Skip to main content

Part 2: The Ontological Core

It is my belief that the core of Unitarian Universalism is about ontology. What is the nature of being, of existence?

This is where I place my faith.

Unitarianism tells me that humankind is, in the big sum and tally, good. That doesn't mean there aren't aberrations, it doesn't mean individually we don't mess up and make mistakes. But in the great aggregate mode, humankind is good. We reject the idea of Original Sin, that we were all born bad, and that we need a mediating influence of a supernatural being to make us acceptable.

Universalism tells me that there is a force at work in the world, an "arc of the universe" to use Unitarian Theodore Parker's term, that is, in the big sum and tally, good. Bad things happen, evil and pain exist, but there is a force that persuades us to goodness, that draws us together so that we may act, and by our actions, put "good" into form. Some call this force "God"; Universalism asserts that it is not a malevolent force, nor a force of judgment. It is grace. Unasked for, perhaps undeserved. Grace.

Simplified down, these are audacious statements in which to have faith:

Humankind is good.
God is good.

And yet I do. I put all of my faith in those. Days come when I am presented with so much evidence to the contrary. How can I say humankind is good when ..... ? How can I think there is a good force at work when .... ?

It is a choice I make. I choose to live my life with one hand in a death grip to that ontological core, choosing optimism sometimes even in the face of despair, because I can do no other.

Some days I am overwhelmed with the rightness of it all; I see evidence all around me of the good at work in the world, and on those days, humankind and the Arc are all interwoven, one acting through another.

My faith is shaken time and again, but still, to it I cling. To have faith that in the final accounting, humankind and God are a force for creating, transferring, and enlarging Love, breaks me open and liberates my soul. It drives what I do, both in the small moments of simply living and in my large dreams of actions to be taken, and how I, too, can be the hands and feet of Love.

This is my faith.

Comments

  1. Agreed. Based on this and your prior blog post, would you posit there is no ontological foundation for our pluralism, our celebration of humanity's many expressions of the divine? That it's an element stems naturally from believing people are good and what they make holy is good?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'd use the word love -- because I think that's what we operated from when we're being and doing good.

    I think it's why there's been this huge upwelling from the grassroots of our faith for Standing on the Side of Love. It's why I call myself a neo-universalist. It's not *about* God and God's love (though it doesn't reject any of that!), but rather just about love. All love.

    And Shawna, I think that agape is the ontological basis for our embrace/celebration of humanity's many expressions of the holy. It's our humanistic embrace of love in any and all forms.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Me and My Collar

You may run into me on a Friday, in my neighborhood, so it's time I let you know what you might see. When I was doing my required unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), my supervisor suggested that any of us who came from traditions where a clerical collar was an option, take one "collar week," to see how we were treated, as opposed to wearing regular professional clothes. After a couple of days, I joked to the Catholic priest, "How do you manage the power?" In regular clothes, I would walk into a patient's room, and it would take about 5 or so minutes of introductions and pleasantries before we could really get down to talking about their feelings, their fears, the deep stuff. With most people, as soon as that clerical collar walked in the room, with me attached, they began pouring out all the heavy stuff they were carrying. I was riding the bus back and forth every day, and though not quite so dramatic, the collar effect was alive there, to...

Beloved Community: The Now and Not Yet

Rev. Christine Robinson has a great little post up about the phrase "beloved community" and why it's problematic to use that to describe a church. Like her mom, I can get cranky about the whole thing, but my crankiness lies in the misuse of what is, to me, such a breathtaking and profound concept. Martin Luther King, Jr., someone whose words I study in great detail, is the one we often think of as originating the term, but he learned about it through the writings of Josiah Royce. Josiah Royce (right) with close friend William James.  Royce was a philosopher, studying Kant, Hegel. I imagine he would have enjoyed Koestler's theory of the holon , because he saw humanity as being both individuals and part of a greater "organism" that was community. As King's belief about Beloved Community would be rooted in agape , Royce's philosophy stemmed from what he called loyalty, and by that he meant, "the practically devoted love of an individual f...

To Love the Hell Out of the World

To love the hell out of the world means to love it extravagantly, wastefully, with an overpouring abandon and fervor that sometimes surprises even yourself. That love flows out of you, sometimes slow and steady, sometimes in a torrent, sometimes filled with joy, sometimes with fierceness, or anger, or a heartbreaking pain that makes you say, "No, no, I can't take this anymore. I can't do anymore. It's too much ... too much." But it's too late. You've opened up your own heart, your own mind, body, and strength, and yes, it is too much. But there's also so much love that comes crashing down on you, gifts from the Heavens in the form of the smiles and cares from others, a giggle burbling up from a toddler's fat little belly, the soft, sweet smell of star jasmine catching you unaware, not knowing where it came from ... but it's here. And you're here. And just to live, just to exist, swells your heart with enough gratitude and love that you mu...