{"id":37,"date":"2019-09-15T19:05:38","date_gmt":"2019-09-15T19:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/?p=37"},"modified":"2020-09-14T17:40:15","modified_gmt":"2020-09-15T00:40:15","slug":"come-sunday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/?p=37","title":{"rendered":"Come Sunday"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The most familiar form of spiritual practice for most Unitarian Universalists is our Sunday gathering:  our communal practice of joining in worship. Our form of worship, inherited from the Protestant Christian tradition emphasizes the word, other forms of worship practice include ritual and participating in the sacraments<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This fall, we\u2019re going to take a look at spiritual practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spiritual practice is the \u201cdoing\u201d part of religion.  We are going to ask, \u201cWhat is it that people \u201cdo\u201d to activate and deepen their spiritual life?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the first of the year we will switch to the \u201cwhy\u201d question.  Why engage in a spiritual life?  We will start in the winter with personal spiritual goals for our individual lives.  But people aren\u2019t religious just for themselves.  Religion is also a social project.  So we will look at various social goals of religion in the spring, what people hope that their religion will do for all of us, generally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, though, the spiritual practices. Of which there are dozens and dozens.\u00a0 If you already engage in an identified spiritual practice, I hope you\u2019ll feel affirmed and maybe find some way to make your practice stronger.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t have a spiritual practice, I hope you\u2019ll be inspired to begin one, or at least to examine the question for yourself, \u201cWhat do I do when I do my faith?”\u00a0 What do you do to make your faith stronger, and deeper?\u00a0 What do you do to express your faith in your life and the world?\u00a0 How do you live your faith?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m going to organize the varieties of spiritual practices this way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, spiritual practices that people do within a spiritual community.\u00a0 Spiritual practices like worship, hymn-singing, reading and discussing a book together, religious education in a classroom-like setting, gathering together for regular fellowship, like church potlucks, or for regular support like healing circles or covenant groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, in October and November, we will look at spiritual practices that people tend to do privately, or individually.\u00a0 Some practices in this category include things like prayer or meditation practices, movement practices like yoga or tai chi or walking a pilgrimage route, or journaling, or hiking in nature.\u00a0 Some of those things you might do with other people around doing the same thing, but this is the category of spiritual practice as private experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And finally, in December, we will look at those spiritual practices that people do in public, with, or for, people who are outside their own spiritual community.  Spiritual practice in the public sphere.  Activities here include things like evangelism, social action, public witness, parenting, teaching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now last week, I started by giving some definitions of what I mean by spiritual, because my intention is that this be a meaningful exploration of spiritual practice for everybody in the room, including people who don\u2019t think of themselves as spiritual and who don\u2019t use that word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So just to review, what I mean by spiritual, is that \u201cspiritual\u201d refers to that part of being human where we engage with the existential questions of identity, purpose and meaning.\u00a0 Every human person asks\u00a0 Who am I?\u00a0 What Should I do?\u00a0 And Why does it Matter? Some people ask in a casual way.\u00a0 Others are more engaged with those questions in a profound way.\u00a0 But we all ask them.\u00a0 That\u2019s how we chart a path through life.\u00a0 And it\u2019s how we organize our days.\u00a0 Who am I?\u00a0 What Should I do?\u00a0 And Why does it Matter?\u00a0 Identity.\u00a0 Purpose.\u00a0 And Meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How you answer those questions defines your theology.  Your theology can be atheistic, or theistic, strictly materialist and naturalistic, or it can include immaterial and supernatural elements.  And in a UU church we welcome multiple, diverse theologies across the entire spectrum.  Any theology is welcome here as long as it is grounded in and leads back to supporting the values we name in our UU seven principles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But every person, of every theology, and even those who claim no theology wrestle with the spiritual questions:\u00a0 Who am I?\u00a0 Is there a self?\u00a0 Is there a soul?\u00a0 What does it mean to be human?\u00a0 What should I do?\u00a0 Am I responsible for others?\u00a0 Should I become vegetarian?\u00a0 Should I prioritize my personal dreams and happiness or work for others?\u00a0 And why does it matter?\u00a0 Who cares?\u00a0 Is there any objective way to judge good or bad or better or worse?\u00a0 Does my life matter only to me?\u00a0 Are there social goods I should align my life with?\u00a0 Or do I owe my life to something big and universal like a god?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, if you can agree that we\u2019re all spiritual, by that definition, then a spiritual practice is a way to regularly engage with those questions, answer them more fully and confidently for ourselves, and then let our answers guide our life choices.\u00a0 That doesn\u2019t mean, necessarily, literally<\/em> asking those questions, although you might.\u00a0 But what a spiritual practice always does is deliberately puts ourselves in a setting where we commune with the psychological entity (whether within in our own minds or beyond, depending on your theology) where we hope to find or have found answers to those questions, and then listening deeply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But also, importantly, a spiritual practice is a practice.\u00a0 It\u2019s an action that you engage in regularly.\u00a0 A practice is like practicing the piano.\u00a0 Every week, or every day, you sit down, and whether you\u2019re in the mood or not, you do your work.\u00a0 And sometimes it\u2019s successful, and inspiring and life-changing, and other times you just sit there for an hour and nothing much seems to come of it.\u00a0 And then you come back the next day and you do it again, or you come back the next week, whatever your practice.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The spiritual practice we experience most regularly is worship.  This experience we are having now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worship is another one of those words that can trip us up.  So again, let me offer an inclusive definition that I think we can all see ourselves in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worship comes from an old English word related to the same root where we get the word “worth.”\u00a0 To worship is to assign worth to something.\u00a0 That something doesn\u2019t have to be a god.\u00a0 Some gods I hear about aren\u2019t worthy of worship in my opinion.\u00a0 The word “God” might not even apply to any actually existing entity in the universe.\u00a0 To assign worth to a fantasy would be silly, or simply wrong, or possibly dangerous. But to give worth to something<\/em> beyond yourself is crucial.\u00a0 To hold that there is nothing of worth beyond yourself is also silly, or simply wrong, or possibly dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So worship, in a Unitarian Universalist context is not about the church or the minister naming the object of worth for you, but inviting you to name for yourself what is worthy.\u00a0 Maybe it’s the seven principles, or a simple value like justice, or peace, or love.\u00a0 Or maybe the object of worth is the fellowship of this community, or the human community of all people, or the planet.\u00a0 Maybe the object of worship changes each week, depending on the theme of worship for that day.\u00a0 Or maybe you worship a particular god, or goddess, and what they stand for, or you worship a large encompassing spirit that holds many worthy qualities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then “to worship,” the action of worship, is for each of us to lift up that worthy thing and to spend an hour (or an hour and eight minutes, perhaps) paying honor to that thing, resolving to center our lives more securely around that thing, and listening to hear what wisdom that thing has to give us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worship as a spiritual practice is that regular returning to communion with that something of worth that we hold as the best and highest organizing principle of our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But here is what I want to say about why we worship in community.\u00a0 Why is worship a communal<\/em> spiritual practice?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worship is itself a collection of many spiritual practices.\u00a0 We sing.\u00a0 We pray.\u00a0 We drop a stone into a bowl of water.\u00a0 We light a chalice.\u00a0 We make an offering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of what we do during worship is something you could also do alone, privately, as an individual spiritual practice.\u00a0 You don’t have to come to church even to hear a sermon; you could just stay home and find a TED Talk on YouTube.\u00a0 It\u2019s not like I\u2019m the only person who has anything spiritually wise to share this morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why not save yourself the trouble, and lower your carbon footprint, by just staying home on Sunday morning?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because the real and unique benefit of communal worship, is not the communion with the something that we worship, but the communion with the community that we worship with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You know that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s that we do this together.\u00a0 It\u2019s that we sing together.\u00a0 We pray together.\u00a0 We share ritual together.\u00a0 We share our joys and sorrows outloud and hold them in community.\u00a0 There\u2019s the palpable energy and power of focusing the attention of a room full of people on one child as they light the chalice.\u00a0 There\u2019s the symbol of gathering the resources of an entire community into one offering toward one shared goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there\u2019s the power of an entire community hearing one message, going home with the same thoughts, coming back later in the week remembering a common experience.  There\u2019s the spiritual discipline of laying aside for one hour (or an hour and eight minutes) your own preferences and interests about what you want to hear, or what you want to sing, or even where you want to be, and giving up that individual will, which gets so much attention throughout the rest of our lives, and instead resting in our commonality.  This people.  My people.  This congregation.  My church.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The most familiar form of spiritual practice for most Unitarian Universalists is our Sunday gathering:  our communal practice of joining… Read more Come Sunday<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons","category-writing"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":915,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions\/915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhmcd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}