{"id":32,"date":"2014-12-04T13:24:53","date_gmt":"2014-12-04T13:24:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/?p=32"},"modified":"2014-12-05T19:55:51","modified_gmt":"2014-12-05T19:55:51","slug":"a-unitarian-communion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/?p=32","title":{"rendered":"A Unitarian Communion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"communion_logo\"<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Short Reflection (10th October 2010 at Essex Church \/ Kensington Unitarians) <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In this short reflection I hope to say something about what communion means to me \u2013 or, at least, what it has become in my imagination \u2013 and why I am so strongly drawn to this ritual with which I have almost no history or previous personal experience.\u00a0I struggled to articulate my fuzzy and nebulous thoughts in a way that might make sense outside of my own head! But I\u2019ll attempt to explain\u2026<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I want to begin by drawing your attention to the words on the front of your order of service. They are taken from a poem called \u2018Separation\u2019 which, for me, points towards the essence of communion. In the poem, an old man hears of the death of a friend, and laments the loss of so many others who were dear to him. He realises that he can now count just four men, who he has known and loved, that remain \u2013 and even they are scattered across thousands of miles \u2013 no-one is close at hand. Thinking of his beloved friends, he says:<\/p>\n

\u201cLonging for each other we are all grown gray; through the fleeting world rolled like a wave in the stream\u2026When shall we meet and drink a cup of wine, and laughing gaze into each other\u2019s eyes?\u201d<\/p>\n

The sense of longing and loneliness \u2013 and the depth of love \u2013 in these words touches me deeply.<\/p>\n

I imagine that it is an experience common to many of us at one time or another \u2013 when times are good we might feel steady enough,\u00a0but at other times we may feel so alone in the face of life\u2019s troubles, and that nobody is really there to keep us company\u00a0as we are \u201crolled like a wave in the stream\u201d.\u00a0We may encounter so many people in our day-to-day life, and yet it is rare to go beyond surface things,\u00a0rare to be truly present and make a deep connection, rare to feel that we know and are known by another, and that we are cared for in some ultimate way.<\/p>\n

This resonates strongly with my own sense of what communion might mean \u2013 and what it might be able to do for us.<\/p>\n

It perhaps shouldn\u2019t be all that surprising that I found my thoughts and feelings about this so difficult to put into words. Maybe whatever-it-is that we\u2019re dealing with in communion \u2013 for me, something around the ultimate unity of all-that-is, our often-unspoken love for each other in community, and the cosmic love that holds and permeates us all \u2013 is something so deep and powerful that it is best approached obliquely, metaphorically, poetically, or even silently.<\/p>\n

For me, the ritual of communion offers a chance to reach out to each other with tenderness \u2013 to symbolically cross the boundaries of our separate human selves \u2013 to express something simple but profound about the depth of our connection and caring \u2013 and to affirm the truth that, ultimately, we are one with each other and with all-that-is.\u00a0We share each other\u2019s joys and sufferings, and our fates are inextricably intertwined,\u00a0as part of the interdependent web of all creation.<\/p>\n

As we prepare to hold our own communion here today, it feels right that we keep an awareness of what communion meant for our Unitarian Christian forebears \u2013 and that we are respectful of what it means today for our brothers and sisters in other churches \u2013 and yet one of the joys of our liberal religious tradition is that each generation can take the rituals, symbols, and metaphors that have been handed down to us, and make them our own.<\/p>\n

I hope that those of us who are here this morning are able to offer our presence \u2013 our \u201cnearness\u201d \u2013 as we enter into this precious communion ritual together, or simply sit in loving witness, each bringing our own subtly different understanding of its meaning, and each taking something of worth from the experience in our own way.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Reflection by Jane Blackall<\/strong><\/p>\n

An audio recording of this reflection (and two others from the same service) is available:<\/strong><\/p>\n\nhttp:\/\/www.kensington-unitarians.org.uk\/podcasts\/KU_sarah.jane.tristan_sermon_10.10.10.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Short Reflection (10th October 2010 at Essex Church \/ Kensington Unitarians) In this short reflection I hope to say something about what communion means to me \u2013 or, at least, what it has become in my imagination \u2013 and why<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions\/111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}