We Forgive You, Saint Nicholas

Nicholas of Myra punching Bishop Arius at the Council of Nicaea

Today is Saint Nicholas Day!

While it is widely known that the Santa Claus of Christmas is derived from St. Nicholas, few know much about the original Saint Nick beyond the fact that he did not live at the North Pole, own flying reindeer, or employ a workshop full of elves.

Nicholas of Myra was a political ally of Athanasius of Alexandria during the Church intrigues of the 4th Century and, like Athanasius, he is rumored to have come into power at an absurdly young age through dubious means.

Fast Track to Bishop

The legend begins with Nicholas as a young man on his way back home to Asia Minor (what we now call Turkey) either from studying in Egypt at Alexandria or from visiting Jerusalem.  While still at sea, as the tale goes, he rescued an overboard sailor.  Or, perhaps he calmed a sea storm with his prayers.  To put it mildly, the stories differ.   His ship then made port in the city of Myra.

Just before Nicholas arrived, the bishop of Myra had died and one of the city’s church leaders was instructed in a dream to choose a “conqueror” as the next bishop.  You or I might be suspicious of such an instruction, not necessarily assuming its Divine origin even if we did accept it as a message from a supernatural source.  But, the church leaders of Myra were not so cynical.

The root of the Greek name Nicholas (Νικόλαος) is nike, meaning “conquest” or “victory,” so when sailors astounded at the exploits of this youth spread the name Nicholas around Myra, the leaders of the church felt they had no choice but to elect the young Nicholas as bishop.

Andrew, Advent, and Annunciation

The Reform celebrates the transition from November to December with the feast of St. Andrew on November 30th (honoring the first disciple of Jesus) and Advent/Annunciation on December 1st.

This differs significantly from other Christian traditions, which celebrate Advent four Sundays before Christmas, and celebrate the Annunciation (the day on which Mary was told by the Angel Gabriel that she would conceive Jesus) on 25 March, a materialist nine months of gestation prior to Christmas.

For the Reform, the historical placement of the Annunciation is not as important as the inspirational role it plays as part of the Nativity story.   By observing this herald of the Nativity together with Advent, AUR brings the entire narrative of the birth of Jesus together in one ritual season, setting aside December as a month of preparing for new beginnings: the beginning of the life of Christ, the beginning of the age of the Tree of Life, and the beginning of the new year when December finally turns over to January.

And, on the Eve of Annunciation, as disciples of Christ we celebrate St. Andrew, the first disciple of Christ.

Reform Unitarian Advent is also the traditional feast day of St. Eligius, patron of goldsmiths, giving us the start of the first Dozen of the Advent/Christmas season: the Twelve Days of Gold celebrating Mary as the Mother of Jesus, which ends with the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12th.

Now is the time for unlit Christmas decorations, and for placing Mary and the Angel in the crèche!

(NOTE: Our Lady’s Day falls on Thursday in 2009, setting the observation of the Twelve Days of Gold to Thursday the 5th.)

12th Day of Thanksgiving – Harvest Thursday

Thanksgiving is often recognized as an inter-cultural holiday, celebrating the cooperation of European Pilgrims and Native Americans, but it is also an interfaith holiday. After all the Wampanoag were not Christian.

For American Reform Unitarians* the interfaith nature of Thanksgiving actually reinforces its Christian importance, for we see Christianity not as a religion defined against others, but as an idiom of Truth that can be translated into other idioms.

[This Thanksgiving message was originally published in 2008]

True Christianity has from its inception been a religion that sees the good in members of other religions. Jesus praised the faith of the pagan centurion over that of his fellow Jews, and used a member of the hated Samaritan sect as a symbol of goodness in explicit contrast to leaders of his own faith community. When ministering to the Greeks, Paul even went so far as to claim that the “Unknown God” long worshiped in Hellenistic religion was in fact the very same God of Abraham and Jesus.

Some might dismiss Paul’s assertion as a marketing technique, and perhaps so. However, the willingness to seek Christian truth in other religions validates Christianity as a religion about reality rather than a religion merely about itself.

There is, in every religious community, a moral tension between loyalism and realism. By realism here, we do not mean the Christian Realism of Niebuhr, but realism in the sense that religion is seen as an idiomatic description of reality, therefore open to other forms of description.  This is opposed to the “loyalist” view in which that description becomes a mere catechetical shibboleth, a catch phrase or password, turning the religion into an entrenched camp isolated (by its own members) from the rest of the universe.

A religion about the Creator cannot be an enclave in Creation. The truth of God does not have to be spread across God’s own work by a tiny minority of creatures; God’s truth is evident throughout the universe.

Justin Martyr, despite his sainted status, is likely the primary culprit in this God-denying loyalist tradition as he was the first to attribute other religions entirely to the action of devils. One step more “realistic” is the approach of Paul and other missionaries who attempted to exapt the language and imagery of the cultures they encountered for Christian truth.

But, while this approach treats idiom properly as a tool rather than the stuff of religion itself, it is still prone to error due to the implication that only the language of other religions is valid, not the underlying reality that language describes.

Again, this sort of religion implies an agoraphobic god who fashions a vast universe only to cower in one tiny corner of it and beg mere humans to brave the immeasurable remainder. Religion that worships the Almighty Creator does not degrade God in this way.

The idiomatic approach of Reform Unitarianism takes realism one step further and recognizes that some of the underlying ideas of other religions must be valid if the God we worship is indeed the God of all Creation and not merely an imagined god of ethnic or sectarian autolatry.

For us, the Thanksgiving story represents two groups of God’s children, speaking in different idioms, coming together for a precious moment of peace and communion. The words and labels each used to discuss the ultimate nature of reality and its moral implications may have differed, but if there is such an Ultimate Truth then it must be the same Ultimate Truth for all, despite the difference in languages used to describe it.

The political, sectarian, God-denying, and autolatrous view is that the Native Americans were un-Christian heathens. The truly Christian, universal, Creator-affirming, moral view is that while the compassion the Wampanoag showed the Pilgrims may not have been “Christian” charity, it was certainly Christian charity.

Have a wonderful feast day, and give thanks for all of the blessings in your life!

* American Reform Unitarians revere Thanksgiving’s Harvest Thursday as one of the Four Great Thursdays alongside Declaration Thursday, Garden Thursday, and Ascension Thursday.

Notional American Unitarian Reform Church No. 6

This is the sixth in a series of light-hearted signs for hypothetical American Unitarian Reform churches, created using an online image generator. I hope to show a range of attitudes and ideas all possible within the scope of AUR.

The sign for today’s notional church, Unity Christian, announces guest speakers from other faiths for Harvest Thursday, here called Thanksgiving Thursday to avoid confusion. Harvest Thursday is the only one of the Four Great Thursdays of American Unitarian Reform.

Significantly, the guest speakers are from Islam and Judaism, for whom Unitarian Christianity creates a continuity of true monotheism.

The Fifth Day of Thanksgiving – Remembrance Thursday

Vital to the full vision of Thanksgiving, as we remember that good things come to our lives through meetings, is the risk involved.

Human beings need to mix and mingle, not only to make life worth living, but to grow and adapt to our changing environment.  Still, this exchange is not without the potential for danger, as the sad fate of the Wampanoag after the first Thanksgiving demonstrates.

The meeting of worlds can end in epidemic, misunderstanding, hostility, and even warfare.  The history of America, and indeed the world, is written in the twin pens of strife and cooperation.

And, for Reform Unitarians, it is important to recognize the harsh realities of life before celebrating the wondrous potentials, which is why we observe a solemn Remembrance Thursday one week before the Feast of Thanksgiving on Harvest Thursday.

The First Day of Thanksgiving – Diversity Sunday

While Diversity Sunday may not be as important as Remembrance Thursday or Harvest Thursday itself, this introduction to the celebration is vital to the full vision of Thanksgiving, as we remember that good things come to our lives through meetings.

Those may be meetings of different opinions, different families, different religions, different business theories, or different culture.  It is important to remember that Diversity is not simply openness for the sake of conflict-aversion, but in full and rational recognition of the great value that Diversity plays in individual and societal growth.

And, for Reform Unitarians this day is particularly meaningful as it falls on Sunday, the Holy Day of many other Christians of different denominations.  Happy Diversity Sunday!

All Hallows Begins Again the Liturgical Year

Today is the beginning of the Twelve Days of Piety, a holiday AUR shares with other Christians: All Hallows Day, the commemoration of all Saints, known and unknown.

On this day, we honor those who have died after long and pious lives, or who have sacrificed their lives for a good and just cause.  For AUR, this means not only a list of officially accepted Saints, but anyone who has expressed a remark-worthy excess of virtue in the way they lived or died.

Tomorrow, All Souls Day, is the Memorial Day of AUR, when we honor all of the departed and meditate on the meaning of death.  The Twelve Days of Piety end on All Corners Day — which falls on a Thursday this year! — when American Reform Unitarians specifically honor the virtuous in other nations and other faith communities.

The Cloud of Knowing

The AUR blog has been offline for a while to attend to personal issues, and as a sign that it is coming back here is a word cloud (thanks to wordle!) of the blog so far:

Notional American Unitarian Reform Church No. 5

This is the fifth in a series of light-hearted signs for hypothetical American Unitarian Reform churches, created using an online image generator. I hope to show a range of attitudes and ideas all possible within the scope of AUR.

The sign for today’s notional church, Unity Christian, announces a “Seven Year Jubilee” for Declaration Thursday. Declaration Thursday is the only one of the Four Great Thursdays that has a date traditionally associated with it, and every seven years when the 4th of July falls on Declaration Thursday, this is celebrated as the Jubilee!

Sadly, the last Jubilee in 2008 was skipped over due to the leap year. The next will take place in 2013.

Declaration Thursday

[originally posted 03 July 2008]

AUR celebrates Four Great Thursdays, two for the universal expression of virtue and two for the specifically American expression of virtue.

On Garden Thursday, Jesus celebrated a feast with his disciples and, later in the Garden of Gethsemane, recognized the contingent nature of human life by accepting his fate: “If it be Your will, take this cup from me; nevertheless, Your will be done.” This feast day was followed by the violence of the Passion. AUR celebrates this Thursday as a Feast Day and a day of commitment to the contingent condition of the individual life.

On Thanksgiving in 1621, two worlds met in Massachusetts: the Old World represented by the Pilgrims and the New World represented by the Wampanoag. Rather than one group dominating the other in oligarchy, they met as brothers and sisters. It was a moment of human community that, unfortunately, was followed by violence. AUR celebrates this Harvest Thursday as a Feast Day and a day of commitment to the contingent place of each social group.

On Ascension Thursday, 11 disciples gathered to witness Jesus rise up to Heaven. Here they received the Great Commission to spread the Christian message to all humanity. AUR observes this Thursday as a reminder of our duty to spread the message of personal liberation.

On a Thursday in Philadelphia, 1776, 11 colonies (New York abstained) sided with the Massachusetts delegation to declare to the world the right of human beings to rise up against oligarchy. Charged with writing a document announcing the reasons for the colonies’ rebellion, Virginia delegate Thomas Jefferson went beyond this and declared rights for all humanity. AUR observes this Declaration Thursday, the first Thursday in July, as a reminder of our duty to spread the message of social liberation.

HAPPY DECLARATION THURSDAY!