(no subject)
The other night my roommate and I did a lot of talking about faith, and I know I've talked with a lot of you about being a Unitarian Universalist and how many people see it as not a "real religion." I thought it would be proper to post this now, it being the holidays, from W. F. Schultz.
Here's to you, and the holidays, and whatever crazy thing it is that made you and everything else happen.
Andrei Sakharov, the renowned Russian physicist, once asked his wife, Elena Bonner, “Do you know what I love most of all in life?” “I expected,” Bonner confided some years later to a friend, “that he would say something about a poem or a sonata or even about me. But no. Instead, he said, ‘The thing I love most in like is radio background emanation’” -the barely discernable radio waves which reach us here on earth from outer space and reflect unknown cosmic processes that ended billions of years ago.
What Sakharov meant of course was that he loved the mysteries that the cosmos hands us, the grandeur and immensity of this thing we call Creation. And he loved the fact that we human beings can occasionally get a glimpse of those mysteries and that grandeur, even the parts whose work was done billions of years ago.
Very few of us can ask the kind of sophisticated questions of the universe that Andrei Sakharov did. Even fewer have the opportunity to receive a hint of reply. But most of us at one time or another wonder about the ultimate questions of life: How did Time begin? Is there a God? Has life meaning? What is good? Why must we die?
These are fundamental religious questions. And most religions- at least in their orthodox varieties- believe they have the answers. Those orthodox answers may be framed in terms of Jesus Christ (Christianity), the law of the Covenant (Judaism), or the eight-fold path to enlightenment (Buddhism), to name but three.
Unitarian Universalism is different. We respect the answers offered by Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism, and the world’s other great faith traditions- we even draw our inspiration and some of our forms of worship from those traditions- but we respect the mystery more. We believe, in other words, that no singe religion (or academic discipline, for that matter) has a monopoly on wisdom; that the answers to the great religious questions change from generation to generation; and that the ultimate truth about God and Creation, death, meaning, and the human spirit cannot be captured in a narrow statement of faith. The mystery itself is always greater than its name.
This, then, is why ours is a creedless faith and respect for others’ beliefs is a high value. We do not require our members to subscribe to a particular theology or set of affirmations in order to join our congregations. Instead, we encourage individuals to garner insights from all the world’s great faiths, as well as from Shakespeare and from science, from feminism and from feelings. We invite people to explore their spirituality in a responsible way. We ask Unitarian Universalists to cherish the earth, to free the oppressed, and to be grateful for life’s blessings. Out of this combination of reflection and experience, each one of us shapes a personal faith.
Here's to you, and the holidays, and whatever crazy thing it is that made you and everything else happen.
Andrei Sakharov, the renowned Russian physicist, once asked his wife, Elena Bonner, “Do you know what I love most of all in life?” “I expected,” Bonner confided some years later to a friend, “that he would say something about a poem or a sonata or even about me. But no. Instead, he said, ‘The thing I love most in like is radio background emanation’” -the barely discernable radio waves which reach us here on earth from outer space and reflect unknown cosmic processes that ended billions of years ago.
What Sakharov meant of course was that he loved the mysteries that the cosmos hands us, the grandeur and immensity of this thing we call Creation. And he loved the fact that we human beings can occasionally get a glimpse of those mysteries and that grandeur, even the parts whose work was done billions of years ago.
Very few of us can ask the kind of sophisticated questions of the universe that Andrei Sakharov did. Even fewer have the opportunity to receive a hint of reply. But most of us at one time or another wonder about the ultimate questions of life: How did Time begin? Is there a God? Has life meaning? What is good? Why must we die?
These are fundamental religious questions. And most religions- at least in their orthodox varieties- believe they have the answers. Those orthodox answers may be framed in terms of Jesus Christ (Christianity), the law of the Covenant (Judaism), or the eight-fold path to enlightenment (Buddhism), to name but three.
Unitarian Universalism is different. We respect the answers offered by Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism, and the world’s other great faith traditions- we even draw our inspiration and some of our forms of worship from those traditions- but we respect the mystery more. We believe, in other words, that no singe religion (or academic discipline, for that matter) has a monopoly on wisdom; that the answers to the great religious questions change from generation to generation; and that the ultimate truth about God and Creation, death, meaning, and the human spirit cannot be captured in a narrow statement of faith. The mystery itself is always greater than its name.
This, then, is why ours is a creedless faith and respect for others’ beliefs is a high value. We do not require our members to subscribe to a particular theology or set of affirmations in order to join our congregations. Instead, we encourage individuals to garner insights from all the world’s great faiths, as well as from Shakespeare and from science, from feminism and from feelings. We invite people to explore their spirituality in a responsible way. We ask Unitarian Universalists to cherish the earth, to free the oppressed, and to be grateful for life’s blessings. Out of this combination of reflection and experience, each one of us shapes a personal faith.