Monday, May 3, 2010

Morning Meditation - Honoring the mystery


"Doubt is a pilgrimage. It is one of the most sacred values of human beings. Doubt does not mean no. It simply says, 'I don't know, and I am prepared to know. I am ready to go as far as possible, but unless I myself come to know, how can I say yes?'"

Osho

Unitarian Universalists believe in the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. It is our fourth principle. We have agreed to covenant with each other to honor and respect a "not knowing" attitude. This "not knowing" is not negativity but rather curiosity.

To be curious requires a degree of security. People who live in fear cannot be curious, they want answers which provide security, predictability, control. And so, how does a person achieve a degree of curiosity in one's existential state that allows curiosity? It requires love and compassion.

Courage comes from the French word coeur which is translated into English as "heart". To have heart, to have the heart for something, means that one is proceeding with love, with passion, with enthusiasm, sometimes with faith.

Seeking truth to illuminate one's doubt takes faith, it takes courage, it takes heart.

I think one of the reasons that the numbers of Unitarian Universalists are low is that it takes tremendous faith, tremendous courage, a great heart to proceed on the spiritual path with doubt.

Unitarian Universalism does not promise answers. It does not promise the truth. It does promise to assist in the search, and it does promise to do it with love and compassion. In this sense, Unitarian Universalism is the true religion. It honors and supports the true religious impulse to know the unknowable, to search for the unfindable, to worship the unknown, to honor the mysteries of the human heart.

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