To cultivate a mindful, restorative stillness, to hear beautiful music, and to engage together in a free and open conversation . . .

A short “thought for the day” offered to the Cambridge Unitarian Church as part of the Sunday Service of Mindful Meditation.

A pdf of the revised order of service in which this address was given, and about which it speaks, can be found at this link.

 

(Click on this link to hear a recorded version of the following piece)

 

—o0o—

Let me start by telling two stories.

The first concerns a comment I have received in various forms from about a dozen new visitors who have checked us out since we returned to face-to-face meetings in October 2021, using what we now call our Sunday Service of Mindful Meditation. This service was, remember, always a post-pandemic compromise, a hybrid construct, being, essentially, the old Evening Service of Mindful Meditation, with the addition of two hymns, one at the beginning and one at the end, and a short address in the middle. The major element that was lost from the old morning service was the time of genuinely open conversation following the address. I’ll come back to this in a moment.

Without exception, these new visitors said that, although they really liked the meditation, and the general vibe and content of the rest of the service, it was, alas, too churchy and so not really for them. They were looking for something very like what we were offering, but one which did not remind them of the kind of conventional, church-type religion they had actively decided they must leave behind. 

I should add that at an event held in this building during the week exploring how a sustainable, green, development model might help a local community-based project better understand itself and be able to pass on its experience to others, following my own welcome and brief introduction to this building, its history and community, I had six very engaged conversations with people — all but one aged between their mid-30s and mid-50s — who were very interested in knowing much more about such a free religious approach. I was writing this piece at the time, so I found an opportunity gently to ask each of them what they thought about hymns. All of them, I repeat, all of them, said hymns were something that did not appeal. It was their strong, unanimous response that convinced me both of the need to finish this piece and to risk giving it to you today.

OK. Hold this story in mind as I place it alongside another.

A few days ago, a member of this church and I were talking about what a modern, liberal, enquiring, free religion could look like. Our conversation, had on a sunny afternoon in the shade of a beautiful lime tree, took place within yards of a moderately sized, but always very well-attended, conservative, evangelical church. As we stood and talked, a couple of dozen latecomers arrived and rushed into the church, which was already filled with people loudly singing hymns and worship-songs.

But, but, but, despite the numbers heading towards, or already in, the church, many, many, many more people were simply walking by the church with complete indifference. And, as we continued talking and looking on, two things connected to this scene began to emerge in our conversation. 

The first was that we were both clear that the people that we, within this liberal, inquiring, free religious tradition, wished primarily to speak with and engage, were not those who were walking into that particular church — or indeed any other church — but those secularized people who were walking by it. This is because, we, like them, are also indifferent to or, let’s be honest about it, increasingly repelled by the whole idea of church-type religion.

The second thing to emerge in our conversation was the strong sense — based, I might add, on good empirical evidence and not merely upon our own feelings — that the day of church-type religion is rapidly drawing to an end in our culture

So, with those two stories in mind, please allow me to make two suggestions.

Given that I have discovered so many of our new visitors and would-be visitors dislike, and find way too churchy, the singing of hymns and the Taizé chant, and because that the majority of funeral services, weddings and child dedications and namings I have conducted in recent years now no longer contain hymns because people don’t know them and or don’t like them, I think we simply have to stop singing hymns and the Taizé chant on a Sunday morning. We need to acknowledge that they scream to our would-be audience, “CHURCH!,” and that is precisely what the people we wish to engage with simply do not want and why so many people continue to walk on by our own building’s doors or, if they do pop in, not to come back. Of course, by stopping singing hymns we won’t guarantee we’ll suddenly experience greater attendance and/or membership, but I feel very confident in saying that if we continue to sing hymns we will continue to repel the very kind of people who might find our religious or spiritual approach both helpful and, indeed, attractive and needful.

The second thing to say, is that many people continue to tell me they miss the opportunity to talk together immediately after the short address. The opportunity to engage in open, free and inquiring conversation was something in our old service which gently and invitingly revealed to visitors (and ourselves) that what we were doing together was nothing like what a conventional church was seeking to do. Here, we weren’t trying to encourage people to adopt a single, narrow, dogmatic understanding of how the world is and our place in it but, instead, to help people develop themselves a genuinely free and inquiring religious or spiritual way of being in the world. I think it’s worth reminding you that the conversation was THE aspect of our earlier service, that so captured the attention of the poet, Grahame Davies, and about which he praisingly wrote in his recent, very well received, guidebook to Cambridge called: Real Cambridge:

[After giving the address, Andrew] offered his microphone to the congregation so they can comment, rebut or question. A risky manoeuvre. I’ve seen this kind of thing go badly wrong, and I braced myself for ramblings about UFOs, conspiracy theories, ex-partners. But I needn’t have worried. The questions were concise, thoughtful, insightful, and Andrew responded to each with honesty and imagination. There was so little belief in the supernatural that I could hardly say it strengthened my belief in God. But it certainly strengthened my belief in human beings.

Of course, I am acutely aware that the suggestion to stop singing hymns and the Taizé chant which would, of course, make space once again for conversation, will really annoy and, perhaps, even anger some of you. Not least of all, because it would be consciously to let go of something much loved. But, but, but, if we are to be genuinely good and faithful servants and stewards of our beloved liberal, inquiring, free religious tradition, then we are called upon, not merely to please ourselves (we, who grew up in church-type religious contexts), but to make certain, necessary changes so as to pass on to the next generation (those who have not grown up in church-type religious contexts) an attractive, living, vibrant and relevant, weekly religious and spiritual practice. It requires us to see that, as much as we may once have loved singing hymns, the age of the hymn is over, it no longer draws people in, but actively puts them off.

But, if we want to, we can choose to change and offer people a meeting each week that does have a chance of attracting more people from the secular world than it puts off. A gathering in which it is possible to articulate a shared commitment to work towards a better world for all in which is made time for sharing a mindful, restorative stillness, time to listen to uplifting, beautiful music, and time to engage in a free, creative and inquiring conversation about life and death, love and loss, joy and woe, the felt possibility of God, the felt impossibility of God, of old faith and new, of what is felt to be good and what is bad, and about science and profound mystery. In short, a conversation about all those things that are worthy of examination and mindful reflection and which make all lives infinitely richer, more creative and rewarding.

I commend my suggestion to you for your further consideration.