage the core values and beliefs of others in the group) is the quality of honking we seek.
When a goose gets sick, wounded or shot down, two geese drop out of formation and follow it down to help and protect it. They stay until it dies or can fly again. Then they launch out with another formation or catch up with the flock. .
If we have as much sense as geese, we will stand by each other in difficult times as well as when we are strong.
May we have at least as much sense as geese.
from a speech given by Angeles Arrien,
based on the work of Milton Olson
One of my favourite songs is “Bluebeat” by New Model Army. There is a line it that goes “There’s always something new to fall in love”. I find this to be a consistent truth of my life.
Last year I fell in love with Geese. It all really began as an antidote to anxiety.
Prayer is really important to my life, it gives me the strength and direction I need to live as openly and honestly as I possibly can and therefore fully experience all that is before me. That said I have discovered, in recent times, its limits; for whatever reason prayer did not take away that anxiety that would come a calling, every Thursday morning, just over a year ago. I can see now that it was the very stillness and solitude of prayer that may well have caused its limitations. When I was in prayer I was still alone. Solitary spiritual practise was not enough it seems, well not at that moment in my life.
So what was the cause of this over powering anxiety, what created this ghost of fear, to come knocking at my door once again?
Well it was learning to drive, something that did not come naturally to me. I let the struggles I had with it get to me at times and I have to say I never thought I would be able to learn. That said I stuck with it and eventually passed.
You may well ask, how did I overcome that anxiety that would almost overwhelm every Thursday morning?
One Thursday morning I rose from solitary prayer and stepped into the cold of winter, crossed the road and walked around Platt Fields Park. I was studying for the ministry at the time at Luther King House, which is where the Unitarian college is, is just across the road from Platt Fields Park between Fallowfield and Rusholme in Manchester. I walked and walked and connected to the simple beauty of nature, the people and the animals. Over the next few weeks and months I would continue this walk, often several times a day. I got use to the similar sights. The group of middle aged men, with their cans of beer and their dogs; the students and Asian women jogging; the BMX boys; the mothers with prams; the men fishing and on Sundays the old guys with their model sail boats. I also took friends there and we would walk and talk together. It became more than a weekly ritual; it became a daily one or even sometimes a several times a day one.
Of all the different things I encountered on these walks, it was the geese who had the greatest impact.
You see I’ve fallen in love with the geese.
I’ve fallen in love with the geese. Just as Milton Olson did in seeing them as an inspiration for how our human societies can function successfully. He observed how every individual gains in power by simply working together for a common purpose, each taking it in turns to lead.
Just by simple watching these geese in a park in central Manchester I was able to connect to the humble reality of my own existence. As I passed them and watched them as they took off and landed as they cried out and honked to one another. I would often chuckle to myself as they waddled about and I observed their funny feet. This love deepened during the spring and summer as they gave birth to their own chicks, which followed them around the lake.
Just gorgeous, yes I’ve fallen in love with the geese, not the swans, or ducks or other birds. The geese, I’ve fallen in love with the geese.
I fell in love with these simple creatures. They took me out of myself and enabled me to connect to that greater reality that for some reason prayer was failing to do at this juncture of my life. Actually that may not be quite true because it was of course in this quiet time of prayer that the voice in my gut told me get up and walk outside into that cold winter morning.
So what has this experience taught me? Well it taught me once again that I cannot exist as a solitary individual. I need to connect I need to relate. To me this is the essence of spirituality. Spirituality is about relationships and about developing a simple and loving connection to the greater reality. As I understand it spirituality is really all about developing relationships at every level.
Whatever I do in life and wherever I go if I forget this I’m in trouble. Spirituality is about relationship. Nothing in life exists alone, without something to relate and connect to life will lose its meaning. No man is an island.
I think this is why I despair at so much of what is described as “New Age” spirituality. It is also why I believe my own Unitarian tradition is open at times to appropriate criticism. It can be too individualistic. Rightly no one has authority over another’s right to a private faith, doubt, belief and disbelief. That said we can’t just believe what we want, what we feel like on a whim from one week to next. Our faith offers freedom to search and seek and to ask the difficult questions. This I believe leads to a vibrant faith without certainty. That saidUnitarians do not just simply believe whatever they want, at least not in my experience.
A few years ago my brother took a holiday, with his wife, to America. One day they were being shown around Dallas by a taxi driver. At one point they passed a church and the driver exclaimed in a mixture of bewilderment and humour “That over there is a Unitarian Universalist church and those folks can believe whatever they like”
Now when he initially related this story it irritated me. Why peoplemay well ask? Well it’s this caricature that is so often painted aboutthe Unitarian faith “that we can believe whatever we like”, that gets to me. As I have heard others state "It’s not so much about believing whatever I like, but about believing what I must." What life in all its mystery and wonder compels me to believe. For me this is a painful and difficult task at times. There are no easy answers.
Also if spirituality becomes a purely private affair, who’s sole aim is to relieve an individual of the pain and discomfort that life can bring, it becomes narcissistic.
Narcissism leads only to more pain and suffering and in the end merely enhances the isolation. Narcissism is the antithesis of spirituality. It is the total annihilation of our humanity. A narcissist is a person utterly absorbed and preoccupied with themselves and their own pain to the total exclusion of others. It was Sigmund Freud who actually coined the term. He was influenced by Frederic Nietzsche, who was fascinated with the Greek Myths, and how these myths told the stories of our everyday lives. Freud saw in the myth of Narcissus this common state of preoccupation with our own pain.
Narcissus was a handsome Greek youth who rejected the desperate advances of the nymph Echo. As punishment, he was doomed to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Unable to consummate his own love, Narcissus wasted away over time and changed into the flower that bears his name. He lost his humanity.
A free religious faith cannot be narcissistic and I do not believe that Unitarianism is and I do not for one minute believe it encourages such instincts. Yes we are individuals, who often believe and disbelieve differently from one another, but we are also much more than that we are a community with a common purpose, we do have shared values. By coming together in community we strengthen one another far more than we could do by sitting alone in solitary isolation, trying to make sense of life. We learn from one another but we do more than that we open one another up to many of life's great mysteries.We share each others joys and pains. We cry together, we laugh together and we celebrate together.
Yes I’ve fallen in love with geese, why you may well ask?
Well, because they have taught me what it is to be truly human and how to live in community with other folk.
Honk...honk...honk
Thursday, 30 June 2011
"That which reveals also hides"
I wonder sometimes if my Unitarian tradition is too fixated on words. I wonder if we in fact worship the word to the detriment of other forms of expression. I think I do. I’m more comfortable with words than with silence, music and imagery. Even the music I love and listen to is song. I don’t really listen to music without words, I’ve never fully appreciated music for music sake. As a young man I detested dance music I saw it as far less worthy than song. I know today that I was missing out.
Paul Tillich claimed that whatever reveals “Ultimate Reality” (“Others call it God”) also hides it. If this is the case then worship that neglects artistic expression and imagery fails to fully reach those experiencing it. During my time at Altrincham and Urmston I have become increasingly aware that the worship I create is predominantly word based; granted nothing like as much as it use to be, but still too much. I am learning the value of space and other media but I do not yet think I have fully learnt the value of the image or sound, although I am more open to it than I use to be. “Progress not perfection.”
There is of course a history of distrust of artistic expression within some strands of religion. Within Christianity, there have always been those who have been suspicious of art and aesthetics in general. This essentially stems from the fear of idolatry and the physical form. Throughout the church’s history attacks on art have been made. The early church faced the iconoclast controversy. Here biblical authority was drawn on to support the claim that to venerate icons in worship was idolatrous. During the reformation figures such as Calvin claimed that there was no place for images within worship. The fear stemmed from the belief that imagery would be a distraction from listening to the word of God through scripture. The word has maintained primacy since the reformation, certainly within the Protestant tradition. Even within my Unitarian tradition where authority is held within the conscience of the individual and not the scripture, the preached word is still central to our worship.
Surely, if Tillich is correct in claiming “that which reveals also hides” our worship must be lacking something by focusing primarily on the word, spoken or sung. Is there enough space for mystery and imagination in our worship? Have we fallen into the trap of idolising words or worse still the preacher? Have we become “preacherphiles”? I hope not. The word alone is limited because it fails to connect with people in a truly holistic manner. It fails to reach those parts at the core of a person’s being that aesthetic communication can. Art reveals a greater reality that cannot be achieved by the word alone.
A few years ago I experienced several life changing spiritual experiences. As a result I began to explore religion and spirituality in an attempt to make sense of what had happened to me. One of the places I use to visit was the Holy Name church opposite the university on Oxford Road in Manchester. I would go there almost every lunchtime, just to sit quietly and pray. While there I kept being drawn to “The Sacred Heart” Icon of Jesus. I became fixated by the glowing heart at its centre; it brought me an incredible sense of peace and connection. At the same time I was meditating on some words in the book “Alcoholics Anonymous”. The words were: “We finally saw that faith in some kind of God was a part of our make-up, just as much as the feeling we have for a friend. Sometimes we had to search fearlessly, but he was there. He was as much a fact as we were. We found the great Reality deep down within us. In the last analysis it is only there that He may be found. It was so with us.” My problem had been my inability to fully accept this reality within me, but I could see it in someone else my friend Claire’s son Ethan. Over the weeks of meditating on these three things together I began to accept that the sacred heart in Jesus and in Ethan truly was in me. As a result I was finally able to make some sense of the changes that had taken place within me. Today I see that of God in everything, not separate or distant from life but within it. I do not believe that I could ever have reached that conclusion by simply reading or hearing words alone.
I agree with Tillich in his assertion that that which reveals “Ultimate Reality” also blocks it. Nothing, whether that is art, the written or spoken word, personal experience or nature can fully reveal ”Ultimate Reality”. I suspect that it is actually beyond our human capacity, I know it’s beyond mine. That said I believe that we can move closer to our own true natures, one another, all that is life and that that runs through life, which I call God, by fully engaging all our senses and appreciating and expressing all the gifts that have been bestowed upon us. Whilst at the same time not making idols of any of them.
Experience has taught me that imagery and artistic expression enhance my experience of the Divine and yet I still create worship that is almost wholly word based. Hopefully in time I will have the courage to create worship that touches those parts that the word alone cannot reach.
Paul Tillich claimed that whatever reveals “Ultimate Reality” (“Others call it God”) also hides it. If this is the case then worship that neglects artistic expression and imagery fails to fully reach those experiencing it. During my time at Altrincham and Urmston I have become increasingly aware that the worship I create is predominantly word based; granted nothing like as much as it use to be, but still too much. I am learning the value of space and other media but I do not yet think I have fully learnt the value of the image or sound, although I am more open to it than I use to be. “Progress not perfection.”
There is of course a history of distrust of artistic expression within some strands of religion. Within Christianity, there have always been those who have been suspicious of art and aesthetics in general. This essentially stems from the fear of idolatry and the physical form. Throughout the church’s history attacks on art have been made. The early church faced the iconoclast controversy. Here biblical authority was drawn on to support the claim that to venerate icons in worship was idolatrous. During the reformation figures such as Calvin claimed that there was no place for images within worship. The fear stemmed from the belief that imagery would be a distraction from listening to the word of God through scripture. The word has maintained primacy since the reformation, certainly within the Protestant tradition. Even within my Unitarian tradition where authority is held within the conscience of the individual and not the scripture, the preached word is still central to our worship.
Surely, if Tillich is correct in claiming “that which reveals also hides” our worship must be lacking something by focusing primarily on the word, spoken or sung. Is there enough space for mystery and imagination in our worship? Have we fallen into the trap of idolising words or worse still the preacher? Have we become “preacherphiles”? I hope not. The word alone is limited because it fails to connect with people in a truly holistic manner. It fails to reach those parts at the core of a person’s being that aesthetic communication can. Art reveals a greater reality that cannot be achieved by the word alone.
A few years ago I experienced several life changing spiritual experiences. As a result I began to explore religion and spirituality in an attempt to make sense of what had happened to me. One of the places I use to visit was the Holy Name church opposite the university on Oxford Road in Manchester. I would go there almost every lunchtime, just to sit quietly and pray. While there I kept being drawn to “The Sacred Heart” Icon of Jesus. I became fixated by the glowing heart at its centre; it brought me an incredible sense of peace and connection. At the same time I was meditating on some words in the book “Alcoholics Anonymous”. The words were: “We finally saw that faith in some kind of God was a part of our make-up, just as much as the feeling we have for a friend. Sometimes we had to search fearlessly, but he was there. He was as much a fact as we were. We found the great Reality deep down within us. In the last analysis it is only there that He may be found. It was so with us.” My problem had been my inability to fully accept this reality within me, but I could see it in someone else my friend Claire’s son Ethan. Over the weeks of meditating on these three things together I began to accept that the sacred heart in Jesus and in Ethan truly was in me. As a result I was finally able to make some sense of the changes that had taken place within me. Today I see that of God in everything, not separate or distant from life but within it. I do not believe that I could ever have reached that conclusion by simply reading or hearing words alone.
I agree with Tillich in his assertion that that which reveals “Ultimate Reality” also blocks it. Nothing, whether that is art, the written or spoken word, personal experience or nature can fully reveal ”Ultimate Reality”. I suspect that it is actually beyond our human capacity, I know it’s beyond mine. That said I believe that we can move closer to our own true natures, one another, all that is life and that that runs through life, which I call God, by fully engaging all our senses and appreciating and expressing all the gifts that have been bestowed upon us. Whilst at the same time not making idols of any of them.
Experience has taught me that imagery and artistic expression enhance my experience of the Divine and yet I still create worship that is almost wholly word based. Hopefully in time I will have the courage to create worship that touches those parts that the word alone cannot reach.
Rev Danny Crosby
Dunham Road Unitarian Chapel, Altrincham
Queens Road Unitarian Free Church, Urmston
Sunday, 26 June 2011
Welcoming the Stranger
"Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again come, come."These words by the Sufi mystic Rumi speak powerfully to me.
— Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi
I believe that they teach us what a religious community should be about. Such communities ought to be about welcoming people – whoever they are and wherever they have been.
This welcome is an invitation to join fellow travellers on a journey together. A journey of hope and not despair, that keeps on inviting the wanderer to keep coming back. The invitation of course is universal, it is open to all.
The importance of welcoming the stranger is at the root of all the great faith traditions. The ancient Greeks cultivated the concept of “Xenia” or “guest friendship” They believed that the guest may well be a God in disguise and thus treated them accordingly. In Genesis Abraham is visited by three guests, who he treats like royalty. These guests are later revealed to be angels; in fact it is implied strongly that one may well be God himself. They tell the childless and aged Abraham and Sarah that they will have a son.
Being a gracious host is a primary requirement of Islam. The Qur’an 4. 36-37 reads:
“Be kind to parents and near kinsman, and to orphans, and to the needy, and to the neighbour who is of kin, and to the neighbour who is a stranger, and to the companion at your side, and to the traveller...Surely God loves not the proud and boastful such as are niggardly, and bid other men to be niggardly, and themselves conceal the bounty that God has given them.”This welcoming of the stranger is deeply engrained in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The classic example of this is the parable of the “Good Samaritan”. The story tells of a Jewish man who lay on the side of the road beaten, robbed and left to die. He is passed by a Jewish priest and temple official, who both ignore him. Then a Samaritan passes by, a despised enemy of the Israelites. He looks after the man and pays for his shelter at the inn. He welcomes the stranger.
Mother Teresa, an often vilified and dare I say mocked figure, took this teaching to heart and believed that in every suffering and needy person was something of God, she saw Jesus in human suffering. She and others like her saw it as their life task to offer hospitality to the stranger.
The monastic tradition has cultivated the practise of caring for the stranger and the poor and needy. Hospitals began in such places. The word hospital comes from “hospitable”. The best example of this has to be the monastery of St. Benedict. Benedict created what has become known as “The Rule of Benedict”, which was a book of rules by which a monastery ought to live. Many monasteries today live by this rule, including some Buddhist ones. The foundation of the rule is listening, deep attentive listening. It begins, “listen carefully, my child, to the instructions...and attend to them with ear of your heart “.
To welcome someone into our lives we need to listen deeply. This is a concept which the Dalai Lama promotes in contemporary time. It is not some ancient practise lost in the annals of time, it is living and breathing, it is contemporary and it is most urgently needed in our time.
In my time at Altrincham and Urmston I have been warmly welcomed by the various faith traditions. I have certainly felt listened to. Inter-faith relations and respect for those who think about religion differently is healthy and strong here. Sadly this is not the case the world over. I suspect that this is why there is so much anti-religious feeling in 21st Century Britain.
Sadly not all people of faith are welcoming of all, whoever they are. Perhaps this is why so many people have rejected religion all together. How often do we hear “I’m spiritual not religious”?
I think people are rejecting religion because they see it as authoritarian, unbending, dangerous and not a source of loving compassion for your fellow man or woman. My experience of religion has been very different, both within my own Unitarian tradition and through my encounters with the other faiths here in Altrincham and Urmston. I consider myself to be both spiritual and religious. I am religious because I join with others on a spiritual odyssey seeking truth and meaning. My fellow travellers often do not hold the same beliefs and yet we are able to journey together in compassion, helping one another along the way. I am also spiritual because I do not seek authority over others and no one has authority over my conscience in matters of faith. The religion I practise is free and it is deeply spiritual.
The 16th century Unitarian Francis David once proclaimed “We need not think alike, to love alike.”
I have found this to be true among the faith communities I have encountered during my short time as a minister. They have made me, the stranger, most welcome.
Rev Danny Crosby
Friday, 24 June 2011
"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 |
Friday, 17 June 2011
New Facebook app
I have now created an embedded UK Spirituality application in Facebook which pulls the events from UK Spirituality, and where people can register for the event by clicking on a button in the Facebook application.
The application is part of the UK Spirituality page, but it can also be used separately.
The application is part of the UK Spirituality page, but it can also be used separately.
Sunday, 5 June 2011
Boost for social justice from an unlikely source
Credit where it's due. David Cameron appears to be committed to defending the international development budget and although the Guardian puts it down to a cynical calculation to shore up his image, I'm not so sure - I suspect most voters probably agree with the charity-begins-at-home sentiments expressed by the Daily Mail.
In his most high-profile intervention on overseas aid since becoming prime minister, Cameron will host the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi) conference in London on 13 June.
The conference, discussed by Barack Obama and Cameron last week, is regarded as vital to efforts to lower child mortality in Africa. In a sign of the scale of pledges being sought, the Obama administration is being asked to give $450m to the programme over three years.
Britain will also announce a substantial extra contribution to help reach the $3.7bn required to scale up immunisation programmes between 2011 and 2015, and save an estimated 4 million children's lives.
The funding will specifically enable Gavi to distribute two vaccines, pneumococcal and rotavirus, tackling the two biggest killers of children in the developing world: pneumonia and diarrhoea. It is thought the vaccines will save more than 4 million lives by 2015. Pneumonia accounts for 20% of all deaths of children under five.
Britain gave £150m to Gavi in March last year, and since 2005 has been the second most generous contributor to the alliance after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
As Alan Duncan puts it: aid-bashing does not actually get us anywhere. If we were to cancel the aid budget altogether it wouldn't solve all the other problems, so this sort of balancing of the aid budget versus all other problems isn't entirely logical.
The fact is, if you had a pound, would you give a halfpenny to stop someone dying in the street? The answer is you probably would, and what we are doing is stopping millions of people dying from disease, we are helping educate people and make them healthy.
Britain now spends more on overseas aid as a proportion of GDP than any other G8 nation, with a planned 34 per cent increase by 2014.
In his most high-profile intervention on overseas aid since becoming prime minister, Cameron will host the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi) conference in London on 13 June.
The conference, discussed by Barack Obama and Cameron last week, is regarded as vital to efforts to lower child mortality in Africa. In a sign of the scale of pledges being sought, the Obama administration is being asked to give $450m to the programme over three years.
Britain will also announce a substantial extra contribution to help reach the $3.7bn required to scale up immunisation programmes between 2011 and 2015, and save an estimated 4 million children's lives.
The funding will specifically enable Gavi to distribute two vaccines, pneumococcal and rotavirus, tackling the two biggest killers of children in the developing world: pneumonia and diarrhoea. It is thought the vaccines will save more than 4 million lives by 2015. Pneumonia accounts for 20% of all deaths of children under five.
Britain gave £150m to Gavi in March last year, and since 2005 has been the second most generous contributor to the alliance after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
As Alan Duncan puts it: aid-bashing does not actually get us anywhere. If we were to cancel the aid budget altogether it wouldn't solve all the other problems, so this sort of balancing of the aid budget versus all other problems isn't entirely logical.
The fact is, if you had a pound, would you give a halfpenny to stop someone dying in the street? The answer is you probably would, and what we are doing is stopping millions of people dying from disease, we are helping educate people and make them healthy.
Britain now spends more on overseas aid as a proportion of GDP than any other G8 nation, with a planned 34 per cent increase by 2014.
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