“Religion is the Story We Tell”
Dear Beloveds,
One way to approach religion is to think of religion as the story we tell ourselves about who we are. This includes the story of where we come from, where we’re going and who we should be. The story is grounding. It places us in time and history as well as in relationship to life. The story gives us direction in terms of relationships to people, places, and things and in terms of ethics and how we should behave.
Many of us became Unitarian Universalists because the story of a former religion no longer worked for us. The story no longer made sense or was no longer believable. It failed to give a sense of place, purpose, and identity. So, in a search for new story, we found ourselves here in Unitarian Universalism, a religion in which you might mix and match stories and swap them in and out of your sacred canon.
Although the number of people who claim no official religious identification continues to grow, people still look for the defining stories that religion and its sacred texts have provided humanity for a great part of history. Many of our contemporary fantasy and science fiction stories and franchises serve this function for some of us, with “scriptures” and tales as familiar to adherents as the Bible or the parable of the Good Samaritan are to others.
The Lord of the Rings is perhaps the most well-known “Hero’s Journey” story of our time. Gollum is what happens to the human soul when its motivation is misplaced, solely internal, narcissistic, and consumptive – it becomes isolated, shriveled, unable to relate to others, scheming, and mistrustful. Among the famous quotes from this scripture are teachings of the wizard Gandalf – “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
Star Trek and its various iterations are a bible-like collection of iterations and versions providing a grounding story and way of looking at life with chapter and verse being replaced by season and episode. One of my favorite parables from this corpus is “Darmok and Jalag at Tanagra” from Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 5, episode 3. It deals with the inability to communicate due to lack of shared cultural and historical perspective. In this episode Captain Picard runs into the commander of an alien craft whose race speaks only through allusions and quotes from history and literature – their history and literature, of which even the Star Fleet computers are ignorant. The phrase “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra” is now common code among geeks for talking past each other due to not having a shared history and background.
Unitarian Universalists have a story that tells us we are people who center Love as a motivating and sacred force and value justice, equity, transformation, pluralism, interdependence, and generosity. We seek to build community, pursue personal spiritual paths, and work for justice. We come from a long history of human beings who have valued human spirituality and human intellect, sought wisdom from various sources, valued compassion and kindness, and sought human dignity and respect for all people. Some of this history took the form of our ancestor religions Unitarian Christianity and Universalist Christianity. As we move into the beginning of this near year, I invite you deeper into the story of Unitarian Universalism and into a deeper exploration of your own personal story.
Shine on,
Rev. Tony