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.
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.
Tom, I still haven't gotten around to responding to your comment of two weeks ago, and here you are with another one. Your responses are always stimulating. I should of course have thought of the Marianne Moore aphorism myself and used, it! Wow, I've heard of traveling preachers, but you have been an itinerant congregationalist! I didn't know you were christened in the Unitarian Church. I mentioned UU to Norrie once and he made a face. Don't know what his notion of Unitarianism was--I was told that UU used to be dominated by secular humanist rationalists, so maybe that's what he knew. Anyway, I love your comments in themselves and because they remind me of the kindred spirits I'm writing for.
Thank you, Michael. I suppose the story of his youth was that people started out as Congregationalists and became Unitarians if they rose in social standing, which usually meant in wealth. That was the story of my father's family, though my mother's remained Congos. My father was sent to board at Episcopal High School and the high church element resonated with me when I was a teenager. ¶ I look forward to your weekly postings, as Bob said he does. BTW, today's his birthday.
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.
Tom, I still haven't gotten around to responding to your comment of two weeks ago, and here you are with another one. Your responses are always stimulating. I should of course have thought of the Marianne Moore aphorism myself and used, it! Wow, I've heard of traveling preachers, but you have been an itinerant congregationalist! I didn't know you were christened in the Unitarian Church. I mentioned UU to Norrie once and he made a face. Don't know what his notion of Unitarianism was--I was told that UU used to be dominated by secular humanist rationalists, so maybe that's what he knew. Anyway, I love your comments in themselves and because they remind me of the kindred spirits I'm writing for.
Thank you, Michael. I suppose the story of his youth was that people started out as Congregationalists and became Unitarians if they rose in social standing, which usually meant in wealth. That was the story of my father's family, though my mother's remained Congos. My father was sent to board at Episcopal High School and the high church element resonated with me when I was a teenager. ¶ I look forward to your weekly postings, as Bob said he does. BTW, today's his birthday.