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.
In Industrial Psychology they call it "sink time."
Sink time is time to sit in silence, to let the data settle, to let the smoke clear off.
How do we digest all that we have taken in when we scurry from one thing to another?
We need time to reflect, to digest, to just relax.
Unitarian Univeralists tend to be busy people.
UUs think a lot and want to fix things.
UUs are searching and trying to rectify injustice and make the world a better place.
Are UUs nothing but Social Workers and Activists?
UUs value their covenant which affirms and promotes seven principles.
Affirmation and promotion takes perspective and deliberate and purposeful action.
To be purposeful and deliberate, one must be thoughtful.
To be thoughtful, one must be quiet.
The first principle states that we
affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Many of us
raised in the Christian tradition were taught that we are born with our souls
contaminated by the Original Sin and to be acceptable to God we have to be
baptized to remove the stain. In other words, there is a meta narrative
promulgated that people are inherently inadequate and defective.
Father
Matthew Fox one of the founders of what is called Creation Spirituality took an
opposite position on the issue and maintains that we are born with the Original
Blessing not in Original Sin. We are creations of God and in the Genesis story
God, at the end of the six days of creation surveys all that He has done and
proclaims that what He has created is good.
The
perennial psychology which is composed of the teachings of all the great
religions tells us that in every human being there is a Spark of the Divine. We
are taught that we each are an extension of God’s love of His/Her creation.
The
problems start with our human conditioning or socialization as the sociologists call it which can
facilitate our growth and development but also traumatize us, abuse us, and
instill warped understandings of who we are as a person. As we grow, we lose
our innocence and learn that there is evil in the world that produces
suffering, anguish, and grief. Into this experience of pain and suffering comes
religion which tries to explain the causes of our suffering, our human
condition, this “veil of tears” as the Catholics call it, or Maya as the Hindus
call it and promises us that the religion and the religion’s representatives
have the power to relieve our suffering or at least mitigate it.
Prescriptions
are given for how to live, and prayers to say, and regulations to be complied
with if we are to be “saved” from our painful existential condition. All along,
the idea that we have a self, and ego, that is real is assumed and reinforced.
In
Unitarian Univeralism, members covenant together to affirm and promote the
inherent worth and dignity of every person and this principle raises at least
two further questions: from whence does this worth and dignity come, and what
is this object called a “person.?
In
this course we will be exploring these questions and attempt to understand from
where and what worth and dignity arise, and what comprises a person who
possesses this worth and dignity.
Questions:
What stands out for you when you compare the "fall/redemption model" with the "Creation Spirituality model?
What do you think about the idea that there is a "divine spark" in every human being?
What do you think about the idea that human innocence is extinguished by social conditioning?
What practices and beliefs have you been taught by religion or secular society that will save you from suffering, condemnation, and death?
What gives human beings "inherent worth and dignity" if you think they have it?
What comprises the "self", the personal identity which we create, that seems so real?
How has your identity, or your sense of self changed over time?
Is this self which has changed over time real or an illusion?
Skill development
Take one of the characteristics of comparison of the Fall/Redemption Model and the Creation/Spirituality model and apply it to your own life describing how it has affected your beliefs, your feelings, and your behavior. Once you have created a coherent description, share it with an intimate other or interested person. (The ability to articulate a coherent narrative about the beliefs that have influenced one's life, leaves one in a position of "agency", that is the ability of choose what beliefs a person wants to keep or change in one's life.}
Values
As you compare the Fall/Redemption Model and the Creation Spirituality model, which aspect of this comparison matters the most to you? Which aspect do you think matters the most to the society and culture in which you live? How is this value expressed and manifested in your life and the life of your society?
Unitarian Univeralists believe in the free and responsible search for truth and meaning that leads some UUs to a belief in some sort of High Power and others to none.
Before things come down they must go up.
Before things fail there must have been success.
Before people become weak they have been strong.
Before things are received they must have been given.
We stand back, gain perspective, and see the complementarity of reality on the ego plane.
Why get upset because things will come full circle often after great suffering and anguish.
And then there will be joy and celebration for a while until the cylce continues on its way.
Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning and this search often takes them up and down, over and back, to good times and bad, and with frustration and despair, and relaxation and hope.
Beyond the search for truth and meaning Unitarian Univeralists are aware of and affirm and promote a respect and a love for the interdependent web of existence of which they, and all things, are a part. It is in the awareness of the interdependent web of all existence that bliss is made possible.
