Comments on: Liberating faith, not liberal faith

By: kim

kim — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 05:58:07 +0000

The good news is that the details of your theology don’t matter as much as your love of neighbor and the good things that makes you do. That you do those good things from love rather than guilt. That revelation and transcendence and Experiencing the Divine Mystery don’t depend on believing any particular dogma, but on compassionate conscious living.
In fact, many of us believe that dogma gets in the way of transcendant experience, so we are the denomination that is trying to have a religion without dogma in order to try to keep the channels open to deeper experience; to keep the religion from ossifying and becoming a dead crust of dogma around a suffocated god.

In any religion, not everyone experiences transcendance. But each has it’s own way of trying to invite the experience. Ours is by doing away with dogma and taking a liberal view of the divine mystery.

well, not very organized, but I hope it’s ok for the spur of the moment….

By: chutney

chutney — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 00:33:26 +0000

Well, I think it’s the talk versus the walk that’s a matter of proportion. Even then, I suspect that entirely too much of our walk falls into the “125,257 good things for Jesus” (or who/whatever) category. In that link, RLP urges that we focus on doing one good thing. Whether individually or denominationally, that’s good advice.

I’m still partial to the slogan “becoming the people the world needs.” Of course, you’re still left asking, needs for what? But it gets us a good deal of the way there.

Figuring out what is/are our most central practice(s) is a matter of trying out some central practice candidates. Nothing short of that (especially talk) will make it happen because without some experience of practices to talk about, there is, well, nothing to talk about.

Additionally, if UUism is not good news, why are any of us doing it? It stands to reason, then, that if we’re doing UUism for a good reason (that is, because of its good news), then we already know what that good news is.

So what is it?

By: fouralarmfire

fouralarmfire — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 19:17:27 +0000

my understanding of this conversation was about this: when we ask “who are we as a religious movement?” what is the answer?

in my limited experience, a lot more UUs that i have met would say “we believe in questioning” than would say “we believe in making the world a better place” or “we believe in building a transformative spiritual community through radical acceptance and service” or something that seems, you know, like something cool we would have to offer a seeker.

yes, many UUs do great things, but i just can’t get down with questioning and the Eternal Sharing of Opinionsâ„¢ being our most central spiritual practice, especially when many folks seem to use the church as a way to stay inside a happy, privileged bubble.

i do think that figuring out what is our most central practice may be a matter of proportion to some extent… i don’t know.

i feel sometimes like the mainline religions are pretty lucky that someone got around to compiling all their sundry stuff into an organized story before folks started questioning it too much. i feel like there IS a UU Gospel, of sorts, but it’s just not compiled in a neat package (printed on recycled paper and bound in organically farmed hemp, of course).

chutney to the rescue, i hope?

By: chutney

chutney — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 01:09:51 +0000

Good point: perhaps it is a matter of proportion.

By: kim

kim — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 00:31:01 +0000

I say if you are actually doing a decent amount of good works, then it doesn’t really matter how much talking about it you do or don’t do. The talking doesn’t hurt anything as long as it doesn’t stop the good works altogether. and some people really do need to talk about it. As long as it’s not ONLY talking.
Besides, we need to talk about it in church so WE know what we are doing — after all, no one reads the newsletter!

By: chutney

chutney — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 14:00:26 +0000

My congregation serves as the de facto PTA for an inner city school and recently built a library for a village in Africa.

We also have twenty or so committees whose primary purpose, as far as I can tell, is to talk about how great it is to be a liberal and how great the world would be if people weren’t too stupid to not see the world they way we do.

And then there are the committees who exist to do “125,247 good things for Jesus,” as Real Live Preacher has put it. And to report the 125,247 things. Especially that.

All are present. But which kind of “service” is predominant? And what are we doing to do more of the first kind of action and starve off the other two?

By: kim

kim — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 06:45:29 +0000

Well, if my congregation does stuff and yours doesn’t, then neither is “representitive of UUism as a whole”, because it obviously contains both types of congregations. So, which is more typical, yours or mine?
Around here, I think most congregations are doing some kinds of outreach.
All Priuses get better than average mileage. If you’re going to get a new car anyway, why wouldn’t that be better than some other car? Has nothing to do with individual prii (?). (My major objection to the Prius is the stupid name.) Besides, they’re really cute.

By: chutney

chutney — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 05:05:02 +0000

Kim,

The work your particular congregation does is laudable, but is it representative of UUism as a whole?

I don’t think my point, or Peacebang’s point, is about any particular individual UU congregation or any particular individual UU Prius.

By: kim

kim — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 20:58:27 +0000

Oh, and $25,000 for a Prius is a lot better than $30,000 for an SUV or $50,000 for a BMW. Even the new Subaru is $30,000, and you can get a Prius for a bit over $20,000 if you don’t want all the bells and whistles. And the Prius does help by polluting less.
On the other hand, I (my 1990 Subaru wagon) only get about 20 to 25 mpg, but just the fact that I’ve had the car for 16 years makes up for that — they didn’t have to make me a new one, which uses a lot of resources.

By: kim

kim — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 20:49:40 +0000

I will repeat here what I said to ChaliceChick about UUs doing something other than navel-gazing:

Our rather stodgy and conservative UU church is part of a rotating shelter for homeless families: we house them for a week every six weeks (including food). We also support a local charitable organization called Samaritan House with a regular line item in our budget. There are other such support items in our budget. (a battered women’s shelter comes to mind.) One collection per month goes to a worthy group outside ourselves. (it’s the biggest collection of the month usually — people give extra). Last year our Rochester project was working with encarcerated youth, and we did a number of things. (This year our Rochester project is Sustainability and we’re not quite so active because everybody thinks they already know it….) Some of the youth stuff from last year continues.
We have adopted families left homeless by Katrina and have been sending stuff to them.
We periodically show up as a group at Second Harvest Food Bank to work — and one of their most active trainers is one of our members who got started because of one of these evening events.
Homework Central is in our church weekday afternoons — it helps students (local, which happen to be mostly Hispanic) with their homework. We have arranged for local high school kids to help with Homework Central for Community Service credit — and we pay them some too.
I’m sure there’s other stuff I’ve forgotten to list. Plus, most of our members are active in other organizations that do “good works”.
I don’t think we are constantly being nothing but intropective. Our congregation isn’t perfect — far from it. But we are doing stuff.

3:50 PM, June 14, 2006

Kim said…
I forgot the stints with Habitat for Humanity.

10:57 PM, June 15, 2006