A reply to an inquiring teenager . . .
On Friday morning, under the featured post of this blog, namely, my 2016 talk to the Sea of Faith Conference at Leicester University called, “The freedom to be tomorrow what we are not today,” the following comment was posted:
Hello! My name is Benedict and I’m a teenager. I’m establishing a personal belief system/religion for myself and I was wondering if you could say a blessing for me to become the first priest of my religion. I ask you because I would like to have a Unitarian bless me. Also, can you create a sacrament for me to follow in my religion?
I confess that I have never been asked such a set of questions before, but since Benedict took the time and trouble to write, it seems only right and proper that I should also take the time and trouble to pen a serious reply. Without any evidence to the contrary, naturally, I assume that Benedict is a real person with genuine questions (hello, Benedict), and my answers, reproduced here as a separate post, were truly written with him in mind. But, as I do this, I am acutely aware that there are many people in the world who think that the Unitarian tradition is, today, so flaky and vague that a free religious minister like me, connected with one of its churches, will either ignore or avoid answering the kind of questions Benedict asked, or simply acquiesce, wholly uncritically, to the requests made. But, as I hope to show you all, a serious, non-trivial set of response can be made and, Benedict, I hope they prove to be helpful to you in some fashion. As to whether my responses are felt by you to be cogent and persuasive . . . well, that is, of course, an entirely different matter.
So here is my reply . . .
Dear Benedict,
Thank you for your comment and questions, which I have never been asked before in this way, but which, I take it, have, in part, been prompted by the basic subject of my long essay here, namely, “The freedom to be tomorrow what we are not today.”
[It’s a long answer, apologies for that, so I’ll have to post it in two consecutive comments.]
So, firstly, let’s take a look at the idea of establishing personal “belief systems/religion.”
I think a key thing to grasp here is that belief systems and religion can never be created from scratch because we all inherit so much from our surround culture (which includes, of course, our immediate family/guardians) that we don’t (and perhaps sometimes, can’t) notice is there. It’s this wholly given “background” (the conditions and conditioning) that is essential to get anybody/everybody going in the matter of living and thinking about existence/reality. There are a lovely couple of paragraphs in Wittgenstein’s “On Certainty” that can help us see this truth a bit better:
143 — I am told, for example, that someone climbed this mountain many years ago. Do I always enquire into the reliability of the teller of this story, and whether the mountain did exist years ago? A child learns there are reliable and unreliable informants much later than it learns facts which are told it. It doesn’t learn at all that that mountain has existed for a long time: that is, the question whether it is so doesn’t arise at all. It swallows this consequence down, so to speak, together with what it learns.
144 — The child learns to believe a host of things. I.e. it learns to act according to these beliefs. Bit by bit there forms a system of what is believed, and in that system some things stand unshakeably fast and some are more or less liable to shift. What stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically obvious or convincing; it is rather held fast by what lies around it.
So, in the light of Wittgenstein’s words, I suppose I am encouraging you to ask whether it might not be better for you to try, not to establish a new, personal belief system/religion, but carefully and gratefully to begin to use the tools gifted to you by the religion, philosophy and culture into which you have been born, in order slowly to nuance and more authentically shape your own, ever more genuinely free, way of being-in-the-world. It is only by engaging in this slow, life-long process that any of us can ever hope to see what should, perhaps, be kept from one’s old, inherited religious tradition/s and what should, perhaps, be reinterpreted/changed/got rid of/abandoned, etc.. For me the key thing is not the creation of a new religion but to develop the kind of wisdom that can help a person (like you and me) responsibly claim the freedom to be tomorrow what we are not today.
It’s also perhaps helpful to consider here the possible etymologies for the word “religion.”
The first is that the word derives from “relegere” meaning something like “to go through again” as one critically reviews one’s own thoughts or re-reads a book.
The second, and more popular, opinion is that the word religion derives from “religare,” which means “to bind fast” in the sense of placing an obligation on or making a bond between humans and god/s.
The third possibility, not often mentioned, is that it comes from “religiens” meaning, “careful” (it’s the opposite of “negligens”, as in negligent).
The “religion” of free religion would, I think, seem to be related more closely to the first and third of these possible etymologies since they emphasise a free and responsible (i.e. careful) search for meaning and truth rather than a binding fast to some pre-existing idea . . . but that’s just a thought to ponder!
It also seems important to think a little about the word “priest,” because within the free religious tradition to which the Unitarian movement belongs, there are no priests. As one of the great heroes of free religion, Ralph Waldo Emerson, once memorably put it, the task of free religion is to encourage the development in people of an attitude which “dare[s] to love God without mediator or veil.” And, as I’m sure you know, the classic definition of a priest includes the idea that they function as mediators between humanity and God. This is why the Unitarian tradition has “ministers” and not priests. And so, as a minister myself, my role is simply to support people in their own free and responsible search for meaning and truth as they re-read their inherited traditions carefully and critically so as to be able to claim, as free spirits, the freedom to be tomorrow what they are not today.
And let me now turn to your request for a sacrament. The most famous definition of a sacrament derives from St. Augustine who called them “outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual graces.” And, within Christianity, these sacraments were always very few (seven in the Roman Catholic tradition, and two in the Protestant tradition). But, in the Unitarian tradition, which comes out of the Radical Reformation, there has been a continual move away from the idea of there being any specific sacraments because it began to develop the sense that everything is holy. A few years ago now, Peter Mayer wrote a song which, I think, lays this thought out rather beautifully . . .
“Holy Now” by Peter Mayer
When I was a boy each week, on Sunday we would go to church, pay attention to the priest. And he would read the holy word, and consecrate the holy bread, and everyone would kneel and bow. Today, the only difference is everything is holy now. Everything, everything, everything is holy now.
When I was in Sunday school, we would learn about the time Moses split the sea in two, and Jesus made the water wine. And I remember feeling sad, miracles don’t happen still, and now I can’t keep track ‘cause everything’s a miracle. Everything, everything, everything a miracle.
Wine from water is not so small, but an even better magic trick is that anything is here at all. So the challenging thing becomes not to look for miracles, but finding where there isn’t one.
When holy water was rare, at best it barely wet my fingertips. Now I have to hold my breath like I’m swimmin’ in a sea of it. It used to be a world half there, heaven’s second rate hand me down. Now I walk it with a reverent air, ‘cause everything is holy now.
Read a questioning child’s face and say it’s not a testament. That’d be very hard to say. See another new morning come and say it’s not a sacrament. I tell you that it can’t be done.
This mornin’ outside I stood. I saw a little red wing bird shining like a burning bush, and singing like a scripture verse. It made me want to bow my head. I remember when church let out, how things have changed since then. Everything is holy now.
It used to be a world half there, heaven’s second rate hand me downs. Now I’m walking with a reverent air, ‘cause everything is holy now.
And now, having said all of the above, although I can’t in all honesty offer you a blessing to become the first priest of a new religion, nor give you a new sacrament, I can, with great pleasure, offer a blessing for your courage in setting out to claim the freedom to be tomorrow what you are not today and become, yourself, in time, a genuinely free spirit. It is the blessing with which I conclude every Sunday morning service:
Go in peace, speak the truth, give thanks each day.
Respect the earth & her creatures, for they are alive like you.
Care for your body; it is a wondrous gift.
Live simply.
Be of service.
Be guided by your faith and not your fear.
Go lightly on your path.
Walk in a sacred manner.
Amen.
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