Last week’s post considered two of the 10 things that worship should do, but that the Clap for Carers often does better. This week we look at just one:
We feel a powerful sense of connection with other participants, near and far Oh, how we need this right now! Seeing our neighbours on their front steps, all of us making a joyful noise, knowing that people are doing the same thing all over the UK, we feel connected. Those we miss are taking part too, and it feels good to be with them in spirit.
How does Sunday morning compare? Actually, many Unitarian Churches do pretty well. Unitarians are now more likely to emphasise the oneness of humanity and creation than the oneness of God. As the Chalice is lit we sense the same thing happening in Unitarian churches near and far. Connectedness is, or should be, what we do.
There’s considerable variety in Unitarian worship, but some of the best examples of connectedness are due to the movement’s openness to Eastern influences. A few Unitarians identify as Buddhists, but many others are eclectic, absorbing Eastern ideas and practices into their spiritual life along with other influences. What a blessing it is to have such diversity within a single tradition.
Meditation that focuses on the breath is probably the biggest gift Unitarianism has received from religions that originated in India. You can practice meditation without buying into the belief system it comes from, but it’s worth looking at these underpinning beliefs if we want to gain the maximum spiritual benefit.
Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism all teach their followers to free themselves from the ‘illusion of separateness’, not intellectually, but through spiritual practices and discipline, in particular meditation. The breath is the key, in which we feel our connection to all other living creatures.
In Buddhism the aim is to dissolve the self, which is also considered an illusion that keeps us from noticing our essential connectedness. There is no soul, or essential self in Buddhism, whereas Hinduism and Sikhism believe in an individual soul, or Atman. In Hinduism, the Atman must be awakened to its essential unity with Brahman, the cosmic world soul. In this unity, it connects with all other living beings, whose Atmans are also intended for unity in Brahman. Sikhism takes this even further, seeing such radical unity in creation that all reality, living and non-living is part of God. All of creation, then, needs to be awakened to a level of unity that is breathtaking in its scope, particularly when viewed from a Judaeo-Christian mindset. This last worldview is known as monism.
Unitarian Christians can certainly learn from this, but can we connect with it? I say we can.
In the second creation account in Genesis 2: 7-9 we read:
...then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Breath is crucial to Christianity too, we just haven’t realised it yet! In Hebrew and Greek the word for Spirit is the same as Breath or Wind. That’s why Paul describes scripture as being ‘God breathed’, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost in the book of Acts is accompanied by the sound of rushing wind. And this Biblical confluence of breath and Spirit begins with an account of how life itself is the result of God ‘breathing’ his Spirit into Adam, and through him into all of us.
Unlike the Eastern religions, mainstream Christianity has done very little to cultivate meditation as part of its tradition. But why not? If life is the Spirit, breathed into our lungs, shouldn’t this make something significant, even sacred of our breath?
There are many ways that being a Unitarian Christian beats being in a mainstream Christian church, but being part of a movement that encompasses those who identify with Eastern spirituality, particularly Buddhism, has to be one of the best. It provides a golden opportunity to connect across religious traditions, and into a spiritual practice intended to help us find a truer, more real sense of connection with others near and far. This could enrich the worship experience of Unitarian Christians hugely.
There are other opportunities to find connection in the second Genesis creation account. The man is formed from the earth, and given life through God’s Spirit. This means that humanity is united in substance with the earth, as well as with the divine in Spirit. That has to be good news for people living through a crisis of dislocation between humanity and the earth that sustains it. This creation account gives us what is known as an ontological connection with the planet, a connection of being, or substance. God, man and Spirit are united in creation. How powerful is that?
And there’s more. Both creation accounts say that Woman was formed out of the Man. We don’t have to read this hierarchically, as though there is anything special about man being created just before woman in the sequence. Picture this: Man and Woman, both created from the same substance, drawn from the same earth, which has had the spirit of life breathed into it; unity of man, woman, earth and Spirit. This is where Christians, Jews and Buddhists, male and female, find common ground - in the divine breath, and the very ground to which we belong.
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