An online magazine of faith based on a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. The mission of Unitarian Universalism: A Way Of Life ministries is to provide information, teach skills, and clarify values to facilitate the evolutionary development of increasingly higher levels of spiritual development for human beings around the world.
Religion is based on tradition and doctrine. Spirituality is based on experience and love. Which do you prefer?
It might be asked, "Can I have both?" The answer at first, if one is reasonable, appears to be "yes," but in practice love must trump tradition and doctrine every time for an authentic spiritual life. Jesus said that the way to heaven is "to love as I have loved." What did Jesus mean by that?
Jesus came to eschew tradition and doctrine in favor of love and they killed him as a threat to the organizations of the day. Jesus' life teaches us that we can't have both. There is only one choice, and He clearly tells us it is love. You will find peace when you chose rightly, chose love.
Unitarian Universalism has a slogan, "Standing on the side of love." This isn't just about social justice issues, this slogan is a vision for a way of life. The slogan captures the message of Jesus and many other enlightened beings.
From Krista Tippett's interview with Dr. Vincent Harding in 2011 and broadcast on 11/10/16 in her On Being show on Is America Possible?
Whenever somebody jokes about “Kum Bah Ya,” my mind goes back to the Mississippi summer experience where the movement folks in Mississippi were inviting co-workers to come from all over the country, especially student types, to come and help in the process of voter registration, and Freedom School teaching, and taking great risks on behalf of the transformation of that state and of this nation. There were two weeks of orientation. The first week was the week in which Schwerner and Goodman and their beloved brother Jimmy were there. And it was during the time that they had left the campus that they were first arrested, then released, and then murdered.
The word came back to us at the orientation that the three of them had not been heard from. Bob Moses, the magnificent leader of so much of the work in Mississippi, got up and told these hundreds of predominantly white young people that, if any of them felt that at this point they needed to return home or to their schools, we would not think less of them at all, but would be grateful to them for how far they had come.
But he said let’s take a couple of hours just for people to spend time talking on the phone with parents or whoever to try to make this decision and make it now. What I found as I moved around among the small groups that began to gather together to help each other was that, in group after group, people were singing “Kum Bah Ya.” “Come by here, my Lord, somebody’s missing, Lord, come by here. We all need you, Lord, come by here.”
I could never laugh at “Kum Bah Ya” moments after that because I saw then that almost no one went home from there. They were going to continue on the path that they had committed themselves to. And a great part of the reason why they were able to do that was because of the strength and the power and the commitment that had been gained through that experience of just singing together “Kum Bah Ya.”
What is the beloved community? How do we work with others to create it?
Editor's note:
Today, 11/04/17, we are starting a new feature on UU A Way Of Life entitled "Question of the day." As has been said, "We can't find the right answer if we don't ask the right questions." One of the six grounding virtues of the Civil Conversations project is "words that matter." Finding the right words can make a big difference in our conversations with people and the rapport we build. Finding the right words to ask the right questions in a spirit of curiosity which contributes to generous listening can create a "holy instant" of connection in which we are transported into a perfect moment of heaven on earth.
I was taught and many other people too in my Catholic upbringing that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. A Course In Miracles makes it clear that the body is not the temple of the Holy Spirit but relationships are. It is written in ACIM: "The Holy Spirit's temple is not a body, but a relationship." T-20.VI.5:1 Section VI, The Temple of the Holy Spirit describes this idea in more detail. It is our relationship with our Creator and our fellow Creations in which the Holy Spirit abides. Jesus told us the same thing in the New Testament when he said, "Where two or more are gathered together in My name, there I will be."
Rev. Marlin Lavenhar at All Souls Church in Tulsa Oklahoma gave a wonderful sermon on October 29, 2017 entitled "Gone But Never Forgotten" in which he makes the point that love never dies. Bodies do, but not love. Love just changes form. Love is eternal. People with highly developed spiritual awareness know this. It is another indicator of spiritual maturity.
