The Whole of the Moon

"All religions are fingers pointing to the moon but what matters is the moon." … Zen saying.

"To find God one must first leave the Church," is a thought that occurred to me years ago, long before I had any formal contact with Unitarianism. By this I did not necessarily mean the Roman Catholic Church. Unitarianism might be a much better attempt at a genuinely Universal (= catholic), but not necessarily Universalist, church, a church to which all humanity does, in actual fact, already belong. What I meant was to leave the very concept of church in order to find oneself, naked in a sense, except for ones humanity. But a human inhabits a pre-given world. And religiosity is a fact of the human condition. And this religiosity is an outcrop of an aspect of human nature. Humans, or some at least, experience God; we have experiences which many describe using God-terminology. We speak of such experiences and occurrences. We write about them and depict them in many other ways. A service in a church or temple, synagogue or mosque, involves speaking of such things and demonstrating them in a variety of other ways.
This would be a good way of defining the nature of Unitarian liturgy. A Unitarian service is a gathering of people who recognise the religious aspect of the human condition and congregate in order to celebrate this fact. This is regardless of the route we may have taken to be here as individuals or as an institution through history.
A Roman Catholic would, with the full blessing of her church, regard a Mass in an Eastern Orthodox church as a valid alternative to a Catholic Mass if a Catholic church was unavailable. By the same token any human being, without compromising his faith, but recognising the fact of human diversity in religious matters, might regard a Unitarian service as "the next best thing" to his own temple or other place of worship.
It might be said that the distinction between a genuine religion and a cult is difficult to define but exists all the same. Accordingly a Unitarian might regard a bona fide religious service as a valid alternative to a Unitarian service. Any such service.
As my wife is a Catholic I often attend Mass with her, just as she attends Unitarian services with me. As the reader might know the Catholic Mass is a service with two sub-divisions: a Bible service and a Communion service. I remember explaining to a bemused Non-Subscribing Presbyterian that I found these excursions not just enjoyable, but useful, as the Bible readings were often inspirational. The Bible is not often used in Unitarian services and is certainly not central to such services. I do not participate in the Communion as it is 'members only' and my personal belief regarding its significance is radically different to most of the others present. But I use the time to meditate on what might be the true meaning of Christian and Universal communion.
The essence of the human condition is that we are individuals within a collective and, I believe, the essence of the individual is identical to the essence of reality as a whole.

"The Kingdom of Heaven is within you," said Jesus.
"Self and Godhead are One," say the Hindus.

The essence of human religiosity is hidden behind layers of social constructs wherever it is celebrated. The Christian 16th century Reformation was an attempt to find the true essence of Christianity by stripping it down to what the Reformers believed was its basics; that is, the Word of God expressed in the Bible. Some say, a little glibly perhaps, that the Reformation simply rearranged the seating in European churches. The source of human interaction with God is the direct human experience of God; books simply speak of this even if eloquently, honestly and accurately. Distinctions such as 'high church' and 'low church' are really unimportant. These refer only to superficial aspects of the 'clothing' which shroud the interface between God and humankind. People are not necessarily closer to God in worship settings that are austere and stark. They are, of course, certainly not farther from God in such surroundings. The individual who feels closer to God within the context of a 'high church' element of whatever world religious movement he might use to approach God feels this more for reasons of cultural preference and conditioning rather than because God speaks more eloquently in such settings.
When God touches an individual it takes the form of an experience of an ineffable nature. Different societies may seek to capture this in a variety of ways. The clothing may be ornate or simple but either way the clothing should be recognised for what it is. It is not the thing itself.
When the Temple of Solomon was destroyed by the Romans in 70AD the Roman general entered the Holy of Holies at the heart of the Temple. This was where Yahweh was said to live. The Roman found an empty space. Not a copy of the Torah whether plainly written or otherwise. Not an ornate Arc of the Covenant; just empty space. Yet this space housed that which is Most Holy. The Most Holy is depicted by nothingness, by the absence of depiction of any sort. It is the ineffable, the indescribable, the nothing that is the source of all, that which is impossible to articulate, to utter.

Brendan Burke MA(Phil)
2nd June 2008 Cork Unitarian Church


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