Chalice Circle Topic for February 2015

 What Makes You UU?

Chalice Circle Topic for February, 2015 adapted from a session created by
Rev. Maj-Britt Johnson

Note: See the Chalice Circle Session Sequence for process guidelines (following this outline).

Gathering, Welcoming (2 minutes)

Business
As needed—checking in about who is coming, where you are meeting, service projects, updating your group covenant….

Chalice Lighting and Reading (2-3 minutes)

We light this chalice for all who are here, and all who are not; For all who have ever walked through our doors, for those who may yet find this spiritual home, and for those we can’t even yet imagine. For each of us and for us all, may this flame burn warm and bright.

            -Erik Walker Wikstrom

Check-in/Sharing (3-4 minutes@ - 30-40 minutes)

This is an opportunity to share recent events and/or current feelings that may (or may not) need to be set aside in order to be most present for the session.

Opening Thoughts and Reading

            This year is a Coming of Age year for our 7^th and 8^th graders at BUF. They are working to understand what they believe and will be sharing their credo statements with us in May. Recently Paul has been asking the adult community to claim an identity regarding our relationship with the outside world—what kind of congregation we are—civic, activist, sanctuary, evangelical….

Sometimes it can be difficult to explain who we are as Unitarian Universalists and especially what we believe—in fact, many of us (especially in our recent past) most likely, when asked what we believe, would instead lay out what we don’t believe.

            Rev. Galen Guengerich, minister at All Souls UU church in NYC writes in his sermon “Gratitude should be the center of Unitarian Universalist theology”:

            “My twelve-year-old was on the playground recently with her Jewish and Catholic friends. The topic of religion came up, and they asked her what Unitarians believe. She found it hard to respond. Is there a playground-ready answer to this question?

            Unitarian Universalism often plays better to a graduate-school crowd than a middle-school crowd. Part of the reason for the enigmatic nature of our theology is that we haven’t worked hard enough to make it clear and simple. I am reminded of a minister who, when asked why he preached a 45-minute sermon, replied, “Because I didn’t have enough time to write a 20-minute sermon.” But there is another reason why this question is difficult. If your child’s friends (and their Muslim playmate) answered the same question about their own faiths, they would probably talk about a God who is revealed through a written scripture (the Torah, the New Testament, the Qur’an) and represented on earth by a prophet or messiah figure (Moses, Jesus, Mohammed).

            Unitarian Universalism has none of these concrete and uniquely defining elements. Instead, our prevailing—dare I say orthodox—view insists on our freedom to believe whatever we want. Indeed, I asked my very own daughter what Unitarians believe, and her answer was orthodox to a fault. Zoë replied, “We believe whatever we want to believe.” This answer is not good enough, and it certainly doesn’t work on the playground. It’s as if your daughter’s friend asked, “Where do you live?” and she responded, “I’m free to live wherever I want.

            ...If we have any sense of mission, we need to be able to say what we believe in language that is positive, relevant, and even playground-friendly. By positive, I mean that we must talk about something other than freedom, which is the absence of something such as coercion. People may be attracted to Unitarian Universalism because we don’t believe in a doctrine they find abhorrent. But they won’t stay because of what’s missing. (People don’t go to Carnegie Hall because of what they won’t hear.)”

            UU’s still have a hard time saying who we are as a group, but these days we’re more likely to have a spiritual practice, and/or claim a theology, and to be willing to share that with others. As we do so, I believe our connections begin to emerge; we gain strength from each other, find food for the journey, inspiration for action, and greater clarity as a faith tradition.

Questions for Reflection—Deep Sharing/Listening (60 minutes)

See if one of the following questions calls out to you:

What would you say makes you a U.U.?

What for you is the fullness of Unitarian Universalism? ie. what “music” do you hear here?

What was your journey like getting to where you are today, as a UU?

Open Discussion (as time permits—this is the cross talk portion)
This is the opportunity to ask questions, and continue to engage the topic….

Check-out/Feedback  (10 minutes)

Thank the group.   Ask what they liked in this session and what changes they would hope for.

Closing Words

“Belief is many things,” said one of our modern leaders, A. Powell Davies, “and so is disbelief. But religion is something that happens to you when you open your mind to truth, your conscience to justice, and your heart to love.” In Unitarian Universalist congregations we do not try to make one another fit a given pattern of experience. But we do discover together that there are religious dimensions in all our varied human experience.

–  from A Chosen Faith by John Buehrens and Forrest Church.