From Hart to Hearts
A Message from Rev Linda Hart for the month of June 2009
‘What do you believe anyway?’
Have you ever been asked that question when someone discovers that you are Unitarian and don’t quite understand what that means? At our General Assembly meetings this year, we were all encouraged to come up with a Lift Line, or what they call an Elevator Speech in the US. The idea is that you’ve gotten on a lift and you have the time between the ground floor and, say, the sixth floor to tell this person what Unitarianism is. It is sometimes quite a trick to sort it out.
But the question of what you believe is a somewhat different matter. There are all sorts of beliefs that shape the way we are in the world, all sorts of things that we’ve experienced or learned that affect what we do and how we do it.
In the 1950s Edward R. Murrow, a journalist, asked famous individuals to write 500 word essays about what they believe and broadcast them on the radio. Four years ago, a radio producer began it again. He describes the reason that they took this up again:
The goal is not to persuade Americans to agree on the same beliefs. Rather, the hope is to encourage people to begin the much more difficult task of developing respect for beliefs different from their own.
I think this work is the kind of thing that we can be doing here in our community. Whilst we say that we respect each other’s beliefs, and that we are a diverse group of people, we don’t often explore those differences. It isn’t done – is it? – to talk openly about what you believe. And more often than not, when asked what we believe, the answer has to do with God and Jesus, with life after death or the virgin birth. It isn’t about those daily moments that truly define what you believe.
Stephanie Pearl-McPhee wrote once: ‘I really believe that you get more of what you pay attention to.’ She went on to describe a several hour ordeal of trying to get on to a place for a business trip when she was blocked at every turn, and where she tried to related calmly to the agent at the desk, and her supervisor and that person’s supervisor as well. ‘Combat crazy with calm,’ is another of her beliefs or rules that she lives by.
It is this sort of belief that I personally am most curious about. We can talk about Jesus and God and the virgin birth and all that, too, but what will tell me most about you are these smaller, intensely personal ideas and commitments that you seek to live out and that you hold to when the world goes pear shape.
You are each and all invited to join in reflecting upon what it is you believe, and to express it in a short essay. I will be leading a three week course at the church in June where you can come and do some exercises to help clarify what you’d like to say, and where you can share with others in the process. Or, if getting to the church isn’t going to work for you (and you find the internet and computers in general friendly), I can provide an online version that you can do, either on your own or in partnership with another. And if those don’t work for you, I can provide you with an on paper workbook that you can use to create.
Did I mention that I really hope that many of us will join in this process?
Let’s give it a go and try to say what we believe, and listen to each other that we may strengthen what it is that gives our lives meaning, and that we build the bonds between us.
What do you believe?
Linda