Hymn 299 begins, “Make channels for the streams of love where they may broadly run; and love has overflowing streams to fill them everyone.” There are many hymns in Singing the Living Tradition and Singing the Journey, our current hymnal and supplement, that contain the word love, but this one never fully resonated with me until I heard it during the pandemic. Then it clicked. If we provide opportunities for the expression of love, then it becomes real.
The hymn continues, “But if at any time we cease such channels to provide, the very founts of love for us will soon be parched and dried.” As a process theologian, I find LOVE to be the closest articulation of what I understand of the holy, that making way, that enacting and embodying, of LOVE is at the heart of theology. LOVE exists because we bring it into the world, and the more ways we make it real, the more love there is. Conversely, if we make no effort to act on LOVE’s behalf, if we deny its expression in the world, then LOVE does not exist for us.
The final verse of the hymn is, “For we must share, if we would keep this gift all else above; we cease to give, we cease to have–such is the law of love.” This is the simplest and most poetic explanation of Process Theology I have ever heard and it was written by an Anglican priest who died almost 50 years before process theology was even a thing.
Over the past month and a half I’ve been leading a small group process with folks from First Unitarian and Eliot Chapel to explore the proposed revision to Article II of the UUA Bylaws and I am coming to think that it too, might just be a simple, poetic, description of process theology.
Some Background: Article II of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) Bylaws, Principles and Purposes, is the foundation for all the work of our UUA and its member congregations and covenanted communities. Most remember Article II as our 7 Principles and 6 Sources, which articulate our denominational agreements and name our spiritual and religious foundations. UUA Bylaws require that we revise Article II on a regular schedule. The 2023 proposed revision of Article II is a radical re-visioning that invites us into dialogue with one another about the values of our shared faith community.
We are in a one year discernment period, after which delegates to General Assembly 2024 will vote to accept or reject the proposed Article II revision. As a congregation we have already begun a multi-pronged approach to this significant moment in our denominational history. I mentioned the 4-session small group I lead this fall. I’ll offer it again in the spring. We will also focus on this in our Mid-Winter Meeting in January. And starting this month, each month the theme of the month will correspond to one of the values in the proposed Article II revision. November’s theme is Generosity.
Want to learn more? Interested in being a 2024 GA delegate? Wrestling with how this will shape the future of our faith communities? All these questions, feelings and more are part of this process. I encourage you to begin with the new display in Fellowship Hall (many thank to Danielle Kozemczak!), watch my sermon from last spring and then check out the UUA’s Article II Study Commission webpage for more information: Article II Study Commission | UUA.org. This is your invitation to join the conversation about how we as Unitarian Universalists make LOVE real in the world!