"If I can't dance - it's not my revolution." Emma Goldman

Note - this is an adapted version of an address I used at Lewisham Unitarian Meeting for a service back in 2010. I came across it again recently and decided it was worth sharing. I didn't use the Emma Goldman quote at the time but it expresses the general thought of the piece well.

When I was 18, I went to my first outdoor music festival. Back then, for a quiet, bookish kid who was just getting into music seriously, this was a real adventure. And as I look back, the impressions I received are still surprisngly clear in my mind. Not just the endless array of different musics over the four days, but the tailbacks on the tiny country roads leading to the festival site; the cheap plastic sunglasses I bought at the festival stall; the weather, which in the fine English tradition ranged from bakingly hot to sudden downpours.

Above all, it is the dancing that I remember. In full-to-the-brim tents, on stages, in small circles – it was everywhere. I remember throwing myself around one lunchtime alongside a small but ecstatic crowd to Underworld on the main stage as the rain came down, the frontman of the band pogoing from left to right across the stage, urging his bandmates and ourselves onto greater heights.

That weekend remains one of the most remarkable experiences of my life. Apart from perhaps the contemplation of nature, listening to music, dancing and singing are still the closest I've come to a sense of overpowering joy. A religious feeling, if you like, where emotion temporarily surpasses logic, where all that matters is the moment and celebrating the moment with others. I doubt I'm the only person to have experienced this as one of the times when they've felt most alive.

So, my starting point is that joy – an active, participatory joy – is not only tremendously important for us as human beings, but that spiritual practice ignores it at its peril. And my question is – what does this mean for us as people gathered here for worship in that very temple of rationalism, a Unitarian meeting house?

Performance, and participation in performance, has been a key part of religion around the world. Let's look at the Christian tradition. You can find sanction for letting your hair down and having a good time in the Bible; from that old time joyful singer and dancer King David of Israel to the parties which Jesus and his disciples attended in the New Testament. Both the Catholic and Protestant traditions – each in their own way – build space for joy and participation into their services, whether that's the timeless ritual of mass or the call and response script of a modern high-tempo evangelical service.

Islam, often associated with austerity, gives us festivals in Egypt where the very recitation of the verses of the Qu'ran has been elevated to an art form, where the best performers are lauded for their work. And dancing is a part of religious celebration wherever you go, from the South London wedding to Diwali to Sufi whirling dervishes.

Here in this Meeting House, singing is a central part of what we have in Sunday worship. We're also fortunate to have not one but two very skilled organists, and our young people are also musically talented. The luckiest meetings have whole choirs of their own.

However, there's been another side to religious practice which looks upon art and joyous practice as a threat, a distraction or a 'barrier to God'. Most of the successive divisions in established religions have been accompanied by new lists of things to disapprove of, whether seventeenth century Puritans, nineteenth century American fundamentalists, or the extremists of all faiths of today. Music and dancing have and continue to feature highly on these blacklists.

It may surprise you to hear I have on the one hand some understanding of this position. I think of what I call the Wizard of Oz argument – if you take away the song and dance show from life and religion then ultimately what's left behind the curtain has to stand and fall on its own merits. When I was dancing in a field, I wasn't thinking about anything other than dancing – it is not a particularly rational experience, and the nearest thing to an ethic of dancing is not to stand on your partners feet or to jostle the other dancers!

On the other hand, I side firmly with those who see in joyous practice, music, art, ritual and dancing – part of what makes human life and sprituality so richly rewarding. As someone who comes at life from a cerebral, rationalist point of view – one of life's right brainers – I think I value it all the more because it doesn't come easy to me. As with indiviudal human beings, I don't think the solution to the mind/body problem in religion is to deny either but to try and reconicle both.

Now, you'll be relieved to hear I'm not going to play loud four-to-the-floor techno music at you, nor am I going to suggest that suddenly all get out of our seats and start dancing. But what I am going to do is close by answering my question: what does talking about joy, about music and dancing mean for us here as people gathered here this morning .

One, is that I believe that as individuals finding ways to connect with joy through - music, dance, art, singing – whatever works for you – is really important.

Second, as I've suggested, we can have our cake and eat it in these services. In other words, we can have all the ethical discussions, rationalism and contemplation we need and also connect with joy through singing, music and art . To express this in terms John (our lay leader) used last week, joyous communion is what we do and what we should be aiming for.

Third, and finally, I do want to issue a gentle challenge to us all – including myself. making time to connect with art and joy takes more time and effort than you might think. Let's all make some time in the coming days to remind ourselves why these things matter and make time for them in our lives.

Curiosity and spirituality

It's perhaps not commonly known, but I occasionally take services at a Unitarian meeting house in South East London.

For more information on Unitarians (like Quakers with hymns) see http://www.unitarian.org.uk. Our Meeting House is on Faceborg here:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Lewisham-Unitarian-Meeting-House/204686696210228

The theme of yesterday's address/sermon was 'curiosity and spirituality' and I include revised extracts below.

Last month I finally watched Citizen Kane for the first time. For those who haven't seen it, the story revolves around a reporter's quest to uncover the riddle of Charles Foster Kane's dying words. Consumed with the need for an answer, he plunges deeper and deeper into Kane's life. Yet for all his zeal and labour, he never finds the answer he is looking for.

But if our own questions don't have one right answer, or even an answer at all, does that matter?

Can we enjoy asking questions without needing an answer?

A question of questions

There are differing views on the value of questions. At one end of the spectrum, analytical philosophers like A J Ayer argued that most questions of ethics or metaphysics are not really true questions at all, as they cannot be answered through observation or mathematical logic.

At the other, literal-minded interpretations of religion tend towards being 'all answer and no question', to quote John Updike. In other words, all questions of belief or practice can be addressed through a monolithic reading of a single holy text.

I have too many questions myself to rest easy with either view. I do think the big questions are worth asking, worth discussing with others. But I've also learnt to live with the fact that often all we get isa provisional answer, an answer for the moment alone.

Sometimes all we can do is hold the question without getting an answer at all. Yet I believe that paying the question attention is I believe in itself useful and consciousness-expanding.

This is why the most interesting teachers answer questions with riddles, parables and stories that enrich debate and enhance possibilities, rather than closing them down.

This is why it's vital to engage with ideas, and with others with ideas, who make you think in new and exciting ways.

This is also why critical thinking is so important

Critical thinking and curious cats

The liberal Anglican Don Cupitt (in The Sea of Faith) defined critical thinking as follows:

A critical thinker seeks to emancipate his own thinking from the tyranny of theory. He learns regularly to perform little thought experiments in which he sets aside the theory which he himself uses to look at himself and the world and tries looking at them in light of another theory.

The only thing I think is missing from this definition is a sense of playfulness. For example, I share my house with three cats which the landlady has left in our care. I have no idea what they are thinking when they poke their noses into everything around them, but they are undeniably curious about the world in a playful, open-ended way.

I recently came across a summary of liberation theology and straight away knew I wanted to read more. I don't know what I'll take from these ideas, but I do hope that this open-minded, curious, cat-like enquiry will help enhance my own thinking and spiritual practice, as Christianity, Buddhism, psychoanalysis and conversation with other Unitarians have all done before now.

Curiosity helps us grow as individuals - if Thomas Edison had not sought the new he would have just built a better candle!

Unicorns in the balloon factory

What applies to the individual also applies to to the community.

There's a great story from Seth Godin in Tribes - a parable almost - about a unicorn in a balloon factory. It means no harm, but it causes all kinds of havoc just by having a point to make.

Curiosity, asking questions, is part of liberation. Wherever a status quo is unhelpful, perhaps even harmful, calling it into question can be a powerful and sometimes a brave act, and perhaps the start of a positive change in your life or the life of the community.

Musings on tolerance and the so-called 'ground zero mosque'

It's perhaps not commonly known, but I occasionally take services at a Unitarian meeting house in South East London. I'm involved in the management there, albeit to a diminishing extent now I'm based in Birmingham.

For more information on Unitarians (like Quakers with hymns) see http://www.unitarian.org.uk. Our Meeting House is on the web here – http://lewisham-unitarians.blogspot.com/.

The theme of yesterday's address/sermon was religious tolerance and I include extracts below, as it's the first one I've been halfway to happy with.

I begin with a quote from the German Enlightenment writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Goethe wrote "Toleration ought in reality to be merely a transitory mood. It must lead to recognition. To tolerate is to affront."

I want to talk to you about this idea of reaching past the kind of negative toleration Goethe is criticising. I want to talk about a more difficult, but positive toleration of those of all faiths and of none based on reconciliation and recognition.

In recent weeks, some of you may have been following a controversy in the United States about an Islamic community centre in Manhattan. If you haven't heard, this is the story.

A cleric named Imam Rauf from the Sufist tradition of Islam is proposing to build a community centre with prayer rooms in Manhattan, some three blocks away, and out of sight of, from the site of the World Trade Centre. Some have compared it to an Islamic YMCA. No big deal, you might say.

Guess again. Irresponsible politicians have branded the project the 'Ground Zero Mosque' and moved to attack it as disrespectful to the dead of 9/11. Adverts have been run on the side of New York buses picturing a plane flying into one of the World Trade Centre towers and a mosque divided by the question: Why Here?

Sadly, all too many people seem willing to listen to these politicians. The German theologian Hans Kung wrote "There will be peace on earth when there is peace among the world religions." Hmm. Guess we're not quite there yet.

So, what should be a simple, local planning decision for the city authorities has become a national controversy in which the President has been forced to intervene, citing the first amendment rights of all US citizens to freedom of religious expression.

Here's what the Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg has had to say on the matter:

Islam did not attack the World Trade Center-–Al-Qaeda did. To implicate all of Islam for the actions of a few who twisted a great religion is unfair and un-American.

I understand the impulse to find another location for the mosque and community center. I understand the pain of those who are motivated by loss too terrible to contemplate.

However, this is a test of our commitment to American values. We must have the courage of our convictions. We must do what is right, not what is easy. And we must put our faith in the freedoms that have sustained our great country for more than 200 years.

So, it looks as if the proposal for the community centre will go ahead. But it throws into sharp relief the limits of negative tolerance. The First Amendment or other forms of negative tolerance before the law don't require people to understand and accept the religious beliefs of others. To see things from another's perspective. A negative freedom cannot of itself create a positive understanding of others, only the space to allow us to cultivate this understanding.

Let's move back to this country and look at some of the readings we heard earlier. The French philosopher Voltaire, a noted Anglophile, praises eighteenth century Britain in his Letters on the English for its hard-won religious pluralism. In 1733, he writes of the equality of the stock exchange, "where the Jew, the Muslim and the Christian transact together as though they all professed the same religion … [where] the Presbyterian confides in the Anabaptist and the Churchman depends on the Quakers word."

Clearly, compared with the wars of the Reformation and with other eighteenth century states like France, where religious tolerance was seldom seen, this kind of economic pragmatism was a big step forward.

But, wind forward fifty years to the setting of Dickens' Barnaby Rudge, the 'No Popery' riots of the 1780's, and we find that this freedom has yet to turn into mutual understanding. We find burning churches, an intolerance of difference in the form of Catholicism, a latent violence which becomes active violence under the provocation of unscrupulous politicians.

The riots find their echo today in the actions of the far right, now organised into the English Defence League. The League march against Islam in cities like Birmingham and like the No Popery riots, they target places of worship. Not far from Birmingham, they left a pig's head on the wall of Dudley Central Mosque – an outrage not only to practicing Muslims but to anyone who takes freedom of religious practice seriously.

So we too in Britain have no reason to be complacent in our negative tolerance of other beliefs, other faiths. We too need to work towards not only maintaining what we have, but also work towards a positive recognition of the worth of all religious traditions.

As one anonymous but pretty wise person put it, "toleration [...]is the first step towards curiosity, interest, study, understanding, appreciating and finally valuing diversity."

We Unitarians have long been adept at incorporating elements of all religions, all philosophies into our worship. Within our walls, each of us brings our own combination of elements such as Christianity, humanist philosophy, Buddhism, paganism as well as the other Abrahamic religions Islam and Judaism.

For those of us who come from, or still feel attached to, the Christian tradition, the intolerance expressed in the Bible towards other faiths, other peoples, can be problematic. Thankfully, there are passages in the New Testament in particular which point in the other direction. In Romans 2, Paul points out that it's not what religion you practice, it's how you live your life which is crucial.

What the times now require – of everyone, and I would argue that this includes Unitarians - is taking that next step of religious tolerance. That which moves us further towards appreciating and valuing our diversity of belief.

Here we are in South East London surrounded by people of all faiths and of none. We've got Voltaire's Churchmen, Quakers and Presbyterians, Dickens' Catholics and Muslims, Jews, Sikhs and Hindus and much more besides.

Not all of them share all our liberal views on religion, but with most of them I would suspect we would find more to unite than to divide us. A commitment to truth and to peace, a love of friends and family, and a desire to leave the world in a better place than when we found it. By listening to and better understanding each other we recognise common ground and – in the spirit of Gandhi - begin to move towards a win-win situation for everyone.

For me, it strikes me that for a person who lives in one of the areas of Birmingham with the highest proportion of practicing Muslims, I know very little about my neighbours. So I'm going to make a small start by reading more about Islam and working to understand them better.

So, if you take one thing away from this talk, please do reflect on how we as Unitarians can play a role in fostering greater understanding and positive tolerance between faiths.

In closing, I want to leave you with two quotes. One is from the Prophet Muhammed himself, who said "You have two qualities which God, the Most Exalted, likes and loves. One is mildness and the other is toleration."

The second, longer quote is from Imam Rauf, the sponsor of the Manhattan community centre we began our address with.

At an interfaith memorial service for the martyred journalist Daniel Pearl, Imam Rauf said, 'If to be a Jew means to say with all one's heart, mind, and soul: Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One, not only today I am a Jew, I have always been one. If to be a Christian is to love the Lord our God with all of my heart, mind and soul, and to love for my fellow human being what I love for myself, then not only am I a Christian, but I have always been one.'