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    No Less Real than Myth

    Filed Under books, islam, questions, quotes, religion, spiritual practice, uuism 

    Priests in Xela, Guatemala 2005

    I’m still thinking about my prior post, The Gods You Didn’t Choose, the responses to it, and posts on other blogs - such as Peacebang, Trivium, Liberal Faith Tradition, The Hanif Blog - related to UU concerns about religious legacy.

    What I don’t like is the centrality of Christianity. The expectation that Christianity is the starting point, when for me, it doesn’t feel as though it’s my cultural starting point.

    But as others have said, you don’t get to choose your parents. Whether I like it or not, Jesus is mainstream, and although I was raised to swim against the religious current, it may no longer be appropriate to feel resentful about it.

    As one commenter suggested, rebelliousness can be a pretty immature reaction (I’d rather not use the word adolescent).

    I was taking this whole thing very personally. There are many people who study religions, histories and cultures for the sake of expanding their horizons - not necessarily their religious practices. Why couldn’t I do the same? Improving my understanding of Christian theology doesn’t mean becoming a Christian or even wanting to be one.

    So I’m good with that. I can handle that. What is likely to frustrate me for the rest of my life, however, is watching people become ensnared by religious teachings, debating and making points of faith out of answers to questions I consider to be inherently problematic (e.g. was Mary, mother of Jesus, a literal virgin?). More painful than that is seeing how these questions are given great value simply because they are religious questions, when to me they are no more crucial to living a moral life than raging debates about the motivations, lifestyles and destinies of any other mythological characters - be they Han Solo, Orpheus or Ophelia.

    Yes, I equated people we all know to be fiction with the characters of great monotheistic traditions. Not to diminish them, but to put them in perspective. Jonah of the Bible is less real to me than, say, Omar ibn al Khattab, but that’s because Omar ibn al Khattab was part of the mythology that I grew up with. This isn’t to say he didn’t exist -  even you and I have stories that can one day be larger than life. The stories we tell of our more immediate ancestors demonstrate this possibility.

    Another quote from Thomas Moore’s Care of the Soul:

    When we tell stories about the family without judgment and without instant analysis, the literal persons turn into characters in a drama and isolated episodes reveal themselves as themes in a great saga.

    I respect myths - no, I love them. Let’s make some more.

    The reason I referred to my last post as The Gods You Didn’t Choose is because I really do believe that it’s a choice - which gods you want to believe in, which world view. And I’ve seen this ever since I was a child: so many Christians who take for granted that there is something more real about what they believe.

    It would be unfair of me to suggest in any way that this is an issue specific to Unitarian Universalism, because that would be false; but all the talk about theology and “going back” to “our roots” raised some sort of internal alarm. The “please tell me we aren’t taking ourselves so seriously” alarm. I’ve hit the snooze button on it for now; I want to keep an open mind.

    I’m a humanist; it just becomes more apparent by the day. And I’ll try to keep that in perspective, too.

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    4 Responses to “No Less Real than Myth”

    1. laura on August 7th, 2007 6:45 pm

      As you know, I am struggling with many of these same questions and issues - and certainly have no better answers. But I cannot tell you how much I appreciate so much the dialogue you are bringing to the table, and the fact that you are encouraging us to all think about faith as UUs not as some hand-me-down piece of clothing, but as something we craft and weave for ourselves, individually. For me, that is the crucial difference between the faiths I saw around me growing up, and the faith to which I have come - I *choose* where I am… I *choose* my gods.

      However, that said, I think there is a lot to gain from the faiths of our childhoods. It is through these lenses that we tell the truths of who we are now… it’s kind of like the wrinkles on an old woman’s face: she got them authentically, through living the journey. I don’t think we can escape living our faith journey out of childhood, and if we’re lucky that journey takes us into the gods we choose.

      Hmmm. Maybe there *are* gods we don’t choose, and they are the ones we were handed as children. Not necessarily bad, not necessarily detrimental… but chosen *for* us, not *by* us.

      Oh dear, HS, you have me rolling around in this and I am not even sure it is the same thing you are talking about… but it surely has me thinking and I am glad for it. Thank you. ::::HUGS::::

    2. Comrade Kevin on August 7th, 2007 8:40 pm

      I proposed going back to Unitarian roots because it seemed to these eyes that UUs had drifted so far into atheism and nihilism that there was absolutely nothing holding us together other than the fact that we “weren’t something”.

      And as I am a proud student of history, I encourage everyone to explore the past. It has much to teach us and although we can’t always predict the future by studying the past, we can be sure that money, greed, sex, and power are constants in human nature. We can make more educated guesses.

      As for taking ourselves seriously, I thought that’s what defined Unitarians as such. I’m not making a snarky joke; I’m being absolutely serious.

      And my reason for advancing this cause of going back to our roots is that deep down, I want Unitarianism to survive beyond just a fringe group that never grows and loses a member for every member it gains.

      I invested nine years into UUism. Just because I don’t identify as UU doesn’t mean that I don’t still care about it. Just because I went through the divorce and signed the papers doesn’t mean that I don’t have a history with UUism. I wish it well.

    3. Michael on August 8th, 2007 7:47 am

      I think you’ve hit on an important discernment tool. here, and one I think UUs need to struggle with whatever our theology. We DO need to be asking ourselves what questions are really important to spend our time on.

      It’s a fascinating discussion to look at the history vs. the mythology of the “virgin” Mary. Fascinating.

      And engaging in that discussion does nothing to alleviate pain, suffering and oppression in our world today.

      I think we can do both: have fascinating discussions AND understand our power and responsibility to create a better society for everyone. I don’t see why it has to be an either-or choice.

      -m

    4. Scott Gerard Prinster on August 8th, 2007 3:44 pm

      I’ve been a long-time proponent of knowing and respecting our history, including our Christian roots, but it seems to me that we come up with exclusively Protestant origins only if we slice our history in a very particular way. If we slice it more narrowly, we look like a movement primarily in retreat from Christianity. If we slice it more broadly, our roots go back at least to the traditions of Judaism. One of my favorite sermons I wrote is about the Jewish roots of UUism — it’s no longer available on the webpage of the congregation I used to serve, or I’d point you to it. If you’re curious, fly me an e-mail at prinster@wisc.edu, and I’ll send you a copy.

      Our heritage is much broader and richer than we give ourselves credit for… it’s time we gave ourselves permission to be grateful for the inspirations of a much grander piece of the world!

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