In a meeting with the Unitarian Universalist minister who will be marrying us exactly one year and one day after this newsletter appears, my fiancée and I were asked about our spiritual beliefs. I groaned, though I had known it was coming. How can someone teach and write about religion and mythology for an entire lifetime and not be able to answer such a simple question? But I am terrible at it, every time, and this newsletter is, if nothing else, an attempt to explain why. The minister had to ask because, alphabetically speaking, UU is DIY. There is no required theology or creed. Although Lori and I are no longer official church members (I’m done with organized religion, I have to say), this kind of openness appeals to both of us. It may appear eccentric, especially to religious conservatives who would regard it as the kind of pathetic
I like your reference to Frye's comments about biblical literalism. I used to tell students in Bible classes that I was a literalist. I wanted them to learn what the texts literally said. Then I could slip in the allegorical, tropologial, and anagogical, knowing that the analogical was beyond the reach of human reason and therefore imaginative -- imaginal, as the French have it. As Mariann Moore said of Blake, I think we are both literalists of the imagination.
Emerson is my idea of a good Unitarian. I was Christenend in the Unitarian Church, baptised in the Congregational Church, confirmed in the Episcopal Church, and married in the Anglican Church of Canada (St. Thomas, where Norrie gave his "Creation and Recreation" lectures). I'd like to think I retained something of each, even though I've had spiritual thoughts that none of them would fully accept.
I like your reference to Frye's comments about biblical literalism. I used to tell students in Bible classes that I was a literalist. I wanted them to learn what the texts literally said. Then I could slip in the allegorical, tropologial, and anagogical, knowing that the analogical was beyond the reach of human reason and therefore imaginative -- imaginal, as the French have it. As Mariann Moore said of Blake, I think we are both literalists of the imagination.
Emerson is my idea of a good Unitarian. I was Christenend in the Unitarian Church, baptised in the Congregational Church, confirmed in the Episcopal Church, and married in the Anglican Church of Canada (St. Thomas, where Norrie gave his "Creation and Recreation" lectures). I'd like to think I retained something of each, even though I've had spiritual thoughts that none of them would fully accept.