Skip to main content

Unitarian scriptures

This is what I decided at church on Sunday:

I can't listen to poems. If someone is reading a poem in church, I can't tell you anything about the poem two minutes later. I just can't pay attention to poems in the slightest. I drift off as soon as someone starts reading. I get nothing out of a poem in church.

Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm not a poem person. But I think this brings up a couple of issues. First the issue of readings used in worship. What is scriptural for Unitarians? When I heard that Unitarians didn't just use the Bible in worship I was excited at the prospect of hearing from the Qur'an or the Bhagavad Gita or Julian of Norwich every week. I was most disappointed, and have continued to be disappointed by the predminance of poems about flowers and such, rather than world religions and mystical texts.

Secondly in general I can't listen to a lot of stuff in church. My mind wanders most of the time. This is why when I am leading worship I have readings written down in an order of service to allow people to read along, and refer back to. This is what I was brought up with in the C of E, and this is what I believe works. But I've never seen any other Unitarian do it. I don't know why.

Comments

Rich said…
This sounds very familiar (I wrote a similar comment in my blog a while back). I recently discovered that my symptoms were very close to those of auditory processing disorder which is very common and seems to be especially prevalent amongst bloggers (for obvious reasons).

I agree it would be great if our services were written as well as said, but I suspect it is a much bigger effort for the minister to put together the service sheet, especially if the source is a book rather than an internet text.
8:00 am
Anonymous said…
I have the same reaction to poems. A poem that's meaningful is almost always at least a little bit difficult or complex. It won't just wash over the listener--at least not this listener.
3:45 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The dumbest thing about American Unitarian Univeralism

I'm glad Peacebang started blogging about this cos I was about to, and now it's like I'm joining in with a conversation rather than doing a big rant and having a go at Americans (though that is always fun ;-)). Why the hell do American (or is it just in New England??) UU churches take, like a quarter of the year off? In the summer they close. They CLOSE!! A church, closing. It's so bloody weird and wrong. Where does it come from? Why? Why? Why? Why do people need church less in the summer? Where are people supposed to go? Where is the Divine supposed to go? My church in Boston didn't close exactly, but moved to the smaller upstairs chapel, but the minister still had all that time off. Now I've spent most of my life around teachers and priests, both jobs where people think people don't put many hours in, when in fact they put in loads ('you only work Sunday mornings/9 to 3.25'). Teachers work hard and need their long holidays. Ministers work hard, a...
3 comments
Read more

What does it mean to be non-creedal?

Steve Caldwell says "The problem here isn't humanism vs. theism for theist Unitarian Universalists -- it's the non-creedal nature of Unitarian Universalism" This is a good point. We need to think much more deeply about what it means to be a non-creedal religion. The first thing I want to say is that there is more than one possible understanding of non-creedalism. The Disciples of Christ are a non-creedal church, they say here : " Freedom of belief. Disciples are called together around one essential of faith: belief in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Persons are free to follow their consciences guided by the Bible, the Holy Spirit study and prayer, and are expected to extend that freedom to others." Quakers are also non-creedal and say here : Quakers have no set creed or dogma - that means we do not have any declared statements which you have to believe to be a Quaker. There are, however, some commonly held views which unite us. One accepted view is that th...
3 comments
Read more

LOST and theology: who are the good guys?

***Spoiler alert*** I'm continuing some theological/philosophical reflections while re-watching the series LOST. One of the recurring themes in LOST is the idea of the "good guys" and the "bad guys." We start the series assuming the survivors (who are the main characters) are the "good guys" and the mysterious "Others" are definitely bad guys. But at the end of series 2 one of the main characters asks the Others, "Who are  you people?" and they answer, in an extremely disturbing way, "We're the good guys." The series develops with a number of different factions appearing, "the people from the freighter" "the DHARMA initiative" as well as divisions among the original survivors. The question remains among all these complicated happenings "who really are the good guys?" I think one of the most significant lines in the series is an episode when Hurley is having a conversation with ...
3 comments
Read more