Religious Stages

I have a lifelong friend, elderly now, who is intensely interested in religious matters and she and I have had many a discussion. She’s a devout Catholic, and I was brought up in the Church of Ireland, so, initially, our conversations were based on these two belief systems and their different interpretations and ways of looking at things. We learned a lot from each other. Like the time, years ago, we were walking round her garden and paused to admire a plant in flower. ‘What’s the name of it?’ she asked me suddenly. It so happened that this was one I knew, so I told her it was a tradescantia. She was delighted, not so much that I knew the name of the plant, as that I had reinforced her theory that one of the essential differences between Catholics and Protestants was that Protestants knew the names of flowers and Catholics didn’t.
When, in due course, I told her that I had discovered Unitarianism, her interest quickened, the level of our discussions deepened and her questions became more searching. She was about to go on a Carmelite pilgrimage, to celebrate an important anniversary of the Order – perhaps its founding? – anyway she was going to Spain for a couple of weeks, to follow the footsteps of St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross. This meant a great deal to her and she hoped, she told me, that she might have a spiritual experience when she was there. But she couldn’t be sure – she knew she couldn’t count on it, and she was worried about how she would handle her disappointment if the hoped-for spiritual experience failed to materialize. We discussed this at length, and although I did my best I felt I hadn’t much advice to offer because, as we agreed, Unitarianism didn’t sound as if it went in much for spiritual experiences. My Protestant background might have made me an authority on garden flowers but as regards more spiritual matters my Unitarian religious identity seemed to be sadly lacking.
Since then, I’ve often thought of that conversation. In its wake I came to the conclusion that it’s not so much the religion that is responsible for spiritual experiences as the person involved. I’m just not cut out for them. That’s why I feel that Unitarianism suits me so well – it’s rational and practical and based on the here and now – and so I don’t have to cope with the idea of visions or visitations or apocalypse or anything mystical or supernatural.
But still . . . but still . . . do we Unitarians lack a spiritual dimension, and if so are we any the poorer for it? With this question in mind, and anxious to validate our denomination to myself, if not to others, I began to delve a little into my own past experience to see if I could come up with anything that could remotely be called a spiritual experience of any kind. I can’t honestly say that I did.
I’m sure we have all experienced moments of a sudden rush of well-being, a feeling of inexplicable happiness, lasting perhaps for anything from a few seconds up to half a minute or so. I certainly have, and I could give you half a dozen examples without having to think, but I have read that these are the result of a flurry of activity in the brain when, for reasons that we don’t yet fully understand, the body releases more than the usual complement of endorphins or whatever chemical or hormone it is that makes us feel that all is right with the world. But desirable and enjoyable as these experiences are, I never felt that they were anything more than an extreme appreciation of the immediate circumstances of the moment – shared laughter with a friend, for example, or a walk in a particularly beautiful part of the countryside, or watching one’s children at the seaside.
No, I’m looking for examples of experience at a deeper level – for moments when one is lifted above and beyond one’s real self to enter some timeless realm where the ordinary rules that govern physical existence no longer apply, where individual identity dissolves and suddenly becomes part of something infinitely greater – moments when one feels within reach of ultimate answers, able to see an opening into infinity and to realize with sudden blinding clarity – yes, this is what existence means, this is truth, this is the ultimate meaning of all things.
And as soon as I began to get this clear in my mind I realized that yes, of course, I do experience such moments. But they don’t come to me in a church. They come in a concert hall, an art gallery, or in a theatre. And it’s the third of these that I’d like to talk about this morning.
When I mention the theatre I should make one thing clear – I’m not talking about being on the stage…Don’t misunderstand me – I’m no actor. I’m a member of the audience. And, as a member of the audience, I have found that there have been instances when something electrifying happens between what’s taking place on the stage and what I experience in my seat. It doesn’t happen often and it doesn’t happen to order – it depends on an almost infinite combination of circumstances including one’s own physical state and mental alertness and also, of course, on dramatic build-up, a good play, the quality of the acting, voices, plot, dialogue, production, lighting – all those factors that combine to make a production what it is – but it doesn’t depend on great resources. A one-man or one-woman show can do the trick just as well as a lavish production with a big cast. During these moments, which are rare, unexpected, and intense, I come as close to a transcendental state as I think I’m ever likely to get.
Organised religion has always known, of course, that religion and drama are but two sides of the same coin. This is why, centuries ago, the medieval churches took to the streets with their mystery plays and miracle plays. These travelling enactments of the great dramatic moments of the Christian story were efforts to embody the eternal struggle between good and evil, to clothe the gospel stories in human form, to place the human person within this context and to bring, in Aristotle’s phrase, the ‘pity and awe’ of the great religious situations and figures of the past within the comprehension, and thence the experience, of the general populace. Street theatre in this part of the world has long since diverged from those religious beginnings, although traces still linger in the religious festivals and parades in continental Europe to honour saints’ days or to display local relics or icons.
Those medieval makers of mystery and miracle plays knew a thing or two, because the Biblical stories are perfect material for dramatization. You only have to read them to envisage them taking place on a stage. The action is hugely varied – sometimes on a cosmic scale with the forces of nature pitted against each other or against humankind, sometimes grandiose but on a human scale, involving the formation and destruction of kingdoms, and sometimes on a purely personal level, intimate and domestic. The characters are real people who appear vividly before us - arguing, discussing, confronting, triumphing, failing – the very stuff of life and the very stuff of theatre. Men and women are described against specific backgrounds – the action takes place in the temple or a house or beside a road or on a mountain or by the sea. Once the stage is set then props are indicated - there is a well or a tree in the centre of the little group of figures, or a bucket or a table, or certain items of clothing or of food or drink. Lighting is given its place too – the contrast between light and darkness is a feature of many Biblical incidents, and the spotlight is seen to focus on a central figure or to swing to a peripheral one as the crowd emerges from, or disappears back into, the shadows.
We all relate to the dramatic portrayal on stage of characters and episodes such as these. However, from the point of view of sheer dramatic impact, it seems to me that it matters little whether the drama is medieval or modern, religious or secular, or whether it comes from our own western European tradition or from the Middle East or ancient Greece. Drama on stage whatever its origin deals in one way or another with the fabric of life such as we ourselves experience. It echoes our reality and thereby throws it into sharper focus. We relate to these situations intensely. We are these figures as they argue and group and regroup and deal with the issues that all humans have to deal with on one level or another as they live their lives. This is life. We, like these characters, have our exits and our entrances. Shakespeare hit the nail on the head. All the world is indeed a stage.
But, this introduces the question – if all the world’s a stage, then where’s the audience? We may strut and fret our hour upon the stage, and in our time play many parts, but if there’s no one on the other side of the footlights to watch us and to respond, then the exercise becomes meaningless. A stage can only exist if there’s an audience.

So what, then, is the role of the audience?

I’ve been wondering about this for years, not just for the purposes of this address. When I was growing up, and indeed for many years afterwards, I used to ponder from time to time as to my role in life. It didn’t seem to be in any way apparent. I never knew what I wanted to be or do, and always envied those who did. Try as I might, I couldn’t find any pointers. I felt that I should make some contribution to the world in which I lived – indeed I wanted to - but I didn’t know how. I had no vocation, I wasn’t a performer or an artist or an administrator or an adventurer or a career person – the list goes on - and I knew instinctively that I lacked the drive, or indeed the wish, to become any of these things. Yet I was not at all comfortable with the feeling that I was a passenger. Life was giving me so much. It was wrong to give nothing back.
Then it came to me. The one thing I was good at was appreciating things. That was where my contribution lay. That was my role in life. I was a member of the audience. I never spoke about this to anybody, partly because I didn’t think anyone would be particularly interested and partly because it seemed rather a passive role and I don’t know that I felt particularly proud of it. However I was happy with it because I knew that it rang true. It fitted me like a glove, and I stopped fretting.
And it got me thinking about audiences. Over time, I have come to realize that members of the audience don’t have a passive role at all. We have a vital contribution to make. So much depends on us. Without us, there would be no performance. So first of all, we have to be there. It takes an unimaginable amount of resources to stage a production. Planning, training, finance, skill, commitment, all of these have to be in place, sometimes years ahead. If there isn’t an audience it all goes for nothing. The play must go on, we say, illustrating the commitment of the actors. Equally, so must the audience.
Secondly, though we may not always realise it, we have an input into the quality of the performance. Our contribution is the way in which we respond. It’s not enough just to buy our tickets and then sit in warmth and comfort and let the entertainment flow over us and think about our home-heating bills or wonder when the bar will be open again. We are not passive spectators of what’s going on – an experience is being created, one that will not occur again, and we are part of the experience. I won’t say our reaction determines it, but it certainly shapes it. This is what live performance is. I’m not suggesting that we go so far as to follow the example of the groundlings in Shakespeare’s day and hurl abuse or missiles at the actors or leap up on the stage or join in the chorus from the back row – but it is, in my opinion, part of our contract to remain in a state of ready alertness, to appreciate everything that’s going on in front of us, to respond appropriately, and to play our full part in creating the two-way flow of energy that, if we are lucky, will occasionally reward us by transforming our appreciation into the sort of semi-transcendental state that I have already described.
If all this applies to live performances in the theatre then I wonder if we could come full circle and find that it applies in churches as well. Or in some churches. In spite of my saying earlier that I had never had a spiritual experience in a church, let’s put that on hold for the moment and have a closer look at what’s involved. A church is very like a theatre. I’ve often been struck, and I’m sure I’m not the only one, by how theatrical orthodox services can seem. The stage is set before the performance begins – there are chairs in the right places, books open on reading desks, flowers strategically arranged. The music starts and the performers appear, often in an orderly procession, and take their positions on the stage. It all appears carefully rehearsed. Priests, sometimes heavily robed, move slowly backwards and forwards across the stage; they follow a preordained script and come in on cue to speak their lines. Finally, although there is no curtain, the actors leave the stage and the performance is over.
Where is the audience in all this? Well, they are the congregation of course, sitting respectfully in their pews, watching and listening, but if they are participating, and I would not wish to suggest that they aren’t, they are each doing it in a very personal and private way and there is, I would suggest, none of the two-way flow of energy which to my way of thinking is essential to the creation of a theatrical, or spiritual, experience. So although the church is like a theatre, and provides a theatrical spectacle and can do it very well, it does not, again to my way of thinking, create the conditions that are essential for what I occasionally experience as a spiritual experience. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that orthodox religion and I parted company all those years ago. I felt I had no role to play, no contribution to make, and when the performance was over I came away disgruntled and unsatisfied.
Now let’s have a look at a Unitarian service. The outward resemblance to a theatre is still there, but the divide between the priest and the congregation has been bridged. There are reasons for this, both historical and theological, but in a nutshell the organic development of Unitarianism over the years has meant that its services now have a flexibility that is limited only by the needs and wishes of individual congregations. A sensitive, responsive relationship can thus develop between a congregation and its minister so that in a Unitarian service today, the conditions necessary for the two way interchange of energy, flow of shared experience, call it what you will, are firmly in place.
This was born in on me a few weeks ago when I went to St Mark’s Church in Edinburgh for the formal installation of Maud Robinson as their new minister. Maud had invited Bill Darlison to give the ‘charge to the congregation’, a short address in which the speaker outlines what he/she considers to be the important items of the congregation’s part of the unwritten contract between minister and congregation. Bill, in his inimitable way, spoke of the essential nature of the role played by the congregation at any Unitarian service of worship. It was in places very funny – he mentioned his experience when he was invited to take a service in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, and was told beforehand that while the members of the congregation would all come by themselves he would be expected to drive them home. They did, indeed come by themselves, all three of them, and a dog, and he did indeed drive them home. But he described the experience of giving a service to three people and a dog, and contrasted it with the very different experience of addressing a closely packed gathering such as he found in St Mark’s. We were left in no doubt as to which he preferred, and which he recommended. But the message I took away from what he said was that the determining factor in the difference was the audience/congregation. The quality of the worship experience was neither better nor worse in either case, it was just different. Both scenarios had their own validity. Because a live performance was being created each time that did not depend on repetitive ritual, the energy that was generated depended significantly on the group dynamics involved.
To sum up, then, Unitarian worship, like theatre, is a shared experience, in which everyone present makes a contribution to the collective whole. This is why I am revising my ideas of what constitutes a spiritual experience. We Unitarians may not see visions or hear voices or have mystical insights into eternity. But if, either as a large congregation or a small group, we remain alert with hearts and minds open, then as our hour together progresses we may experience a wholeness within ourselves and a feeling of oneness with each other and with the universe of which we are a part. This is, for me, what worship is all about, and, regarding a spiritual experience, I’d settle for that.

Jennifer Flegg
26th April 2009 Dublin Unitarian Church


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